Explaining Traditions: Folk Behavior in Modern Culture

by Simon J. Bronner

Overview

Why do humans hold onto traditions? Many pundits predicted that modernization and the rise of a mass culture would displace traditions, especially in America, but cultural practices still bear out the importance of rituals and customs in the development of identity, heritage, and community. In Explaining Traditions: Folk Behavior in Modern Culture, Simon J. Bronner discusses the underlying reasons for the continuing significance of traditions, delving into their social and psychological roles in everyday life, from old-time crafts to folk creativity on the Internet. Challenging prevailing notions of tradition as a relic of the past, Explaining Traditions provides deep insight into the nuances and purposes of living traditions in relation to modernity. Bronner's work forces readers to examine their own traditions and imparts a better understanding of raging controversies over the sustainability of traditions in the modern world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780813165868
Publisher:	University Press of Kentucky
Publication date:	08/20/2015
Series:	Material Worlds
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	546
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.80(h) x 1.50(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Simon J. Bronner, Distinguished University Professor of American Studies and Folklore and director of the American Studies doctoral program at Pennsylvania State University, Harrisburg, is the author of more than a dozen books, including Grasping Things: Folk Material Culture and Mass Society in America and Killing Tradition: Inside Hunting and Animal Rights Controversies. He lives in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Prologue: Beginning with Tradition
1. Defining Tradition: On the Meaning and Politics of a "Handy" Concept
2. Explaining Tradition: On Folk and Folkloristic Logic
3. Building Tradition: On Control and Authority in Vernacular Architecture
4. Making Tradition: On Craft in American Consciousness
5. Adapting Tradition: On Folklore in Human Development
6. Fading Tradition: On a Dying Language and Lore
7. Personalizing Tradition: On Storytelling by an African American Father and Son
8. Symbolizing Tradition: On the Scatology of an Ethnic Identity
9. Sporting Tradition: On the Praxis of American Football
10. Virtual Tradition: On the Internet as a Folk System
Notes
References
Index

Editorial Reviews

Janus-like, contemporary life looks insistently forward, just as it is wedded to the past. How to explain the contradiciton? This is Simon Bronner's conundrum in his new collection of essays, Exlplaining Traditions: Folk Behavior in Modern Culture. The answer is to understand how tradition serves modernity in smoothing the rough edges of change. Tradition becomes a form of practice—praxis—rather than a set of objects or texts. Bronner reaches back to the Roman distinction between traditum (the object itself) and tradition (the process of transmission).

Folklore 123.2

Explaining Traditions opens our eyes to why we reject some aspects of tradition, why we choose to keep the lore we keep, and the ways in which we are haunted by collective memory even as we seek to slough off its vestiges.

Homestead.org

As one of the foremost thinkers in current folkloristic scholarship, Simon Bronner addresses a key issue in his new book, Explaining Traditions. His work is a very necessary and most welcome publication. Though quite clearly and outspokenly a strong advocate for a reflective understanding of the positive role of tradition in the making of historical and modern culture, Bronner also succeeds in drawing a detailed picture of the opposite points of view of traditional values in our society without blurring his basic vision.

W.F.H. Nicolaisen

"As one of the foremost thinkers in current folkloristic scholarship, Simon Bronner addresses a key issue in his new book, Explaining Traditions. His work is a very necessary and most welcome publication. Though quite clearly and outspokenly a strong advocate for a reflective understanding of the positive role of tradition in the making of historical and modern culture, Bronner also succeeds in drawing a detailed picture of the opposite points of view of traditional values in our society without blurring his basic vision." — W.F.H. Nicolaisen, Distinguished Professor emeritus of English and Folklore, University of Aberdeen, Scotland

"Simon Bronner's Explaining Traditions: Folk Behavior in Modern Culture offers a fresh, rich understanding of how tradition shapes our life each day. In his thoughtful essays on Yiddish stories, blues tales, football, vernacular architecture, crafts, the Internet, and children's games, Bronner shows how tradition defines each of these diverse worlds. The book is a landmark study that is distinguished by both its thorough scholarship and its breadth of vision." — William Ferris, author of Give My Poor Heart Ease: Voices of the Mississippi Blues

" Explaining Traditions opens our eyes to why we reject some aspects of tradition, why we choose to keep the lore we keep, and the ways in which we are haunted by collective memory even as we seek to slough off its vestiges." — Homestead.org

" Explaining Traditions provides deep insight into the nuances and purposes of living traditions in relation to modernity." — SIEF News

"A thought-provoking book about what constitutes tradition, why we continue to care about traditions, and how we forge new ones." — Bookreporter

"No American folklorist is better qualified than Simon Bronner to review and update our ideas about what 'tradition' means...He pulls off a masterful job in this important new book." — Journal of Folklore Research

"An indefatigable researcher and writer, Bronner exhibits his best skills in this book. Always having sought to define and refine the concept of tradition, the author evocatively recapitulates and expands the thrust of his interests and development over the last 35-plus years with this work." — Choice

"Bronner's book is an important contribution to folklore studies. The book's breadth and depth exemplify Bronner's points as he draws upon such a diversity of instances that will persuade readers that tradition remains a pervasive element in modern American life." — Journal of American Folklore

"Janus-like, contemporary life looks insistently forward, just as it is wedded to the past. How to explain the contradiciton? This is Simon Bronner's conundrum in his new collection of essays, Exlplaining Traditions: Folk Behavior in Modern Culture. The answer is to understand how tradition serves modernity in smoothing the rough edges of change. Tradition becomes a form of practice — praxis — rather than a set of objects or texts. Bronner reaches back to the Roman distinction between traditum (the object itself) and tradition (the process of transmission)." — Folklore 123.2

From the Publisher

An indefatigable researcher and writer, Bronner exhibits his best skills in this book. Always having sought to define and refine the concept of tradition, the author evocatively recapitulates and expands the thrust of his interests and development over the last 35-plus years with this work.

Choice

A thought-provoking book about what constitutes tradition, why we continue to care about traditions, and how we forge new ones.

Bookreporter

No American folklorist is better qualified than Simon Bronner to review and update our ideas about what 'tradition' means.... He pulls off a masterful job in this important new book.

Journal of Folklore Research

Simon Bronner's Explaining Traditions: Folk Behavior in Modern Culture offers a fresh, rich understanding of how tradition shapes our life each day. In his thoughtful essays on Yiddish stories, blues tales, football, vernacular architecture, crafts, the Internet, and children's games, Bronner shows how tradition defines each of these diverse worlds. The book is a landmark study that is distinguished by both its thorough scholarship and its breadth of vision.

William Ferris

Bronner's book is an important contribution to folklore studies. The book's breadth and depth exemplify Bronner's points as he draws upon such a diversity of instances that will persuade readers that tradition remains a pervasive element in modern American life.

Journal of American Folklore

Explaining Traditions provides deep insight into the nuances and purposes of living traditions in relation to modernity.

SIEF News