# Reconfiguring Tradition(s) in Europe: An Introduction to the Special Issue

Alessandro Testa, Cyril Isnart

<figure><img src="image_1.png" /></figure>

## To cite this version:

Alessandro Testa, Cyril Isnart. Reconfiguring Tradition(s) in Europe: An Introduction to the Special Issue. Ethnologia Europaea, 2020, 50 (1), 10.16995/ee.1917. halshs-03097194

HAL Id: halshs-03097194

https://shs.hal.science/halshs-03097194

Submitted on 11 Jan 2021

HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access
archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci-
entific research documents, whether they are pub-
lished or not. The documents may come from
teaching and research institutions in France or
abroad, or from public or private research centers.

L'archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est
destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents
scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non,
émanant des établissements d'enseignement et de
recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires
publics ou privés.

<figure><img src="image_2.png" /></figure>

Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
# RECONFIGURING TRADITION(S) IN EUROPE
## An Introduction to the Special Issue

Cyril Isnart, Aix Marseille Univ., Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique – UMR IDEMEC Aix-en-Provence
Alessandro Testa, Charles University, Prague

"Tradition" has been a key concept and object of European ethnology from the foundation of the discipline all the way to intangible cultural heritage policies today. A focus has been given to the cultural and social circulations and permutations affecting traditional facts and has shown the plasticity of "traditions" to (ever-)changing social conditions. Understood as "uses of the past", these mainly political and sociological understandings of what "tradition" means today need to be complemented with a view on the emotional aspects of this peculiarly human way of imagining and experiencing the world. This text introduces three notions which highlight the experiential dimension of tradition: re-enchantment, ritualization, and heritage-making. We hope to forge new paths towards the exploration of all things "traditional" and their cultural dynamics.

Keywords: tradition, ethnology, ritual, heritage, cultural change

How are magic and supernatural powers expressed through “traditional” practices experienced in the public sphere? How can the ritualization of a practice or a craft interweave with its commodification or bureaucratization? What place do experiences and feelings of individuals have in the construction and expression of identities and cultural common ground? Such questions are linked to a central and crucial object of ethnological and anthropological investigation within European contexts, one which has contributed to framing – with more or less success – the scope and epistemologies of our disciplines: tradition.

### “Tradition” and the Traditional in European Ethnology

"Tradition" has been a key concept and object of European ethnology from the foundation of the discipline all the way to intangible cultural heritage policies today.¹ As a polysemic notion, "tradition" can be associated, and has in fact been associated, with almost everything in the realm of culture: nation, identity, material culture, rituals, individual and family practices, museums, territory and locality, history and representations of the past, social order, politics, philosophy, and more. European ethnology has often, but of course far from exclusively,
focused on “popular” traditions, that is those cul-
tural manifestations repeatedly transmitted and
enacted (or thought to have been repeatedly trans-
mitted and enacted) by certain categories or groups
of social agents for a certain time, especially con-
cerning the so-called everyday life (Alltagskultur). A
certain focus has been given, in the last few decades,
to the cultural circulations, exchanges, permuta-
tions, and mutual influences affecting traditional
facts between different social classes, groups, and
even individuals, but also to the sociologically sig-
nificant differences in the usage of the notion of
tradition, according to a variety of factors, such as
social status or other contextual aspects (Bausinger
[1961]2005; Dei 2002; Boyer 1990; Ginzburg 2009;
Hutton 2008; Sahlins 1993). However, studies have
also shown the permeability, plasticity, and reactive-
ness of “traditions” to present (ever-)changing social
conditions (Bronner 2000; Clemente & Mugnaini
2001; Lenclud 1977, 1987; Noyes 2009; Pouillon 1975,
2007). In other words, tradition’s symbolic richness,
adaptability, and volatility manifest themselves in
a number of “creative” features in which societal
structures, longue durée cultural elements, post-
modern mediascapes, and new forms of collective
organizations and actions merge and interact inex-
tricably. No wonder that these processes have con-
cerned different spheres of social life, and perhaps
most visibly the connected realms of religion and
politics, which are often grounded, perhaps more
than other spheres of human activity, on usages of
a symbolic capital coming from or connected with
the past. Hence, this thematic issue of Ethnologia
Europaea will gather and discuss ethnographic cases
of symbolic, political, and religious reconfiguration
of European phenomena deemed “traditional”.

The revival of critical scholarly interest in
“traditional” things,² especially of a festive, ritual, or
ritualesque (Santino 2009) nature, has gone hand in
hand with the popular revival of those very things,
especially in rural or semi-urban, peripheral,³ and
“provincial” areas.⁴ Some of the “provincial” con-
texts that will be discussed in this issue are not only
provincial because of their being administratively
subordinated to a bigger city, or because they are

relatively small and not densely populated, nor be-
cause they are surrounded by the countryside. In a
more structural sense, they are provincial because
although they are not subaltern at the global level
(they are after all part of the rich West) – they are
subordinated *within* the European space, and even
more so within their national contexts. In other
words, they are the peripheries of the knots of the
post-industrial, neoliberal world – these knots being
the wealthy and culturally dynamic metropolises of
the West. Hence the provincial populations of semi-
rural or semi-urban settings are constantly dragged
between two extremes: the attachment and even
love for the “locality” and, on the other hand, urban
ambitions or envy towards the city. They are often
suspended halfway between the two poles of rurality
and urbanity – not only geographically and socially,
but also symbolically, and, in a manner of speaking,
existentially. It is especially in these contexts that,
as Jeremy Boissevain put it, “there seems to have
been a spurt of celebratory activity in the years im-
mediately following the [Second World] war. By the
late 1950s this had tapered off, and festivities were
declining. The decline persisted through the 1960s,
but began reversing in the 1970s. In the 1980s the
florescence of celebrations [...] was widely visible”
(Boissevain 1992: 7).⁵

In the academic realm, the years of revivalism
correspond largely to the reflexive turn and the
emergence of deconstructionism, of which the very
notion of “tradition” has been the object, along
with its kindred notions of “culture” and “reli-
gion”. Rather contrariwise, at a popular level this
revival and renewed interest has been sustained by
– and at the same time has triggered – an “institu-
tionalization of the past” (Macdonald 2013: 138) in
new and different ways, which has actually quickly
acquired the traits of a multidirectional process.
In recent decades, a new wave of musealization of
local traditions has occurred, along with an un-
precedented “heritage fever”, mainly, but far from
exclusively, for identity purposes. As Frykman and
Niedermüller put it: “cultural heritage, tradition,
and folklore are just some of the resources that peo-
ple can draw upon in order to negotiate a sense of
self and identity" (2003: 4). These considerations are
now widely accepted by ethnologists.

Other dimensions are, however, also at work in
the cultural machineries of re-appropriation and
re-elaboration of the past in “traditional” or “tra-
ditionalizing” ways, in the frame of what has been
named the European “memory-heritage-identity
complex” (Macdonald 2013). This introduction is
of course no place to review all of these dimensions
or the general sociocultural conditions and reasons
for this revival, its patterns, and the interpretations
that have been offered about them – such attempts
have been made in several of the works cited in these
pages. Rather, our aim is to shed light on some new
or less-visited paradigms and notions, specifically,
ritualization, re-enchantment, and heritagization,
and to enlighten and substantiate the previous theo-
retical and historical arguments with the help of a
few carefully chosen, recently carried out ethno-
graphic case studies across Europe. Prior to going
more deeply into each of these three notions, we will
briefly review some core approaches and concepts
within the study of tradition.

