Usable Pasts: Traditions and Group Expressions in North America (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Usable Pasts: Traditions and Group Expressions in North America Deanna M. Kingston Usable Pasts: Traditions and Group Expressions in North America. Ed. Tad Tuleja. (Logan: Utah State University Press, 1997. Pp. x + 335 , acknowledgments, illustrations.) The stated purpose of the collection Usable Pasts: Traditions and Group Expressions in North America is to modify Hobsbawm and Ranger's thesis in the Invention of Tradition (Cambridge University Press, 1988). Whereas the latter demonstrated that tradition invention was used by those in power to create homogeneity and continuity in a disparate nation, the intent of the authors of this collection is to show that the "politically powerless may also have the power to invent, to apply the creative impulse to their own private heritages" (p. 3). The essays show that groups of people, no matter their size or constitution (whether ethnic, occupational, organizational, or regional), creatively utilize past practices as manipulatable markers of a common identity (p. 3). In other words, the authors turn our attention from a macrolevel, national view of tradition manipulation and identity creation to a microlevel, subnational perspective. In addition, according to Tad Tuleja, the authors also draw theoretically on Frederick Barth in Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of Culture Difference (Little, Brown, 1969) and contemporary folklore approaches that highlight context and performance. First, following Barth, they see ethnogenesis as a social and political dynamic. Second, they see folklore "not as a thing but as a practice," as a "malleable mobile expression of social identity" (p. 6). Thus, the authors base much of their work upon these theoretical underpinnings in order to show that small groups manipulate and use folkloric expressions to present themselves to themselves and to others. All of the examples, as the title implies, are from groups of people living in North America. Groups include the Navajo, Texans, Mexican Americans, Polish Americans, Canadians, Newfoundlanders, African American women, Jewish Americans, Boy Scouts, Mormons, martial artists, Appalachians, New Englanders in Maine, and American supporters of American victims and servicemen overseas. It is this eclectic mix of groups that gives the volume its strength. First, it focuses our attention on groups at home, within the larger nation-states of the United States and Canada. Thus, the collection is timely in that, recently (1998-99), the Anthropology News, the newsletter of the American Anthropological Association, reminded scholars that they did not have to go abroad to find interesting research sites. Second, the collection demonstrates the broad range and variability of peoples who live in North America. In doing so, it shows that no matter how a large nation-state might exert a homogenizing influence, its people resist by finding ways to create smaller, community-level interactions with one another. As Tuleja states, actual communities are "moved to rechannel the streams of their peculiar expressivities by the very forces that threaten to stop their flow" (p. 15). The other strength of this collection is the range and variability of the group expressions that are employed by collectives to differentiate themselves from others. Thus, arts and crafts, myths, legends and narratives, uniforms, license plates, food, calendrical rites, skits, drinking customs, and yellow ribbons are among the many creative responses that groups use to express themselves. This list, of course, is not exhaustive; instead, the variety of expressions in this collection suggests that there are endless possibilities of creative traditions that can be manipulated by groups as identity markers. Thus, the largest contributions that this collection gives to the study of folklore, cultural studies, and anthropology are to demonstrate both the diversity of groups in North America and the diversity of group expressions that are the bases of their identities. In this regard, it does fulfill its stated goal of demonstrating that [End Page 95] the politically powerless do creatively manipulate their pasts. However, the idea that people are social agents, actively engaging and responding to outside perspectives and pressures, is not new. In other words, after reading the essays, I did not learn much in the way of theoretical understandings of identity creation and maintenance. Perhaps I was expecting too much. Nonetheless, it was an enjoyable read because of the diversity of examples. It made me think of...