2. • What is Tradition
• Tradition is both Lore and Process
• Sense of identity
• Identified as a tradition by the community
• How do people learn and share traditions?
• Term "Tradition Bearer"
• Do traditions disappear?
• Inventing Tradition
Tradition
3. Tradition
• Tradition is a vital, dynamic feature of the culture of a folk group
What is Tradition
• Both the lore we share and the process by which we share it.
• Something that creates and confirms identity.
• Something that the group identifies as a tradition
Questions arised
• How do people learn and share traditions?
• Do traditions disappear?
4. • Tradition indicates the process of communicating that lore.
• This definition of tradition implies a sense of continuity and of shared
materials, customs, and verbal expressions that continue to be practiced
within and among certain groups.
• Continuity, does not always mean repetition of the same thing. Here, it
refers to the threads of meaning and significance that connect traditions
with groups.
• Sharing in term helps us conceptualize transmission within a group, among
its members, as well as between groups.
• Tradition incorporates space as well as time: we share traditions from group
to group, person to person, place to place—in the present—across and
within groups.
Tradition is both Lore and Process
5. Tradition helps to create and confirm a sense of identity
• Participation in and sharing of a particular
group’s traditions allows members of a group to feel they are a part of
it.
• It allows you to express certain aspects of your
own interests and identity that you have
chosen to develop by participating in the
traditions of the group.
• Recognizing traditions validates the identity
of the existing group and signals our
willingness to be identified as one of its
members.
6. • Traditions themselves must be identified as meaningful by groups.
• Along with that comes the idea that folk groups claim as tradition and participate
in those traditions that allow them to share values and beliefs that are important to
them.
• The key to understanding the role of tradition is to examine what a tradition means
within a particular group.
Identified as a tradition by the community
7. • The idea of “passing down” a tradition no
longer describes the way we understand the
process of learning and adapting traditions.
• Anthropologist Clifford Geertz writes about
the idea of culture as a web (1973, 5)
How do people learn and share traditions?
Thinking about tradition as part of a web of
behaviors and texts helps establish a clearer idea
of the way in which traditions are shared, built on,
and influenced by the cultural behaviors of folk
groups and their individual members.
8. • indicating a specific member of a group who carries out a tradition for other
members of the group, and sometimes actively and consciously teaches or shares it
with others: craftperson, storyteller, ritual leaders.
Term "Tradition Bearer"
Problem with Term "Tradition Bearer"
• By this definition, only those noted individuals who “pass on” traditions
have an active role in sharing and continuing a group’s traditions; the
other members of groups are, then, always passive recipients of
traditions.
• All members of a group participate in an ongoing process of sharing and
remaking their own lore.
• But, it can help folklorists talk about the people they work with as
consultants
9. • Most of the time, though, traditions change and evolve naturally,
and what appears to be an ending is really an adaptation, part of the
process.
• Performing a traditional practice in a new, slightly different way
does not mean it’s wrong or disrespectful of tradition.
• If there’s a “new” way, it’s likely that the members of the group
have, consciously or unconsciously, adapted the tradition to be
more meaningful and/or effective for them, as current members of
the group
Do traditions disappear?
Folklore is NOT a relic of a dying, pure past, that can never change.
10. • People work together to keep a tradition
relevant and meaningful to those who share it.
• Different ways of inventing traditions allow
them to emerge in a variety of situations
Inventing Tradition
• If inventing tradition is a constant process of
cultural interpretation and reconstruction, it is
clear that it can also be a socially and politically
empowering activity
• Tad Tuleja (1997) emphasizes that "invention
suggests the creative impulse,” not the negative
connotations of fakery or falseness."
11. • What is Ritual?
• Features of the ritual
• Low-Context and High-Context Rituals
• Types of Rituals
Ritual
12. • Rituals make our inner experience of traditions visible and observable to
members of the group and often to outsiders.
• During a ritual, the world changes, reality can be suspended, and
traditions become real, tangible experiences that we can actively take part
in.
• Folklorists study rituals because their complexity and dramatic qualities
make them dense with meaning: they are significant expressions of a
group’s traditions, beliefs, values and identity.
Ritualizing...
13. • A ritual is a particular type of tradition
that many folklorists study as a
distinct category of folklore.
• Rituals are repeated, habitual actions,
but they are more purposeful than a
custom
• Rituals are frequently highly
organized and controlled, often
meant to indicate or announce
membership in a group.
What is Ritual?