Among the concepts that scholars of history,
ethnology, or anthropology have implemented
to understand how European societies transform
certain social practices into “traditions”, or re-
functionalize practices once obsolete or exhausted,
are invention (Hobsbawm & Ranger 1983) and revi-
talization (Boissevain 1992).⁶ These refer to practices
that gather together elements from a set of available
symbolic sources, also adding, in the process, the
chrism of the past and therefore, an aura of authen-
ticity.⁷ The concept of structural nostalgia, proposed
by Michael Herzfeld in the context of rural Cretan
society (Herzfeld 1997) illustrates how an idealized
past can become a normative and shared reference
for interpreting and regulating the conflicts exist-
ing in the present. The commodification of ethnicity
(Comaroff & Comaroff 2009) mobilizes traditions
as part of cultural identities included both in the
economic field and the reflexive recognition of the
self. With the notion of institution of culture, French
ethnology has highlighted the contemporary mobi-
lization of ancient craft productions, monuments

and rituals in the economic markets in southern
Europe (Bromberger & Chevallier 2009; Fabre 2000,
2013; Fournier 2005, 2012), whereas Italian studies
have often focused on the process of folklorization
and politicization of festive culture (Bravo 1984;
Faeta 2005; Gallini 1971; Testa 2014a, 2014b, 2017a,
2017b). Authors have also analysed the way in which
narratives of the past, monuments, or landscapes
were institutionalized in Europe as cultural goods
in collaborative processes between civil society and
public cultural administration (Isnart 2012). Anoth-
er critical concept is past-presencing, that is a wide-
spread manner of doing and experiencing the past
in/as/for the present (Macdonald 2013).

Most of these notions and ideas deal with new uses
of the past, with reformulations of what European
societies consider meaningful and important in their
present *because* of its coming from the (ir) past, thus
empowering a certain social group or community
to act to preserve a given “tradition” and transform
it into symbolic, social, cultural, or even economic
capital (Bourdieu 1986). What often underlies these
representational as well as practical (and political) re-
formulations, adaptations, and re-enactments is the
well-established (but also well-deconstructed, among
scholars) dichotomy between “traditional” and
“modern”, or other binaries. Such an essentialized
and Manichean way of looking at the relationship be-
tween the present and the past is, as already suggested,
based on imaginaries of time, poetics of authenticity,
and the above-mentioned “structural nostalgia”.

Scholarly interpretations are thus able to account
for the ways in which traditions – or what is labelled
as such – are used for a variety of purposes. In fact,
traditions and the traditional are still widely at work
constructing and expressing local or national iden-
tities, solidifying or contesting the political order,
legitimizing narratives and discourses, acquiring or
maintaining symbolic positions in the arena of social
and political interactions, accessing or protecting or
exploiting economic resources, or placing a locality,
a region, or a country on the map of transregional or
transnational relations.

Most of the aforementioned notions and theoreti-
cal tools are still valid in understanding reconfigu-
rations of traditions in Europe. They have lost little or none of their explanatory power. Some of them, however, seem not to address sufficiently the important dimension of *experience*. Recent investigations into the “social life” of traditions have begun to include analysis of different, though correlated aspects of this human activity: cognition and language (Boyer 1990), knowledge (Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 2004; Tauschek 2011), and feelings and values (Fabre 2013; Heinich 2009, 2012). In order to get a better understanding of what the term “tradition” means today, the classic views on political and sociological interpretations need to be complemented with a view on the emotional aspects of this peculiarly human way of imagining and experiencing the world.

We have chosen to focus on three notions, which also highlight the experiential dimension of tradition: re-enchantment, ritualization, and heritage-making. We hope to broaden the discussion with and about them, helping to open up new formulations or hypotheses or forge new paths towards the exploration of social things considered as “traditional” and their cultural dynamics.

## Re-enchantment

This concept, as it is used in the contributions to this issue, has a double connotation, which is linked to the *longue durée* history of European cultures and to the more recent transformation of the religious landscape in Europe. One important narrative of change begins before the Enlightenment period, as the end of the Middle Ages saw a shift from societies driven by religion to a non-clerical and “rational” morality of political and philosophical life. A historian like John Bossy (1985) traces the passage of political power from the Church to the Monarchy, leading to the conception of a civil and lay society as an independent and autonomous body, generating its own values. The Christian principals of charity and the celebration of the Church as a congregation were appropriated by the State, which became its own provider of medical and social care and which managed its population as a complete and all-encompassing group. Accompanying a strong criticism of (Christian-)

religion as a guideline for public administration, the Enlightenment later led European scholars of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to stress the lack of spirituality in the collective management of social life as the main feature of modernity. Labelled “disenchantment” (*Entzauberung*) by Max Weber, the more general hypothesis lay in the idea of an inevitable secularization – that is loss of religiosity – in modern Western societies and of a restructuration of power relations and social hierarchies.⁸ For their part, members of the so-called French Durkheimian school never used the term “disenchantment”, though they also highlighted the disappearing religious roots of modern collective life. As socialist activists searching for powerful social alternatives to industrial and productive models (Riley 2010), these scholars often illustrate “primitive” religious customs as the best examples and elementary forms of social organizations (Kurasawa 2003). For instance, Robert Hertz, known for his pre-structuralist essays on death rituals ([1907]2009) and on the right hand ([1909]2009), but also for his pioneering European ethnology ([1913]2009), always used exotic and folk European religious rituals as good examples for his contemporary peers to build on and create new futures (Isnart 2006). Thus, with the “disenchantment” of the world comes the potential for “re-enchantment”, with which people can shape new avenues for their lives.

In a different vein, Alfred Gell used the expression “enchantment” to express all the practices humans carry out that lead to making a place, an artefact, a performance, or a person into something mysterious, appealing, fascinating, or magical – in a word, “special” and outside the rational perception of reality (1992). This is not to say that the very techniques of enchantment remain unknown to people responding to them, or are impossible to describe and analyse for scholars. On the contrary, Gell’s project aims to understand how enchantment is made socially possible. Contradicting the Weberian diagnosis, he forces us to look precisely at the modes and effects of enchantment techniques in various domains of collective life. Gell developed his theory within the field of art, artistry, and aesthetics as one
of the most vivid arenas of enchantment in Western societies. He came to the conclusion that any human being is aware of his power and capability to create magic and fascination – this he calls *agency* (Gell 1998). But performative arts and traditional music may be other enchanting arenas to investigate (Stoichiță 2013), just as traditional festivals, arts and crafts, or narratives could be.

More intriguingly, the “return” of traditions and the “charm” with which they often fascinate a variety of social agents (“tradition-holders”, functionaries, tourists, ethnologists, and others) sometimes have, though not exclusively, explicit connections to religion or are presented as new forms of religiosity. This point appears in several of the ethnographic case studies presented in the articles of this themed section.

In recent decades, a number of clearly observable social phenomena have lent empirical support to the notion of a religious re-enchantment in Europe.⁹ While Protestant and Catholic Churches are partly losing ground in Europe as institutions, different forms of “cultural religion” (Demerath 2000; Hervieu-Léger 2000) or religiosity are emerging or re-emerging: alternative forms of Christianities (Demerath 2000; Hervieu-Léger 2012; Fedele 2015); different religions brought in by migrants (Islam, for instance: Marranci 2012); new religious movements like New Age, modern witchcraft or neopaganisms (Heelas 1996; Rountree 2015; Ruickbie 2006); “invented religions” (Cusack 2010); “civil religion” (Margry 2012); “personalized” or unstructured forms of religions, often substantiated in the claim of being “spiritual” but without following any church or being part of any organized religious movement (Hervieu-Léger 2012); and crucial for our focus in this special issue: forms of “vernacular” or “folk” religion understood as the re-appropriation of popular beliefs and practices that had existed, especially in rural contexts, before modernization (Testa 2017a). Even in the (apparently) more secularized post-socialist countries, which experienced decades of state atheism, religions and religiosity have experienced a heterogeneous re-emergence since the collapse of the communist regimes (Hann

2006; Borowik & Babinski 1997; Rogers 2005; Creed 2011). Catholicism itself has seen a profound diversification of its spiritual and ritual modalities, with multiple sub-movements such as *focolare* (Bowie 2003), pre-Vatican II Catholicism (Sapitula 2010) or Taizé communities (Pritchard 2015).

