Product details
- ISBN 9780857455680
- Weight: 481g
- Publication Date: 01 Oct 2012
- Publisher: Berghahn Books
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
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While in some cases modernity may dominate 'traditional' forms of expression, in others, the modern is embraced as a welcome source of new ideas that can modify 'tradition' while still keeping it within its own bounds. Maintaining a strong and distinct cultural identity with the help of modernity helps representatives of that identity cope with the modern world more generally. By contrast, assimilation to a dominant culture marked as modern is clearly associated with not only the loss of a distinct identity, but also its specific forms of cultural expression. This book explores the consequences of the interface between modernity and tradition in selected societies in Taiwan, mainland China and Vietnam. The contributors examine how traditions are themselves exploiting modernity in creative ways, in the interests of their own further cultural developments, and to what extent this approach is likely to help a tradition survive.
James Wilkerson is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the Institute of Anthropology, National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan. He received his PhD degree in anthropology from the University of Virginia. He has conducted research on religion, kinship and social history in the Penghu Islands, Taiwan and in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, People’s Republic of China.
