For folklorists familiar with Pertti Anttonen’s earlier works, Tradition Through Modernity will represent a continuation of the discussions he introduced in the previous volumes. In fact, most of the chapters in this recent work were published previously in journals in Scandinavia. As it is unlikely that many folklorists and interested scholars in related disciplines have seen these publications, the present work is a welcome contribution to the critical literature on folklore and theory as well as on folklore and nationalism.
Divided into two sections, the first half of the volume deals with theories of postmodernism and their implications for folklore. Drawn from his dissertation research completed at the University of Pennsylvania, this section provides a very accessible introduction to the broadest issues associated with postmodernism. Considering the influence of scholars from several disciplines, Anttonen outlines some of the most important perspectives in the study of social phenomena, including especially hermeneutic and constructivist analyses that recognize the processes of interpretation and contextualization in contrast to objectivism and positivistic empiricism. Of particular interest in this section are his reflections on the dichotomization of tradition and modernity or folklore and modernity, though one wishes for a consideration of a broader body of folklore scholarship. Students just beginning their folklore studies will find this section very helpful as they attempt to sort out the various meanings of the terms tradition , authenticity , modernity , and reflexivity .
In the second section (five chapters), Anttonen addresses the relationship of folklore scholarship to nationalism and the making of the nation-state with a special emphasis on Finland. Using the work of some of the foundational scholars of nationalism, such as Benedict Anderson and Anthony Smith, he considers the uses to which folklore is put in establishing political identities and creating symbols of a unified nation. Throughout this section the author relies heavily on a few selected scholars in Scandinavia and in the U.S. (such as Samuel Huntington), as well as a limited number of folklore scholars from both regions of the world. More problematic, however, is the fact that several of these chapters are devoted to summaries of the work of other scholars and conclude with a banal statement that reduces the issues to common knowledge. For example, he concludes the chapter on globalization with the following: “Accordingly, the many arenas in which globalization is both encouraged as well as used for ideological purposes, alert us to acknowledge that despite the fact that there is only one globe, the global is a highly contested category” (123).
The more original material appears in Chapters Eight and Nine in which Anttonen introduces the process of nationalism in Finland, historically and in the present, and the position it is in today with regard to immigration and globalization. Chapter Eight discusses how homogeneity was historically produced through discourse, with both language and action, and the following chapter reviews those consequences and contradictions. Prominent among them is the discourse of national unity derived from Herder, with its emphasis on one language as the expression of the national soul. Meanwhile, Finland has two national languages, Finnish and Swedish, due to the historical context in which nationalism and the nation state emerged, after 600 years of Swedish rule. The discourse over identity took a significant turn in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries when it was established that the Finnish language belonged to the Finno-Ugric language family, locating the “cultural cradle” of the Finnish people in the east and contributing to the rise of racial theories about the "Mongolian" character of the Finns (toward the end of the nineteenth century).
Perhaps the most fascinating chapter for those interested in the process by which identity, ethnicity, genetics, language, territoriality, and citizenship converge is Chapter Eight. In this chapter, Anttonen discusses the effort to define the category of “the Finn” (an ethnic-genetic-linguistic category), and the relationship between Finns and these kindred groups: 1) Finnish-speaking Ingrians who live in what is now Northwest Russia; 2) the Sami (or Lapps) in Northern Finland who have been excluded from the nation-state project and constitute “our” minority for the Finns; and 3) the Karelians who have been primitivized and exoticized as reflecting ancient Finnishnesss, the authors of antiquated genres of oral poetry yet remaining distinct from the Finns because they are like “noble savages,” a perpetually indigent people in need of Finnish enlightenment.
Unlike the first section, the second section would likely be difficult for a reader unfamiliar with the literature on nationalism and the significance of Finland in folklore. A great deal of the discussion is referenced but not explained.
By American standards, this book would be considered “uneven,” a term that refers to wide differences from one chapter to another. But, this book was published by the Finnish Literature Society in Helsinki, and perhaps that may account for the differences in style that make it challenging and for the repetitions of the same ideas. It is a rewarding book for those of us who have read and appreciated William Wilson’s Folklore and Nationalism in Modern Finland , Richard Bauman and Charles Briggs’ Voices of Modernity , and Satu Apo, Aili Nenola, and Laura Stark-Arola’s Gender and Folklore [in Finland], or those interested in the construction of race, class, and ethnicity (no mention of gender), or readers of the literature on nationalism and its intimate relations with folklore and language.
--------
[Review length: 887 words • Review posted on February 8, 2007]