This book sets out to study the central theoretical constructs—such as tradition ecology and the folklore process—of the late Lauri Honko. This is done by comparing his ideas with those of the cognitive paradigm, the scholarly context within which the authors have worked, Matti Kamppinen in particular. The aim is to provide an analytical study of Honko’s concepts and theories in order to single out and crystalize the ones deemed most fruitful for future research. The book is divided into nine chapters, most of them dedicated to one single concept of Honko’s, or a group of interrelated concepts. Matti Kamppinen, Senior Lecturer in Comparative Religion at the University of Turku, has written all the chapters except chapter 6 and parts of chapter 9, which have been authored by Pekka Hakamies, Professor of Folkloristics at the University of Turku.
Chapter 1 briefly outlines the trajectory of the concepts—genre, tradition ecology, the folklore process, etc.—studied, from Lauri Honko’s early works, such as Krankheitsprojektile (1959) and Geisterglaube in Ingermanland (1962) to their culmination in the Siri epic project. Kamppinen points to the way in which Honko developed and tested his theories, emphasizing their often inductive character and his way of devising multiple hypotheses to explain a single phenomenon.
In chapter 2 Kamppinen locates the roots of Honko’s theories in functionalism, systems theory, and process thinking. He does so by teasing out the propositions underlying Honko’s thinking and scientific practice, for example, “Cultural entities are individuated on the basis of their functional roles,” which is the basic tenet of functionalism. This elucidation is a useful one, as it makes it easier for a reader new to Honko’s work to understand the assumptions behind it.
Chapter 3 focuses on the concept of pool of tradition, introduced by Honko in Textualising the Siri Epic (1998). Kamppinen highlights the distinction Honko made between the formal building blocks of culture—the pool of tradition—and their use in specific situations, i.e., systems of culture. Kamppinen points out that the distinction is useful for narrowing down the scope of the concept of culture, which would otherwise run the risk of being watered down. This short chapter could well have been integrated into chapter 6, where the closely related concept of mental text is discussed.
Chapter 4 outlines Honko’s conceptualization of tradition ecology, which was unique at the time in arguing for the selective pressure of the cultural environment, not only the natural one. In successive papers from 1972 onward, Honko constructed concepts and theories to explicate the supply and demand of tradition and the dynamics of cultural traits, such as the concept of tradition barrier, and the theory of four forms of adaptation of tradition: milieu-morphological, tradition-morphological, functional, and ecotypification. Curiously, Carl Wilhelm von Sydow’s concept of oicotypes, an important predecessor of Honko’s, is not referred to in this discussion. Kamppinen also suggests that ecotypification is redundant, as it can be subsumed under milieu- and tradition-morphological adaptation. Personally, I nevertheless prefer Honko’s own formulation of the theory, in which ecotypification acts as the overarching concept and is used to describe the combined effect of the other forms of adaptation. It enables us to speak about adaptation in a more holistic way than the other concepts afford, and this can be valuable in many contexts.
In chapter 5 Kamppinen comes into his own, as he tries to relate his own field of expertise, the cognitive study of religion and memetics, to Honko’s work. The presentation of the theory of memes—the units of cultural selection and evolution—in Richard Dawkins and Daniel C. Dennett is clear and succinct, and the relevance of Honko’s tradition ecology and concept of the pool of tradition is championed, though exactly how it might benefit cognitivist studies is not made clear. Kamppinen proposes that the hitherto fruitless search for the memetic algorithms behind cultural complexity should not be abandoned, even if it is a difficult quest.
In chapter 6 Pekka Hakamies discusses Honko’s lasting contributions to folkloristics, his genre theory on the one hand, and the concepts he developed in the study of oral epics, such as mental text and multiform, on the other. His views on textualization and performance as well as individual vs. collective tradition are also covered. Hakamies traces the scholarly debate on ideal types vs. indigenous genres in folklore in which Honko’s work was situated, and contextualizes his innovations in oral epics research by comparing and contrasting Honko’s conceptions with those chiefly of Albert B. Lord and John Miles Foley. A similar strategy is employed in the discussion on Honko’s debate with Charles Briggs and Richard Bauman on textualization; Hakamies locates their differences in the reference points of different performances. For Honko, it was the mental text; for Bauman and Briggs, earlier performances. Hakamies masterfully brings out the nuances of these scholarly discussions.