In such a context of massive diversification of experiences, we would like to draw more attention to the entanglements of religion, tradition, and enchantment. What do we know about individuals’ experiences and practices of enchantment, about the link between people’s perceptions and collective identity? What kinds of material changes come from (re-)enchantment? How is disenchantment expressed in the human daily view, and what does enchantment-making imply for the community environment? Besides, the dialectic relationships between the disenchantment process and the will of re-enchantment have not yet been explored in any real depth and more energy is needed to better comprehend the techniques which lead to making traditional (not only religious) items a new field of identity building.

## Ritualization

A reflection on the role of rituality in processes of tradition reconfiguration, and therefore in the structuring and articulation of society at large, must include a mention of the importance of the so-called Manchester School in the history of social anthropology – namely the theorization undertaken by Max Gluckman and Victor Turner. Their work constitutes the first and perhaps most important attempts to challenge, on the basis of ethnographic evidence, the functionalistic assumption of the “homeostatic” force of rituals, and therefore provokes a rethinking of the relationship between rituality and social order (Gluckman 1963; Turner 1966, 1967, 1982). Likewise, Clifford Geertz’ conclusions on the behavioural codes inscribed in public rituals, which, in his opinion, can be read as “texts” about the local cultural (and religious) system, were important (Geertz 1973a, 1973b). More recently, what we might call the neofunctionalist approach developed by Don Handelman regains, develops upon,
and problematizes the preceding anthropological theories on ritual and rituality (Handelman 1999).¹⁰

Taking these now classical formulations of ritual into account and also expanding on them, we have chosen to focus especially on the paradigm of ritualization, considered as yet another possible way to connect the invention, revitalization, and reconfiguration of traditions (whether religious, “re-enchanting”, or not) with the actual dynamics of social practices.¹¹

We are fully aware of the intrinsic problems connected with working with the notion of ritual (and therefore ritualization). The first problem is that, as Don Handelman put it, “ritual [is] an area defined much more ‘commonsensically’ than analytically in anthropology” (Handelman 1999: XI). The second and perhaps most important reservation concerns the fact that “no single feature of ritual is peculiar to it” (Roy Rappaport quoted in Bell 2009: 152; but see also ibid.: 91–92). In another text, an article eloquently titled “Against ‘Ritual’”, Jack Goody put forth similar considerations, arguing that cultural operations like formalization and reiteration of actions are processes at the very basis of social life itself, and therefore not at all characteristic of things *only* ritual and nothing else (Goody 1977: 28). This is not the place to discuss or resolve these theoretical impasses, and we provisionally content ourselves with the “commonsensical zone” put forward by Handelman and with the pragmatic approach suggested by Catherine Bell: “rather than impose categories of what is or is not ritual, it may be more useful to look at how human activities establish and manipulate their own differentiation and purposes – in the very doing of the act within the context of other ways of acting” (Bell 2009: 74). In fact, Bell observed the trend towards categories of ritualization and ritual context (and contextualization) as early as the 1990s (Bell 2009: 88–93, 197–238), when she theorized ritualization “proper”, often explicitly preferring this notion to that of “ritual”. A few years later, Handelman noted how “over the years there have been attempts to use the idea of ‘ritualization’ to expand on or to replace ‘ritual’” (Handelman 1999: XVII).¹²

During these years and this methodological and conceptual shift, Michael Houseman developed his considerations of rituality in the direction of a greater analytical attention to the cognitive, emotional, and behavioural dimensions of ritual, ritualizing, and ritualized practices (Berthomé & Houseman 2010; Houseman 2010).¹³ A relational cultural dispositive *par excellence*, rituals, according to Houseman, have the specific purpose of establishing and structuring relationships between agents (human as well as non-human), whence emerge conclusions about rituals “as dynamic interactive contexts” (Houseman 2006: 417).

At times a contested concept, ritualization has mostly been associated with the shaping of new modalities of action (religious or not), with taxonomic reordering, and with the production of new social meanings through symbolization (or rather by making certain things “more symbolic” than others).¹⁴ It is actually the already mentioned Don Handelman himself who reacted rather critically to the concept of ritualization. His criticism is sharp and at times provocative, but also convincing: “ritualization may be especially useful in discussing this shift from what can be called ‘non-ritual’ to ‘ritual’ – but once there, within ritual, much of its utility ends” (Handelman 1999: XVII); or

> For Bell [...] there is nothing beyond ritualization, except further ritualization. A “ritual” is constituted by its ongoing ritualization of practice and action. Certain issues – like that of the internal logic of public events, or how different kinds of events relate to social orders – are of no relevance. [...] For these scholars, ritual is a surface phenomenon [...] it has no depth of process nor of destination (Handelman 1999: XVIII).¹⁵

We tend to agree with his assessment: the term “ritualization” is particularly accurate and useful when assessing the shift from non-ritual to ritual or the re-establishment of a formerly “unritualized” ritual (re-ritualization, as discussed in Testa’s article in this themed issue); however, “once there, within ritual”, other interpretative tools and concepts are more helpful.
Taking this criticism into consideration, as well as the different theoretical and methodological angles from which it has been addressed, and the various historical or ethnographic materials constituting its empirical foundations, in this issue we have formulated our own operational definition of “ritualization”. With this term, we basically refer to that process by means of which a given practice acquires new forms, social meanings, and/or functions on the basis of performative actions resulting in its structuring and formalization, but also in the entanglement with the emotional sphere of the social agents involved.¹⁶ In turn, processes which can either determine the re-enactment of a former ritual act or trigger the creation of a new one (or of something similar to what is normally considered a rite), is correlated to, and actually itself often fosters, broader societal transformations and structural changes.¹⁷

Ritualization can also be – and actually very often is – associated with a reference to previous similar (“traditional”) practices, causing the distinction between ritualization and ritual revitalization – as well as a distinction between (re)invention and reconfiguration of tradition – to be often blurred. Referring to a traditional framework is a cultural operation of paramount importance, for ritualization can only happen if convergent with the establishment (or the re-establishment) of a ritual context, which is made through the synergy of several factors, for example traditional features specifically, environmental aspects, the local social setting itself, but also authority and social prestige, the mobilization of different “forms of capital” (Bourdieu 1986), etc.¹⁸ The creation of a ritual context is not only instrumental but necessary, insofar as it is precisely the establishment of such a context that leads the ritualizing force of actions and representations to emerge, as well as to their being charged with a higher symbolic value, which also determines their being separated from the ordinariness of social life (such as by marking them as “traditional”), thus becoming veritably “ritual”. In fact, as it has already been argued, aspects like formalization, repetition, reiteration, and circumscription are not intrinsically ritual: they become ritual only through ritualization and the

emergence of symbolization therein. This cannot but entail the inclusion, and therefore also exclusion, of certain symbols, actions, and representations: as Valerio Valeri observed, “ritual produces sense by creating contrasts in the continuum of experience. This implies suppressing certain elements of experience in order to give relevance to others. Thus, the creation of conceptual order is also, constitutively, the suppression of aspects of reality” (Valerio Valeri quoted in Wolf 2001: 395). Or, as Catherine Bell worded it: “this view suggests that the significance of ritual behavior lies not in being an entirely separate way of acting, but in how such activities constitute themselves as different and in contrast with other activities. [...] At a basic level, ritualization is the production of this differentiation” (Bell 2009: 90). Such separation, suppression and differentiation (such as that between the traditional and the modern) are necessary for establishing the ritual context and, metonymically, the ritual itself: in a manner of speaking, it is the ritual itself that is ritualized.

