Two things inspired me this morning to contemplate a blog post that isn't just a random collection of links I've been clinging onto until they finally make firefox crash.  Firstly, there is a new issue of Anthropological Forum [paywall] out.  The theme is 'Creations: Imagination and Innovation'.  Oooh!  And, secondly, Messrs Mouse and Holdsworth have been delving into the contentious territory of Harvest (not to be confused with 1972's finest), which delights me 'cos I study tradition and that, y'know. 

I did at first think that I could have written two separate posts, full of lovely, well thought out words and timely analysis.  Then I regained my senses with a nice cup of tea.  So, being an intrepid sort who is still actually living out of a backpack (please send your unwated chests of drawers c/o the St James op shop), I thought instead that I'd go for the time-honoured anthropological technique of cramming it all into a jar, shaking it up a bit, and hoping the end result doesn't make me look like I've been hanging with the shamans a bit much.

(Yes, yes, two paragraphs already without a sensible thought.)

So, Anth Forum.  (And as a side note, Jeannette Mageo's Samoa/historical anthro article [paywall] this issue is really rather good.)  Joel Robbins has a lovely afterword about anthropological approaches to imagination and creativity [paywall].  He suggests that though we tend to think of imagination as mental freedom it is actually culturally bound.  But he doesn't wave culture about as the scholarly trump card; he goes on to argue that "[if] such culturally defined freedom is the best kind of freedom human beings can hope for, then anthropologists ought to take it seriously as a kind of freedom and appreciate the possibilities it affords and the issues it raises".  Then he does a little hop from imagination to innovation, where he talks about the relationship of innovation to tradition with a nice reminder that innovations are constantly being incorporated into traditions. 

Now Anth Forum lingers in Australasia, so our serving of imagination and innovation is served with lashings of traditional anthropological stomping ground.  But Robbins' afterword is begging, screaming, and throwing a right tantrum to be taken off to visit Britain.  It wants to do a proper traditional tour; catch a bit of rake making, maybe buy a spoon or two.  So why not bring a bit of cheese for Mouse and have a swing of the thurible while it's there? 

Harvest is actually rather old.  To get functionalist about it, suddenly having a heap of food (but having had to work like mad to get it) is a pretty good excuse for a party.  But it was olded up a bit more and sanctified as a tradition by the Victorians, who were really rather good at that sport (see also: Christmas).  So, the C of E have a service for it.  This is part of Mouse's 'plaint: as he squeaks "it now has virtually no meaning in the modern world".  (I have to stomp my foot a little here since technically the nineteenth century was modernity.  And, partly because of that, I am a firm believer that we are still really Victorians.)  Mouse is also a metropolitan, and not a fieldmouse, so he wonders quite how relevant Harvest is in the inner-city ... and outside it too, since rurality is not what it used to be (if it ever was).  He's keen on updating the tradition.  Kelvin has come out in sympathy, though he reports his efforts to Bring Back Lammas haven't gone exactly down a treat. 

I reckon it's pretty interesting, looking at these imaginings of Harvest, that Mouse wants to overhaul the tradition with some updated, urban ideas (and even with a possible whiff of the dread Americanisation), whereas Kelvin's plunging back to Lammas (sometimes we find new things in the old, as ++Rowan has also written).  There's more here too in whether innovating traditions should happen incrementally (this is already happening with Harvest donations) or whether there's a point where we turf it and start again (which is essentially what the Victorians did with the Harvest that we're talking about in the first place).  Aaaand ... these urban responses do seem to contrast with Geoffrey Walker's 2002 research in rural Somerset [paywall], where he found that the demand from parishioners for these sorts of services was actually on the up: imaginings bound up in cultural ideas about the rural and urban, perhaps?  So much stuff to make an anthropologist of Britain oooh and aaah!

So what do I think about Harvest?  Well, I'm a sucker for a bit of rural tradition.  But I do reserve a special hatred for Lark Rise to Candleford.