In chapter 7 Kamppinen argues that Honko was a precursor of and contributor to the cognitive paradigm, and that tradition ecology will provide tools for future cognitive studies of culture. He presents the concepts of cultural model and script, and suggests that the concept of cultural model can be used to denominate abstract elements of the pool of tradition as well as those properties that enable its application to specific contexts, whereas script overlaps with several of Honko’s concepts, for instance mental text and ideal type. However, it must be pointed out that a script is culturally shared, whereas the mental text was solely individual for Honko, something Kamppinen does not quite bring out properly.
The importance of genre analysis in the study of religion is emphasized in chapter 8, and Kamppinen advances Honko’s tradition ecology and genre analysis as a remedy for the lack of a conceptualization of this aspect in memetics and cognitive theories of culture. Tradition ecology and the concept of the folklore process are used to examine the dynamics of cultural contents as they move from context to context, and genre to genre, in particular the migration into a media context, when religious contents shift from a context of belief to a context of entertainment. The folklore process is framed as a form of storage where cultural contents or memes are preserved and processed, and the discussion demonstrates the potential fruitfulness of this approach.
In chapter 9 Honko’s project of safeguarding folklore through his engagement in drafting the UNESCO Recommendation for the Safeguarding of Folklore (1989) is discussed, as well as the problems attached to protecting folklore through government invention, which is highlighted in Pekka Hakamies’s analysis of the Karelian villages initiative. In this venture, a copy of a traditional Orthodox Karelian house was erected in eastern Finland, and the site became a tourist attraction that afforded little work or economic benefit for the locals, who also felt the tourism entrepreneurs expected them to live a “museum-like” life. Hakamies also studies an even more disastrous attempt to revive the old Karelian feast of local patron saints, praasniekka. Traditionally, this feast involved visitors receiving hospitality in the homes of members of the local community, but when the attempt was made to revive it, the hosts received no economic compensation for the money they spent on food and drink for their guests. Hakamies observes that these attempts to preserve Karelian culture were actually contrary to the UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (2003), in which the status of folklore as part of a living tradition is stressed.
The book concludes with remarks on the future relevance of Honko’s work and an overview of how his students implemented his ideas. Relating Honko’s theory of culture to trends in our present information age, the authors suggest that the ways in which the functions of the pool of tradition, for example, have changed, becoming more dynamic as new meanings and short-lived cultural systems come into being, and that the access to pools of tradition is no longer restricted by cultural identities, nationality, ethnicity, or boundaries between the sacred and profane. This section is unfortunately not expanded on; it would have deserved a fuller treatment, as it extends the applicability of Honko’s theories into the information age.
Indeed, in many cases, the arguments of the book would have benefitted from elaboration. To take another example: in chapter 3 Kamppinen writes about “the future-oriented analysis of religious groups and their identity construction benefits from the distinction [between tradition and culture]: why some groups choose exclusive or xenophobic resources of tradition and elevate them into identity symbols.” However, no further explanation of just how the distinction casts light on this issue is offered, and an inchoate discussion that could have been very interesting is thus cut short. The book would also have benefitted from more thorough language editing.
In general, I think this book would have needed a clearer focus. The title suggests a discussion of the legacy of Lauri Honko’s seminal ideas, but apart from their potential application in the cognitive paradigm, this is not well covered, except in chapter 6 and the concluding remarks. A title relating primarily to the cognitive paradigm, and only secondarily to Honko, may have been more appropriate. The text is sometimes difficult to follow, as there is no logical progression in the organization of the book into chapters, and internally within chapters. Nevertheless, the book is commendable in its effort to extend Honko’s theories into new areas, and thus contribute to their dissemination and survival.
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[Review length: 1560 words • Review posted on October 22, 2014]