The Cultural Market of Traditions (Foreword) Cover Image

The Cultural Market of Traditions (Foreword)
The Cultural Market of Traditions (Foreword)

Author(s): Vintilă Mihăilescu
Subject(s): Anthropology
Published by: Muzeul Ţăranului Român, Editura Martor
Keywords: (invention of) tradition; modern society; heritage; national ethnology; ideology; history; mythology; authentic; genuine; marketization;

Summary/Abstract: Tradition has to be distinguished from custom – Eric Hobsbawm claims at the very beginning of his celebrated text about „inventing traditions“ (Hobsbawm, 1983: 2). In this vein, it is not with „customs“ that we will be concerned in the following paper, but with tradition(s). Our interest will not be turned toward the socalled „traditional societies“ (which we prefer to call customary societies – Mihailescu, 2003), but will focus on present day modern societies (mainly Romania) and their ways and reasons of producing and handling here and now what they explicitly consider to be (their) „traditions“.

  • Issue Year: 2008
  • Issue No: 13
  • Page Range: 11-14
  • Page Count: 4
  • Language: English