Multiple Modernities and Reflexive Traditionalisation A Mediterranean Case Study

Abstract

Straddling the divide between tradition and modernity, European ethnologists feel most comfortable with explaining how the present became what it is today. They are more reluctant to forecast which ones of the cultural phenomena they can observe today will still be with them tomorrow. Globalization and the cultural transformations it entails challenge European ethnology to distinguish the durable from the transitory and also, to highlight the emergence of novel cultural practices. Using ethnographic findings from the economic culture of tourism in Cyprus as a case in point, the A. explores the usefulness of explanatory models engaging either tradition or modernity.