The transformative patterns previously described usually involve (or rather trigger) the emergence of new behavioural configurations and new social relations or positioning of social agents in and through the newly established ritual context. It also triggers (and at the same time is based on) a reorganization of the emotional connection with the ritual(ized) objects and practices, a reorganization that can of course be ethnographically observed and recorded, as is argued and shown in some of the following articles.

## Heritage-making

By the end of the nineteenth century, cultural heritage had become a strong political tool for fostering national identities in public administration. Monuments, museums, archaeology, costumes, folk literature, and music entered the realm of cultural heritage, as exemplar pieces of the past and emblems of ancestors’ lives, displaying to a more and more industrial and urban population the roots and essential traits of national identity. Obviously, only a small selection has been put into the spotlight here, which shows a division between what political elites
want to value and what they prefer to hide. Adminis-
tration of culture at that time fostered a certain im-
age and a certain imaginary of identity, and tradition
was one of the modalities used to engage local peo-
ple in a holistic and exclusive project of nationhood
grounded on a partially fictional past (Anderson
1983). With no surprise, the traditional content
included in such processes often vested an official
status always accompanied with a decadent, mourn-
ing, or survivalist feature, which has been termed by
some French historians as “the beauty of the dead”
(De Certeau, Julia & Revel [1970]1993). Coming
from the past and at risk of vanishing into the mists
of history, traditions were easy to manipulate and
malleable enough to fit the political elites’ desires.
This had been the case until the end of the twentieth
century in Europe, when rurality, race, and ethnic
identity were at stake in conflicts and competition
between colonial Empires (Great Britain, France,
Germany) and continental small-scale nation states
(within the Balkans for instance). More recently, tra-
ditions throughout Europe have also been used for
boosting tourism industries. Anthropologists and
ethnologists noticed that local traditional cultures
sometimes survived thanks to the coming of for-
eign visitors for whom inhabitants had to perform
rituals, music or art and crafts (Boissevain 1996).
Similarly, ethnic minorities throughout Europe,
especially Jews (with local museums, see Trevisan
Semi, Miccoli & Parfitt 2013) or Roma (for *flamenco*
music, see Machin-Autenrieth 2016), implemented
cultural heritage programmes in order to fight
against the homogeneity built by national policies
and politics of culture or tourism.

Following this line, many anthropologists, ethnologists, folklorists, and museum professionals have shown that cultural heritage acts as an interface of reflexivity and as an operational device to communicate narratives of the many collective selves present on the scene (Adell et al. 2015; Fabre 2000; Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 2004; Kockel & Nic Craith 2007; Harrison 2013). However, traditions embedded in such processes of heritage-making (a term we use as a synonym of “heritagization”), be they at a local or at an intergovernmental level, always

suffer the mechanisms of hegemony and the impo-
sition of values which are politically and ideologi-
cally charged. The heritage practitioners – official or
not – (Harrison 2010; Isnart 2012) mobilize patterns
of certain aesthetic, moral, and class values in their
daily activities (Heinich 2009, 2011). More generally,
this rather wide, much-encompassing new narrative,
which Smith called the *authorized heritage discourse*
(Smith 2006), that is the universalization of the
Unesco heritage conception (a “worldwide mental-
ity”, according to Bendix 2009: 257), is largely based
on Western, nationalist, elitist, and upper-class cri-
teria (Bortolotto 2011; Bendix, Eggert & Peselmann
2013). The universality claimed by Unesco, and by
some of the heritage actors, challenges in fact local
definitions of what is important to safeguard, to
conserve or to restore. It provokes a great number of
counter-discourses (Bondaz, Isnart & Leblon 2012),
either merging the Unesco views with regional or re-
ligious understandings of heritage, or translating the
international framework into indigenous languages,
or even maintaining the local understandings of
recognition of the past and valuable goods fighting
against economic dispossession or political margin-
ality (Bondaz et al. 2014; Hodges 2011; Testa 2017b).

In sum, heritage-making is not only a way of
transforming and remodelling traditional content
per se; it is also an opportunity for people in charge
of memory claims and cultural management to
think up and build their own concepts, tools, and
procedures based on what they see as valuable. In the
words of Carneiro da Cunha (2009), heritagization
touches both what social science names Culture (the
collective framework that structures and commands
the common life within a group) and what people
are claiming to be their “culture” (the elements
selected to represent the group and to communicate
with others).

Thus, such heritage reconfigurations of the per-
formances and objects deemed as traditional not
only imply a transformation of the rituals, the nar-
ratives, or the aesthetics. They also touch, more
importantly to us, the very cognitive, sensorial, and
representational structures of speaking and thinking
about collective and individual identities. Analysing
the transfer of a local festival, a piece of music, or
handicraft know-how from ordinary life to a herit-
age environment leads us to consider that the people
engaged in heritage-making are dealing with a more
profound and more complex reconfiguration of cul-
ture than simply an economic or political (mis-)use
of culture, the past, or tradition.

The research agenda linked to this broader un-
derstanding of the reconfiguration of traditions in
Europe calls for a more diverse and multidirectional
investigation. Binary oppositions such as tourism vs.
locality, authenticity vs. fake, participation vs. dis-
play, institution vs. folk, official vs. unofficial, and
heritage vs. daily life seem to be widely at work at the
emic level. Our intention is to understand the rea-
sons for this conceptual incorporation among social
agents, and we are also interested in analysing the
polysemic and not necessarily polarized cultural in-
tersections and interactions involved in heritagiza-
tion processes. A first line of inquiry may consist in
scrutinizing the way in which individuals are deal-
ing with changes in traditions: what do people think
of the transformations of their traditions? Are they
active in the process? What are the arguments they
use to legitimate the change? Do they always agree?
What are the emotional and material consequences
of the reconfiguration for their proper lives? A sec-
ond avenue of interrogation concerns the role of
conflicts and competition within the processes of
heritagization of tradition. Who are the masters of
the play, what kind of hierarchical system is struc-
turing the present forces? How do people win or lose
control of the situation and with what emotional ef-
fect? When is victory claimed and contested? Lastly,
but this list is not exhaustive, the transformation of
traditions makes room for an inquiry into the dis-
positifs¹⁹ employed by actors to deal with traditions:
museums and archives are always the most efficient
and popular structures to be put in place. But what is
the role of more innovative devices, like the Intangi-
ble Cultural Heritage convention or the Faro conven-
tion? What about digital social networks mobilized
in the dynamics of heritage-making? What kinds of
collaboration – or exclusion – establish themselves,
and between which institutions and actors? What

are the transformations of the *dispositifs* when they
come into contact with traditional objects? Could
we witness some looping effects between heritage
devices and traditions?

The contributions to this thematic issue will not
be able to address all of the topics we develop in
this introduction. Nevertheless, our aim is to con-
tribute to a rethinking of the theoretical scope and
significance of these notions of re-enchantment, rit-
ualization, and heritage-making vis-à-vis the more
classical concepts and theories that link culture to
economics, politics, and to other more or less theo-
retically circumscribed “spheres” of human activity
(Terpe 2016). As ethnologists educated in and work-
ing in and on Europe, and as the editors of this issue,
we have continued and amplified the trend of po-
litical and sociological analysis in the field of those
social elements deemed “traditional”; however, we
have also felt it necessary to reevaluate the concepts
and the methodology of doing this. Thus, this issue
represents both a tribute to previous analytic para-
digms and an effort to consolidate the renewal of
our field, in an attempt to connect the micro-level
of our empirically oriented ethnographic investiga-
tions with general societal patterns widely charac-
terizing the European cultural space today.

