Donegal's Changing Traditions

Book excerpt: First Published in 1985. One of the notable objectives of the Library of Anthropology is to provide a vehicle for the expression in print of new, controversial, and seemingly unorthodox theoretical, methodological, and philosophical approaches to anthropological data. This is a book about traditions that are changing, not languishing in a moribund state and not dead, as other scholars have suggested, but changing to fit present circumstances. Since many people think of traditions as static or immutable, the author’s assertion that traditions are changing may strike readers as paradoxical, but this book deals with a paradoxical people, the Irish of Southwest Donegal, who simultaneously guard and manipulate their traditions: guarding them against the encroachments of the modern world and manipulating them for their own advantage in that world.