Culture and Tradition: Recapitulation of the Relationship Between Two Alternative Terms

Vol.11,No.1(2020)

Abstract
The article deals with theory of tradition as one of the fundamental theoretical and terminological problems of cultural anthropology which has impact on its methodology, range of resolved themes and the way or the direction of putting questions. It tries through excerption of basic encyclopaedic and dictionary literature, selected writings and authors from the field of anthropology and other related disciplines (mainly sociology and folklore studies) capture, summarize and recapitulate general „story“ of the term and the notion of tradition in the course of the last 150 years – from the beginnings of the anthropological thought in the second half of the 19th century through the themes of acculturation, modernization and cultural change in the half of 20th century to the contemporary challenges which the collaboration with the disciplines from the field of natural sciences today brings. The emphasis is put on inherent competition with culture as the fundamental and key concept of cultural anthropology. Both these terms are often considered and used as alternative (equivalent) and therefore we can ask why the anthropology has preferred the term culture to the term tradition (whereas folklore studies did the opposite), how anthropology was explicitly and implicitly considering the term tradition during its development and how the notion of tradition was gradually changing according to actual survey topics and the dialogue with other disciplines. Last but not least we can consider the future of the concept of tradition which is significantly returning today not only in the theoretical and expert level but also as our experienced identity focus in the current changing and interconnecting world.

Keywords:
history of cultural anthropology; 20th century; culture; tradition; cultural transmission; cultural change
Author biography

Vít Erban

Jihočeská univerzita

Odborný asistent, Katedra filosofie a religionistiky, Teologická fakulta Jihočeské univerzity v Českých Budějovicích
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