The Articles in this Issue

Such consolidation and rethinking cannot but be
cultivated on the ground of a theoretical contribu-
tion, firmly resting on solid empirical evidence, for
ethnology as a discipline was born, has grown, and
is now mature as an empirically oriented discipline.
This is the reason why the contributions forming
this issue stem – however differently – from ethno-
graphically gathered materials or evidence-based
considerations, even though the approaches of the
individual authors vary.

Alessandro Testa's chapter explores the three
main concepts and experiential aspects at the centre
of this special issue (re-enchantment, ritualization,
and heritage-making), on the empirical grounds of
three different ethnographic cases from Italy, the
Czech Republic, and Catalonia (Spain), offering
fresh evidence as well as a theoretical discussion.
The latter is developed against the backdrop both of the existing secondary literature and the analyses and suggestions presented in this introduction. The text also attempts to demonstrate how re-enchantment, ritualization, and cultural heritage-making can co-exist and interact within or around the same traditional facts as complementary (or at least not mutually exclusive) processes. It examines in what sense their correlation and interaction can be thought of in terms of “tradition reconfiguration”. This is also done by discussing the related concepts of “(re)traditionalization” and “past-presencing”, as well as other related themes, such as symbolization, mythopoiesis, popular Frazerism, and (pseudo-)religious heritage.

Grounded on his ethnographic research in the village of Tende (southern France, 2005–2011), Cyril Isnart shows in which ways heritage-making and enchantment frame the dynamics of the identity of an Alpine community facing the consecutive concealment and renewal of religious practices and local associations of worship. In the framework of the historical and anthropological literature on local religion, this case helps to better understand what conditions are necessary in order to reconfigure the ritual groups called *confraternita* or *confréries* (brotherhoods) and for a village pilgrimage related to traditions to be safeguarded and valued. Nevertheless, the text also demonstrates that working on such remote, small and classical communities could provide ethnology and anthropology of religion with models to be compared with other social or religious contexts, and open new paths to better grasp how “traditions” are reconfigured within our contemporary societies.

Eva Löfgren offers a thorough study of an interesting and rather peculiar example of “re-enchantment”: the reconstruction of destroyed churches in Sweden, a society thought to be so thoroughly secularized that it does not seem to be a rational investment of resources. Her profound and detailed analysis of several interesting case studies from different Swedish regions illuminates the ways in which even apparently superfluous acts of material reconstruction can actually trigger and engender a

rather rich series of social dynamics connected with questions of cultural institutionalization, memory, identity, and religiosity.

In Pedro Antunes’ article we encounter the moving, pious examples of Portuguese ritual performances for the souls of the dead. The author brings us into the social fabric of religious mourning in a context of “southern Catholicism”, and does so by means of an insightful, “thick”, but also empathetic ethnography. In this article, too, we see at work the complex machinery of traditional reconfiguration and/through ritualization, re-enchantment, and heritage-making. The author engages deeply with the concept of heritage-making, relating it to an evident process of re-enchantment in the Portuguese context within which the fieldwork was conducted, seeking to understand the role, the relevance, and the transmission of these phenomena, their social conditions, and the cultural factors that allow their reproduction.

Following these articles is a forum gathering a large panel of anthropologists and ethnologists who have been working in and on Europe for at least two decades. Each of them was called upon to react to a simple question: What can we say today about the notion of tradition and what can we do with it? From eastern to southern Europe, from cultural heritage to social anthropology, from historical perspectives to the moral engagement that seems to come with our disciplines, the nine contributions to the forum depict a diverse landscape of approaches, methodologies, and epistemologies of tradition, including some lessons on what tradition can reveal about our contemporary world. We invite the readers to read and compare the perspectives given in the forum and to add their own views during their classes and seminars, in order to bring this forum to life outside of these pages.

Altogether this introduction, the four articles, and the forum contribute to a new way of framing and reconfiguring the study of tradition in Europe.

## Notes

1. The idea of this special issue originated on the occasion of a panel for the 13th SIEF Congress in Göttingen,
April 2017. We would like to thank the general editors, the anonymous reviewers, and Jonathan Riches for helping to improve the present article as well as the other articles of this themed issue.

2 The word “revival” is used for the sake of brevity. Theories of “tradition” and traditional “revitalization” have multiplied ever since the publication of Hobsbawm & Ranger 1983; see, for instance, Bronner 2000; Clemente & Mugnaini 2001; Handler & Linnekin 1984; Glassie 1995; Istenič 2012; Noyes 2009; Pouillon 2007; Testa 2016a and 2016b; just to quote a few. An interesting typology, building on the micro-semantic distinctions between terms such as “invention”, “revitalization”, “revivification”, “reanimation”, “restoration”, “resurrection”, “retraditionalization”, and “folklorization” is in Boissevain 1992.

3 For a recent discussion on the categories of “marginality” and “periphery” in European anthropology, cf. Martínez 2019.

4 “Provincial”, a controversial, commonsensical, and apparently inaccurate adjective, is used here in the manner Dorothy Noyes uses and theorizes it (Noyes 2003: 9–12).

5 Roughly the same periodization has been proposed by other scholars. In fact, accounts of this revival and reemergence in Europe are numerous. One of the first (and best) studies into the “revival” of popular religious traditions in a European marginal context (Sardinia), and its going hand in hand with other processes such as massification, touristification, commodification, etc. is Gallini 1971. Other French and Italian scholars would soon follow suit: Bravo 1984; Fabre & Camberoque 1977; Valeri 1979 (just to cite three exemplary works). Boissevain 1992 remains a work of reference; others, more recent ones, where the problem is also treated generically and/or comparatively are (this list is necessarily very partial): Ariño & Lombardi Satriani 1997; Clemente & Mugnaini 2001; Faeta 2011; Herzfeld 1982; Hodges 2011; Macdonald 2013; Testa 2014a; Testa 2017a.

6 “The revitalisation of traditions all over Europe goes hand in hand with economic globalisation and post-industrial modernisation. The celebration of newly invented folk traditions as authentic, the display of regional identities and heritages [...], the production of legitimacy through languages and practices of conservation and essentialisation and the belief that ‘old’ or ‘original’ is an equivalent for ‘good’” (Knecht & Niedermüller 2003: 89).

7 “What is historical and typical is authentic, and it is assumed that authenticity is objectively ascertainable” (Handler 1988: 200); see also Bendix 1997.

8 Weber 1919. A classical interpretation of Weber's paradigm can be found in Acquaviva 1966. For other ap-

proaches and declensions of the Weberian paradigm of *Entzauberung*, see Tschannen 1992. In this study the notion of re-enchantment is preferred instead of those, closely associated, of de-secularization, re-sacralization, or re-confessionalization, following a terminological, theoretical, and methodological choice explained in Testa 2017a: 25–27.

9 The literature on this topic is today very rich and includes a significant corpus of studies for rethinking classical sociological hypotheses about the presumed inevitable secularization of the industrial world, notably Europe and “the West”. In this note as well as in the text above, only some of the most representative works are cited: Barker & Warburg 1990; Davie & Hervieu-Léger 1996; Eller 2007: 160–172; Heelas 1996.

10 Handelman’s perspective is particularly interesting, in our case, because he is an anthropologist of the contemporary world, dealing mostly with public rituals in Western nation states, rather than with non-European contexts. Handelman’s theorization about how – and why – public rituals work within/for/against/around a given sociopolitical order has been very inspiring and inform some of the following pages.

