Cultural identities are often invented traditions rather than inherited ones

Evidence

This should make us think again about that tricky term in popular culture, “tradition.” Tradition is a vital element in culture; but it has little to do with the mere persistence of old forms. It has much more to do with the way elements have been linked together or articulated. These arrangements in a national-popular culture have no fixed or inscribed position, and certainly no meaning which is carried along, so to speak, in the stream of historical tradition, unchanged. Not only can the elements of “tradition” be rearranged, so that they articulate with different practices and positions, and take on a new meaning and relevance. It is also often the case that cultural struggle arises in its sharpest form just at the point where different, opposed traditions meet, intersect. They seek to detach a cultural form from its implantation in one tradition, and to give it a new cultural resonance or accent. Traditions are not fixed forever: certainly not in any universal position in relation to a single class. Cultures, conceived not as separate “ways of life” but as “ways of struggle,” constantly intersect: the pertinent cultural struggles arise at the points of intersection. Think of the ways in the eighteenth century, in which a certain language of legality, of constitutionalism, and of “rights” becomes a battleground, at the point of intersection between two divergent traditions: between the “tradition” of gentry “majesty and terror” and the traditions of popular justice. — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 1017 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: National identity is built on manufactured ancestral myth, not primordial history. — Neil DeVotta, Sinhalese Buddhist Nationalist…, 74; Forgotten origins make arbitrary conventions feel like nature’s order — W. David Marx, Status and Culture: How Our Desire for…, 131; Many honored traditions were invented recently for commercial reasons — W. David Marx, Status and Culture: How Our Desire for…, 649 (+14 more)

Broader Connections

• Traditions are re-articulated arrangements, not fixed inheritances carrying stable meaning #corroborates (0.95) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 1017