Usable Pasts

Traditions and Group Expressions in North America

Tad Tuleja

• Publisher: Utah State University Press
• Year: 1997
• Print ISBN: 9780874212266, 9780874212259
• eBook ISBN: 9780874213348
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Customs & Traditions
• Index: Social Sciences

In Usable Pasts, fourteen authors examine the manipulation of traditional expressions among a variety of groups from the United States and Canada: the development of a pictorial style by Navajo weavers in response to traders, Mexican American responses to the appropriation of traditional foods by Anglos, the expressive forms of communication that engender and sustain a sense of community in an African American women's social club and among elderly Yiddish folksingers in Miami Beach, the incorporation of mass media images into the "C&Ts" (customs and traditions) of a Boy Scout troop, the changing meaning of their defining Exodus-like migration to Mormons, Newfoundlanders' appropriation through the rum-drinking ritual called the Schreech-In of outsiders' stereotypes, outsiders' imposition of the once-despised lobster as the emblem of Maine, the contest over Texas's heroic Alamo legend and its departures from historical fact, and how yellow ribbons were transformed from an image in a pop song to a national symbol of "resolve."

Table of contents

• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction. Making Ourselves Up: On the Manipulation of Tradition in Small Groups
• Part I: Marking the “Tribal”
• Part II: Intentional Identities
• Part III: The Spirit of Place
• Part IV: National Perspectives
• About the Contributors