Rituals are performances that are repeated,
patterned, and frequently include
ceremonial actions that incorporate
symbols, action, repetition; and perhaps
most significant to our being able to
recognize rituals, they have a frame that
indicates when the ritual begins and ends
(Myerhoff 1977, 200)
14. • Tangible factors: “special event” markers: oral performances (songs, dramatic
readings or recitations); dances; special foods (perhaps foods requiring time-
consuming preparation); and dramatic lighting (dim light, candlelight, spotlights of
some sort).
• These items of material culture add weight to the process and reinforce the sense of
the ritual’s being real
Features of the ritual
• Intangible factor: "frame" sets apart ritual
from ordinary events, even those rituals that
seem to us ordinary.
• This frame may be gestural, oral or time-
oriented, and its function is to alert people
to the significance of actions in it.
15. • Low context rituals are those that are less formally designated
and usually not announced or planned in advance.
• It may be performed when others are present or when one is
alone and does not require a particular setting.
• For example, the conversion ritual of throwing salt over your
shoulder when you spill salt is fairly low context.
• Burry the killed cat with your clothes worn when the accident
happen.
Low-Context Rituals
16. High-Context Rituals
• High context” rituals are very stylized and occur at set times for specific,
announced purposes.
• In high-context rituals, there are likely to be particular dress codes participants
must follow, and/or designated ceremonial clothing or jewelry they must wear.
• These are often public events, such as weddings or christenings
17. • An invented ritual, however, is more of a consciously constructed event that may
signify transition and/or change in membership or position
• Rituals mark and announce changes in state, status, or role, and we continually
create rituals that we find meaningful.
• Rituals can at the same time lend a sense of conscious control over the boundaries
between one state or role and another.
Invented Ritual
• Invented rituals may also define groups, in that a group may come
together to perform a particular ritual, then continue to exist as a group.
• In a similar way, a ritual may become a defining feature of a group.
The rituals create the community.
18. • Liminality” comes from the word “limen,” which
means “on the threshold.”
• When we experience a liminal state or are in a
liminal space, we are on the edge of something
new, a transitional place where we are neither
what we were nor what we will be.
• Liminal spaces created through ritual are magical
or mystical realms where literal and symbolic
transformation can take place.
• The transformative power of the ritual space is
sometimes easiest to see in rituals that take place
in sacred belief systems.
Liminality and Ritual Space
20. • Mark notable dates or stages in a person’s life.
• Occur at change or transition: birth, puberty, entering
adulthood or coming-of-age, marriage, and death.
• In some groups, rites of passage involve fasting, body
modifications, or ingestion of ceremonial foods
substances.
• Rites of passage are practiced in all cultures, but the
events celebrated vary from culture to culture.
Rites of Passage
21. • Express a person’s entrance into membership in a group.
• Groups with initiation rituals are usually well-defined, with clear hierarchies and
structures, perhaps even laws or rules of conduct.
• Rituals may include reciting promises or pledges.
Initiation Rituals
Initiations involve activities that
an individual initiate or group of
initiates perform to prove their
worthiness or to bond them to
each other and/or to the group.
• Exhibiting symbolic materials
that represent the group’s
values and history.
22. • There are many rituals associated with naming that range from a
public presentation of an infant within an informal gathering of a
family group, to elaborate ceremonies in which names are bestowed by
religious or community leaders.
• Names and traditions concretize their importance through actions and
performances.
Naming rituals
Adat Maru Ane, Aoheng
Naming rituals acts as an
announcement and
confirmation of that child’s
identity and membership
23. • Traditions link us to family, friends, neighbors, and
other groups we belong to.
• Studying tradition allows us to understand not just
what we care about but also how we express ourselves
across the complex web of communication we share
with those around us.
• Ritual makes beliefs visible, opens up a group’s beliefs
to evaluation and judgment by those outside the
group.
• Rituals are important and are almost always spoken of
as being important; they mark events, values, beliefs,
and experiences that are considered valuable enough
to merit an outward expression.
Closing
24. “Tradition is not the worship
of ashes, but the preservation
of fire.”
― Gustav Mahle
Folklore and Mythology 2021
25. Assignment 2 (Meeting 3)-Tradition and Rituals
1. Have you ever been in a ritual? What was that called by
the people? To what folk group does the ritual belong
to?
2. What was the purpose/significance of the ritual?
3. Express your experience when being in/watching the
ritual?
4. Provide picture example if any.
