ANTH 3120 Study Guide - Colonial Williamsburg, Edward Shils, Tom Hanks
27 Mar 2014
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Document Summary
History, tradition, and identity: how identity is being shaped and reshaped. Tradition (1: commonsensical notion: a tradition is a ritual, belief, or object passed down within a society, unchanged and still maintained in the present, with origins in the past. This is how a lot of people think of tradition: natural objective exsits as an aspect of that culture, dichotomy: modern vs traditional the past and the present. There is the core the hard stuff and the mushy stuff around. Constructivist (anthropological) approach (3) same elements, different meanings: traditions are reconstructions, habitual, meaningful to daily life meanings are reshaped. Like the best man at a wedding in the past had a different meaning as it has: symbolic models of the past this thing was important to people in the past, and it still is. There"s nothing natural in these traditions, they are always being reinterpreted: traditions are inventions.