11 The ontological, definitional, and methodological problems related to the study of ritual and ritualization are discussed at length in Testa 2014a: 56–77, 499–510, and passim.

12 European examples of “ritualization process” were early discussed, with theoretical far-sightedness, by Eric Hobsbawm (Hobsbawm 1983a, 1983b).

13 “Ritual occasions [are] a privileged arena for investigating emotions” (Berthomé & Houseman 2010: 69).

14 On ritualization as a cultural means by which certain social meanings acquire a special relevance, cf. Bell 2009: 90–93; on a theory of ritual symbolic graduation and hierarchy (i.e. on how and why certain things, especially ritual things, become “more symbolic”), see Testa 2014a: 69–75.

15 Handelman’s criticism and its merits and limits are discussed in Testa 2014a: 65–77.

16 Anthropological definitions, theories, and analyses of performance can be found in Turner 1982 and Kolaniewicz 2008.

17 A recent sociological definition states that ritualization can be conceptualized as a “ubiquitous form of social behavior in which people engage in regularized and repetitious actions which are grounded in actors’ cognitive maps or, to use another phrase, symbolic frameworks” (Knottnerus 1997: 260).

18 The notion of ritual context is well defined in Bell 2009: 69–93 and passim.

19 *Dispositif* is used here in Foucault’s understanding of the term, i.e. as an ensemble of values and procedures that frame a social domain (Foucault 1980).
## References

Acquaviva, Sabino 1966: *L'eclissi del sacro nella civiltà industriale*. Milan: Comunità.

Adell, Nicolas, Regina Bendix, Chiara Bortolotto & Markus Tauschek (eds.) 2015: *Between Imagined Communities of Practice: Participation, Territory and the Making of Heritage*. Göttingen: Göttingen University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/books.gup.191.

Anderson, Benedict 1983: *Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism*. London & New York: Verso.

Ariño, Antonio & Luigi Lombardi Satriani (eds.) 1997: *L'utopia di Dioniso: Festa tra tradizione e modernità*. Rome: Meltemi.

Barker, Eileen & Margit Warburg (eds.) 1990: *New Religions and New Religiosity*. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press.

Bausinger, Helmut (1961)2005: *Cultura popolare e mondo tecnologico*. Napoli: Guida. (Volkskultur in der technischen Welt*. Stuttgart: Kolhammer, 1961.)

Bell, Catherine 2009: *Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice*. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press.

Bendix, Regina 1997: *In Search of Authenticity*. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

Bendix, Regina 2009: *Heritage between Economy and Politics: An Assessment from the Perspective of Cultural Anthropology*. In: Smith Laurajane & Akagawa Natsuko (eds.), *Intangible Heritage*. London & New York: Routledge, 253–269.

Bendix, Regina, Aditya Eggert & Arnika Peselmann (eds.) 2013: *Heritage Regimes and the State*. Göttingen: Göttingen University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/books.gup.348.

Berthomé, François & Michael Houseman 2010: *Ritual and Emotions: Moving Relations, Patterned Effusions. Religion and Society: Advances in Research 1: 57–75*. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3167/arrs.2010.010105.

Boissevain, Jeremy (ed.) 1992: *Revitalizing European Rituals*. London & New York: Routledge.

Boissevain, Jeremy (ed.) 1996: *Coping with Tourists: European Reactions to Mass Tourism*. London & New York: Berghahn.

Bondaz, Julien, Florence Graezer Bideau, Cyril Isnart & Anaïs Leblon (eds.) 2014: *Les vocabulaires locaux du “patrimoine”*. Zurich: Lit Verlag.

Bondaz, Julien, Cyril Isnart & Anaïs Leblon 2012: Au-delà du consensus patrimonial. *Civilisations* 61(1): 9–22. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/civilisations.3113.

Borowik, Irena & Grzegorz Babinski (eds.) 1997: *New Religious Phenomena in Central and Eastern Europe*. Krakow: Nomos.

Bortolotto, Chiara (ed.) 2011: *Le Patrimoine culturel immatériel: Enjeux d'une nouvelle catégorie*. Paris: Éditions de la maison des sciences de l'homme. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/books.editionsmsh.3545.

Bossy, John 1985: *Christianity in the West, 1400–1700*. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press.

Bourdieu, Pierre 1986: The Forms of Capital. In: John Richardson (ed.), *Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education*. New York: Greenwood, 241–258.

Bowie, Fiona 2003: An Anthropology of Religious Experience: Spirituality, Gender and Cultural Transmission in the Focolare Movement. *Ethnos* 68(1): 49–72. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/0014184032000060362.

Boyer, Pascal 1990: *Tradition as Truth and Communication: A Cognitive Description of Traditional Discourse*. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511521058.

Bravo, Gian Luigi 1984: *Festa contadina e società complessa*. Milan: Franco Angeli.

Bromberger, Christian & Denis Chevallier (eds.) 2009: *Carrières d'objets: Innovations et relances*. Paris: Éditions de la maison des sciences de l'homme.

Bronner, Simon 2000: The Meaning of Tradition: An Introduction. *Western Folklore* 59(2): 87–104. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/1500154.

Carneiro da Cunha, Manuela 2009: *Cultura com aspas*. São Paulo: Cosac & Naify.

Clemente, Pietro & Mugnaini Fabio (eds.) 2001: *Oltre il folklore: Tradizioni popolari e antropologia nella società contemporanea*. Rome: Carocci.

Comaroff, John L. & Jean Comaroff 2009: *Ethnicity, Inc.* Chicago: University of Chicago Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226114736.001.0001.

Creed, Gerald W. 2011: *Masquerade and Postsocialism: Ritual and Cultural Dispossession in Bulgaria*. Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.

Cusack, Carole M. 2010: *Invented Religions: Imagination, Fiction and Faith*. London & New York: Routledge.

Davie, Grace & Daniele Hervieu-Léger (eds.) 1996: *Identités religieuses en Europe*. Paris: La Découverte.

De Certeau, Michel, Dominique Julia & Jacques Revel (1970)1993: La beauté du mort. In: Michel de Certeau, *La culture au pluriel*. Paris: Point, 45–72.

Dei, Fabio 2002: *Beethoven e le mondine*. Rome: Meltemi.

Demerath, Nicholas J. 2000: The Rise of “Cultural Religion” in European Christianity: Learning from Poland, Northern Ireland, and Sweden. *Social Compass* 47(1): 127–139. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/003776800047001013.

Eller, David J. 2007: *Introducing Anthropology of Religion: Culture to the Ultimate*. London & New York: Routledge. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203946244.

Fabre, Daniel (ed.) 2000: *Domestiquer l'histoire: Ethnologie des monuments historiques*. Paris: Éditions de la maison des Sciences de l'Homme. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/books.editionsmsh.2861.

Fabre, Daniel (ed.) 2013: *Émotions patrimoniales*. Paris: Éditions de la maison des sciences de l'homme. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/books.editionsmsh.3580.
Fabre, Daniel & Claude Camberoque 1977: *La Fête en Languedoc: Regards sur le carnaval aujourd'hui*. Toulouse: Privat.

Faeta, Francesco 2005: Un oggetto conoscibile: La festa religiosa in aree dell'Europa meridionale. In: Francesco Faeta, *Questioni italiane: Demologia, antropologia critica*. Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 151-170.

Faeta, Francesco 2011: Le “radici” folkloriche dell'Europa contemporanea: Ripensare la cultura popolare e i suoi studi. In: Francesco Faeta, *Le ragioni dello sguardo: Pratice dell'osservazione, della rappresentazione e della memoria*. Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 132-155.

Fedele, Anna 2015: *Looking for Mary Magdalene: Alternative Pilgrimage and Ritual Creativity in Contemporary France*. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press.

