Question

charecterstice of little traddition

Answer 1

The issue of little traditions did not arise for the first generation of anthropologists who, following the example of Malinowski, mainly studied remote, self-contained, small-scale societies. It was only after World War II, when anthropologists began to study communities integrated within larger states and participating in centuries-old religious traditions such as Buddhism or Christianity, that the problem arose. The terms ‘great’ and ‘little’ traditions were actually introduced and elaborated in the 1950s by the University of Chicago anthropologist Robert Redfield. In Redfield’s vision: ‘The studies of the anthropologist are contextual; they relate some element of the great tradition — sacred topic, story-element, teacher, ceremony, or supernatural being — to the life of the ordinary people, in the context of daily life as the anthropologist sees it happen’ (1956).