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are an example of an invented tradition created in the 19th century.]] Invented traditions are cultural practices that are presented or perceived as traditional, arising from people starting in the distant past, but which are relatively recent and often consciously invented by historical actors. The concept was highlighted in the 1983 book The Invention of Tradition, edited by Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger. Hobsbawm's introduction argues that many "traditions" which "appear or claim to be old are often quite recent in origin and sometimes invented."Hobsbawm & Ranger (1983), p. 1. This "invention" is distinguished from "starting" or "initiating" a tradition that does not then claim to be old. The phenomenon is particularly clear in the modern development of the nation and of nationalism, creating a national identity promoting national unity, and legitimising certain institutions or cultural practices.The articles in the volume include Hugh Trevor-Roper's "The invention of tradition: the Highland tradition of Scotland," Prys Morgan's "From a death to a view: the hunt for the Welsh past in the romantic period," David Cannadine's "The context, performance, and meaning of ritual: the British monarchy and the 'invention of tradition', c. 1820-1977," Bernard S. Cohen's "Representing authority in Victorian India," Terence Ranger's "The invention of tradition in colonial Africa," and Eric Hobsbawm's "Mass-producing traditions: Europe, 1870-1914."
Mirror of Modernity: Invented Traditions of Modern Japan. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998.
It has influenced related concepts such as Benedict Anderson's imagined communities and the pizza effect.Anderson, Benedict. "The origins of national consciousness". Nationalism: Critical Concepts in Political Science 1 (2000): 316, p. 37.Indeed, the sharp distinction between "tradition" and "modernity" is often itself invented. The concept is "highly relevant to that comparatively recent historical innovation, the 'nation', with its associated phenomena: nationalism, the nation-state, national symbols, histories, and the rest." Hobsbawm and Ranger remark on the "curious but understandable paradox: modern nations and all their impedimenta generally claim to be the opposite of novel, namely rooted in remotest antiquity, and the opposite of constructed, namely human communities so 'natural' as to require no definition other than self-assertion."Hobsbawm & Terence Ranger (1983), p. 13-14. The concept of authenticity is also often questionable.
The term fakelore was coined in 1950 by American folklorist Richard M. Dorson in his article "Folklore and Fake Lore" published in The American Mercury. Dorson's examples included the fictional cowboy Pecos Bill, who was presented as a folk hero of the American West but was actually invented by the writer Edward S. O'Reilly in 1923. Dorson also regarded Paul Bunyan as fakelore. Although Bunyan originated as a character in traditional tales told by loggers in the Great Lakes region of North America, William B. Laughead (1882–1958), an ad writer working for the Red River Lumber Company, invented many of the stories about him that are known today. According to Dorson, advertisers and popularizers turned Bunyan into a "pseudo folk hero of twentieth-century mass culture" who bore little resemblance to the original.Dorson (1977), 214–226.
Folklorismus also refers to the invention or adaptation of folklore. Unlike fakelore, however, folklorismus is not necessarily misleading; it includes any use of a tradition outside the cultural context in which it was created. The term was first used in the early 1960s by German scholars, who were primarily interested in the use of folklore by the tourism industry. However, professional art based on folklore, TV commercials with fairy tale characters, and even academic studies of folklore are all forms of folklorism.
Others have argued that professionally created art and folklore are constantly influencing each other and that this mutual influence should be studied rather than condemned. According to Newall, 133, the German folklorist Hermann Bausinger expressed a similar view. For example, Jon Olson, a professor of anthropology, reported that while growing up he heard Paul Bunyan stories that had originated as lumber company advertising.Olson, 235. Dorson had seen the effect of print sources on orally transmitted Paul Bunyan stories as a form of cross-contamination that "hopelessly muddied the lore". For Olson, however, "the point is that I personally was exposed to Paul Bunyan in the genre of a living oral tradition, not of lumberjacks (of which there are precious few remaining), but of the present people of the area." What was fakelore had become folklore again.
Responding to his opponents' argument that the writers have the same claim as the original folk storytellers, Dorson writes that the difference amounts to the difference between traditional culture and mass culture.
Other American folk heroes that have been called fakelore include Old Stormalong, Febold Feboldson, Mose Humphrey, Tony Beaver, Bowleg Bill, Wisakedjak, Annie Christmas, Cordwood Pete, Antonine Barada, and Kemp Morgan.American Folklore: An Encyclopedia, ed. Jan Harold Brunvand, Taylor & Francis, 1996, p. 1105 Marshall Fishwick describes these largely literary figures as imitations of Paul Bunyan. Additionally, scholar Michael I. Niman describes the Legend of the Rainbow Warriors – a belief that a "new tribe" will inherit the ways of the Native Americans and save the planet – as an example of fakelore.Niman, Michael I. 1997. People of the Rainbow: A Nomadic Utopia, pp. 131-148. University of Tennessee Press.
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