Foucault, Michel 1980: The Confession of the Flesh (1977) Interview. In: Michel Foucault, *Power/Knowledge Selected Interviews and Other Writings*. New York: Pantheon Books, 194-228.

Fournier, Laurent Sébastien 2005: *La fête en héritage: Enjeux patrimoniaux de la sociabilité provençale*. Aix-en-Provence: Publications de l'Université de Provence. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/books.pup.1573.

Fournier, Laurent Sébastien 2012: The Impact of the Intangible Cultural Heritage Unesco Policies in France. *Traditiones* 41(2): 193-206. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3986/Traditio2012410214.

Frykman, Jonas & Peter Niedermüller 2003: Articulating Europe: Local Perspectives. In: Jonas Frykman & Peter Niedermüller (eds.), *Articulating Europe: Local Perspectives*. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 3-6.

Gallini, Clara 1971: *Il consumo del sacro: Feste lunghe di Sardegna*. Bari: Laterza.

Geertz, Clifford 1973a: Ritual and Social Change: A Javanese Example. In: Clifford Geertz, *The Interpretation of Cultures*. New York: Basic Books, 142-169.

Geertz, Clifford 1973b: Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight. In: Clifford Geertz, *The Interpretation of Cultures*. New York: Basic Books, 412-454.

Gell, Alfred 1992: The Technology of Enchantment and the Enchantment of Technology. In: Jeremy Coote & Anthony Shelton (eds.), *Anthropology, Art and Aesthetics*. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Gell, Alfred 1998: *Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory*. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Ginzburg, Carlo 2009: *Il formaggio e i vermi: Il cosmo di un mugnaio del '500*. Turin: Einaudi (first publication 1976).

Glassie, Henry H. 1995: Tradition. *Journal of American Folklore* 108(430): 395-412. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/541653.

Gluckman, Max 1963: Rituals of Rebellion in South-East Africa. In: Max Gluckman, *Order and Rebellion in Tribal Africa: Collected Essays*. London: Cohen & West, 110-135.

Goody, Jack 1977: Against “Ritual”: Loosely Structured Thoughts on a Loosely Defined Topic. In: Sally F. Moore & Barbara G. Myerhoff (eds.), *Secular Ritual*. Amsterdam: Van Gorcum, 25-35.

Handelman, Don 1999: *Models and Mirrors: Towards an Anthropology of Public Events*. New York & Oxford: Berghahn Books (first publication 1990).

Handler, Richard 1988: *Nationalism and the Politics of Culture in Quebec*. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press.

Handler, Richard & Joycelyn Linnekin 1984: Tradition, Genuine or Spurious. *Journal of American Folklore* 97: 273-290. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/540610.

Hann, Chris (ed.) 2006: *The Post-socialist Religious Question: Faith and Power in Central Asia and East-Central Europe*. Halle (Saale): Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology.

Harrison, Rodney 2010: Heritage as Social Action. In: Susie West (ed.), *Understanding Heritage in Practice*. Manchester & Milton Keynes: Manchester University Press in association with the Open University, 240-276.

Harrison, Rodney 2013: *Heritage: Critical Approaches*. New York: Routledge. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203108857.

Heelas, Paul 1996: *The New Age Movement: The Celebration of the Self and the Sacralization of Modernity*. Oxford: Blackwell.

Heinich, Nathalie 2009: *La Fabrique du patrimoine: De la cathédrale à la petite cuillère*. Paris: Éditions de la Maison des sciences de l'homme. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/books.editionsmsh.2642.

Heinich, Nathalie 2011: The Making of Cultural Heritage. *The Nordic Journal of Aesthetics* 40-41: 119-128. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7146/nja.v22i40-41.5203.

Heinich, Nathalie 2012: Les émotions patrimoniales: De l'affect à l'axiologie. *Social Anthropology/Anthropologie sociale* 20(1): 19-33. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-8676.2011.00187.x.

Hertz, Robert (1907)2009: A Contribution to a Study of the Collective Representation of Death. In: Marcel Mauss, Henri Hubert & Robert Hertz, *Saints, Heroes, Myths and Rites: Classical Durkheimian Studies of Religion and Society*. London & New York: Routledge, 109-180. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315632292-6.

Hertz, Robert (1909)2009: The Preeminence of the Right Hand: A Study of Religious Polarity. In: Marcel Mauss, Henri Hubert & Robert Hertz, *Saints, Heroes, Myths and Rites: Classical Durkheimian Studies of Religion and Society*. London & New York: Routledge, 88-108. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315632292-5.

Hertz, Robert (1913)2009: Saint Besse: Study of an Alpine Cult of Death. In: Marcel Mauss, Henri Hubert & Robert Hertz, *Saints, Heroes, Myths and Rites: Classical Durkheimian Studies of Religion and Society*. London & New York:
Routledge, 181–221. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315632292-7.

Hervieu-Léger, Danièle 2000: *Religion as a Chain of Memory*. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.

Hervieu-Léger, Danièle 2012: Mapping the Contemporary Forms of Religiosity. In: Charles Taylor, José Casanova & George F. McLean (eds.), *Church and People: Disjunctions in a Secular Age*. Washington: RVP, 25–38.

Herzfeld, Michael 1982: *Ours Once More: Folklore, Ideology, and the Making of Modern Greece*. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Herzfeld, Michael 1997: *Cultural Intimacy: Social Poetics in the Nation-State*. New York: Routledge.

Hobsbawm, Eric J. 1983a: Introduction: Inventing Traditions. In: Eric J. Hobsbawm & Terence Ranger (eds.), *The Invention of Tradition*. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1–14. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781107295636.001.

Hobsbawm, Eric J. 1983b: Mass-Producing Traditions: Europe, 1870–1914. In: Eric J. Hobsbawm & Terence Ranger (eds.), *The Invention of Tradition*. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 263–308. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781107295636.007.

Hobsbawm, Eric J. & Terence Ranger (eds.) 1983: *The Invention of Tradition*. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Hodges, Matt 2011: “Disciplinary Anthropology?” Amateur Ethnography and the Production of “Heritage” in Rural France. *Ethnos* 76(3): 348–374. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/00141844.2011.577228.

Houseman, Michael 2006: Relationality. In: Jens Kreinath, Jan A.M. Snoek & Michael Stausberg (eds.), *Theorizing Rituals: Issues, Topics, Approaches*. Leiden & Boston: Brill, 413–428. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789047410775_020.

Houseman, Michael 2010: Des rituels contemporains de première menstruation. *Ethnologie française* 40(1): 57–66. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3917/ethn.101.0057.

Hutton, Ronald 2008: Modern Pagan Festivals: A Study in the Nature of Tradition. *Folklore* 119(3): 251–273. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/00155870802352178.

Isnart, Cyril 2006: “Savages who speak French”: Folklore, Primitivism and Morals in Robert Hertz. *History and Anthropology* 17(2): 135–152. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/02757200600625757.

Isnart, Cyril 2012: Les patrimonisations ordinaires. Essai d’images ethnographiées. *ethnographiques.org* 24.

Istenič, Sasa Poljiak 2012: Aspects of Tradition. *Traditions* 41(2): 77–89. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3986/Traditional0212410206.

Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara 2004: Intangible Heritage as Metacultural Production. *Museum International* 56(1–2): 52–65. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1350-0775.2004.00458.x.

Knecht, Michi & Peter Niedermüller 2003: The Politics of Cultural Heritage: An Urban Approach. *Ethnologia Europaea* 32: 89–104.

Knottnerus, David J. 1997: The Theory of Structural Ritualization. *Advances in Group Processes* 14: 257–279.

