Multiple Modernities and Reflexive Traditionalisation
in Ethnologia Europaea
Author:
Gisela Welz
Gisela Welz
Goethe University Frankfurt am Main
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Search for other papers by Gisela Welz in
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Straddling the divide between tradition and modernity, European ethnologists feel most comfortable with explaining how the present became what it is today. We are more reluctant to forecast which ones of the cultural phenomena we can observe today will still be with us 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 article explores the usefulness of explanatory models engaging either tradition or modernity.