Kockel, Ulrich & Máiréad Nic Craith (eds.) 2007: *Cultural Heritages as Reflexive Traditions*. London: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230285941.

Kolankiewicz, Leszek 2008: Towards an Anthropology of Performance(s). *Performance Research* 13(2): 8–24. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/13528160802639177.

Kurasawa, Fuyuki 2003: Primitiveness and the Flight from Modernity: Sociology and the Avant-garde in Inter-war France. *Economy and Society* 31(1): 7–28. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/0308514032000045744.

Lenclud, Gérard 1977: Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. *Nouvelle revue de psychanalyse* 15: 203–211.

Lenclud, Gérard 1987: La tradition n'est plus ce qu'elle était. *Terrain* 9: 110–123. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/terrain.3195.

Macdonald, Sharon 2013: *Memorylands: Heritage and Identity in Europe Today*. London & New York: Routledge. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203553336.

Machin-Autenrieth, Matthew 2016: *Flamenco, Regionalism and Musical Heritage in Southern Spain*. Abingdon & New York: Routledge. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315582504.

Margry, Peter Jan 2012: European Religious Fragmentation and the Rise of Civil Religion. In: Ulrich Kockel, Máiréad Nic Craith & Jonas Frykman (eds.), *Companion to the Anthropology of Europe*. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 275–294. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118257203.ch16.

Marranci, Gabriele 2012: Studying Muslims in Europe. In: Ulrich Kockel, Máiréad Nic Craith & Jonas Frykman (eds.), *Companion to the Anthropology of Europe*. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 295–310. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118257203.ch17.

Martínez, Francisco 2019: An Expert in Peripheries: Working at, with and through the Margins of Anthropology. *ANUAC: Journal of the Italian Association of Cultural Anthropology* 8(2): 167–188.

Noyes, Dorothy 2003: *Fire in the Plaça: Catalan Festival Politics After Franco*. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.9783/9780812202991.

Noyes, Dorothy 2009: Tradition: Three Traditions. *Journal of Folklore Research* 46: 233–268. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2979/jfr.2009.46.3.233.

Pouillon, Jean 1975: Tradition: Transmission ou reconstruction. In: Jean Pouillon, *Fétiches sans fétichisme*. Paris: Maspéro, 155–173.

Pouillon, Jean 2007: Tradition. In: Pierre Bonte & Michel Izard (eds.), *Dictionnaire de l'ethnologie et de l'anthropologie*. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 710–712.

Pritchard, Elizabeth 2015: Pilgrimages and Publics: The Case of Taizé. *Anthropological Theory* 15(1): 68–91. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/1463499614556900.

Riley, Alexander T. 2010: *Godless Intellectuals: The Intellectual Pursuit of the Sacred Reinvented*. New York & Oxford: Berghahn Books.
Rogers, Douglas 2005: The Anthropology of Religion after Socialism. *Religion, State & Society* 33(1): 5–18. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/0963749042000330848.

Rountree, Kathryn (ed.) 2015: *Contemporary Pagan and Native Faith Movements in Europe*. New York & London: Berghahn. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt9qctm0.

Ruickbie, Leo 2006: Weber and the Witches: Sociological Theory and Modern Witchcraft. *Journal of Alternative Spiritualities and New Age Studies* 2: 116–130.

Sahlins, Marshall 1993: Goodbye to Tristes Tropes: Ethnography in the Context of Modern World History. *Journal of Modern History* 65(1): 1–25. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1086/244606.

Santino, Jack 2009: The Ritualesque: Festival, Politics, and Popular Culture. *Western Folklore* 68(1): 9–26.

Sapitula, Manuel Victor J. 2010: The Formation and Maintenance of Traditionalist Catholicism. *Social Science Review* 62(2): 315–343.

Smith, Laurajane 2006: *Uses of Heritage*. London: Routledge. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203602263.

Stoichiță, Victor 2013: Enchanting Spaces: Echo and Reverberation at Romanian Popular Parties. *Etnográfica* 17(3): 581–603. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/etnografica.3281.

Tauschek, Markus 2011: Reflections on the Metacultural Nature of Intangible Cultural Heritage. *Journal of Ethnology and Folkloristics* 5(2): 49–64.

Terpe, Sylvia 2016: *Max Weber's "Spheres of Life": A Tool for Micro-Sociological Analysis*. Halle (Saale): Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology Working Papers (179).

Testa, Alessandro 2014a: *Il carnevale dell'uomo-animale: Le dimensioni storiche e socio-culturali di una festa appenninica*. Napoli: Loffredo.

Testa, Alessandro 2014b: L'homme-cerf, l'ethnologue et le maire: Les politiques du folklore dans un contexte rural italien. In: Stanisław Fiszer, Didier Francfort, Antoine Nivière & Jean-Sébastien Noëlalt (eds.), *Folklores et politique: Approches comparées et réflexions critiques (Europes – Amériques)*. Paris: Le Manuscrit, 99–120.

Testa, Alessandro 2016a: Ripensare la tradizione: Riflessioni critiche su una nozione controversa. *Annuaire Roumain d'Anthropologie/Romanian Yearbook of Anthropology* 53: 63–91.

Testa, Alessandro 2016b: From Folklore to Intangible Cultural Heritage: Observations about a Problematic Filiation. *Osterreichische Zeitschrift für Volkskunde* 119(3–4): 183–204.

Testa, Alessandro 2017a: "Fertility" and the Carnival 1: Symbolic Effectiveness, Emic Beliefs, and the Re-enchantment of Europe. *Folklore* 128(1): 16–36. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/0015587X.2016.1236488.

Testa, Alessandro 2017b: "Fertility" and the Carnival 2: Popular Frazerism and the Reconfiguration of Tradition in Europe Today. *Folklore* 128(2): 111–132. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/0015587X.2017.1281967.

Trevisan Semi, Emanuela, Dario Miccoli & Tudor Parfitt, (eds.) 2013: *Memory and Ethnicity: Ethnic Museums in Israel and the Diaspora*. Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Tschannen, Olivier 1992: *Les théories de la sécularisation*. Geneva: Librairie Droz. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3917/droz.tscha.1992.01.

Turner, Victor 1966: *The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure*. Chicago: Aldine.

Turner, Victor 1967: *The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of N'dembu Ritual*. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Turner, Victor 1982: *From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play*. New York: Performing Arts Journal Publications.

Valeri, Valerio 1979: Festa. In: *Enciclopedia Einaudi*. Turin: Einaudi, 87–99.

Weber, Max 1919: *Wissenschaft als Beruf*. Munich & Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot.

Wolf, Eric R. 2001: *Pathways of Power: Building an Anthropology of the Modern World*. Berkeley, Los Angeles & London: University of California Press.

Cyril Isnart is an anthropologist, senior researcher at the Institut d'ethnologie méditerranéenne, européenne et comparative (Aix Marseille University and Centre de la Recherche Scientifique, Aix-en-Provence, France), and works on music and religious heritage-making in southern Europe and the Mediterranean. He is the co-founder of the international network *Respatrimoni* and he recently edited with N. Cerezales *The Religious Heritage Complex: Legacy, Conservation and Christianity* (Bloomsbury).
(isnartc@gmail.com)

Alessandro Testa is Marie Curie/OPVVV Research Fellow in anthropology at the Institute of Sociological Studies, Charles University, Prague. Trained in history, ethnology, and religious studies, since 2003 he has studied, worked, or undertaken ethnographic fieldwork for long periods in Italy, France, Estonia, the Czech Republic, Germany, Austria, and Spain (Catalonia). He has also been a guest lecturer in Slovenia, Slovakia, and Iceland.
(alessandro.testa@fsv.cuni.cz)