Course Catalogues as Ideological Custom, but not True Tradition

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The artifact from the college archives I looked at this week was a set of several course catalogues from the 1940s, beginning in 1942. These contained much more than the course catalogues at Kenyon today, such as 3 pages on the “history and aims” of Kenyon college, specific about different scholarships and loans, information about student activities and organizations, and a list of all of the administrators, professors, the board of trustees; clearly the course catalog’s functional use has greatly changed in the over 80 years since these catalogs were considered standard. What caught my eye the most was one of the things that clearly marked these catalogs as early 1940s artifacts: the acknowledgements that World War II was occuring at this time and the US had finally entered the war. In each catalog after the “History and Aims” section, there was a page entitled “College Studies and the War” which describes how the college must acknowledge that, due to these times of war, many students cannot complete a standard college education and the school has therefore “revised many of its courses and has accelerated all of its work.” There is also a great deal about an able-bodied man’s duty to his country and ends with a short paragraph emphasizing the importance of a liberal arts education both times of war and after for maintaining peace.

I was able to see this artifact in a different light when I read Eric Hobsbawm’s work on “invented tradition” and we discussed this concept further in class on Friday. Hobsbawm argues that there is a big difference between a true invented tradition and mere custom, convention, or routine. A true invented tradition involves a set of practices which do not change over time and are governed by ritual or symbolic rules which “seek to inculcate certain values and norms of behaviour by repetition” (Hobsbawm 2011:271). This differs from a custom because customs are more flexible and vary over time. Hobsbawm gives the example of a judge in a courtroom setting, saying that “‘Custom’ is what judges do; ‘tradition’ (in this instance invented tradition) is the wig, robe and other formal paraphernalia and ritualized practices surrounding their substantial action” (Hobsbawm 2011:272). Convention or routine also differ from tradition in that they do not have significant ritual or symbolic function and are technical rather than ideological according to Hobsbawm.

    In this way, the course catalog could be interpreted as primarily a convention or routine and perhaps, to a degree, also a custom due to certain aspects of it, like the “History and Aims” section in the 1940s and the “Kenyon College Mission and Values” and “Kenyon College Goals and Objectives” that exist in today’s course catalogues. These aspects of the course catalog appear to be directly related in the lineage of Kenyon College course catalogues, but are obviously not a true tradition because of the variation that occurs throughout the years and the transformation they have undergone; these aspects of the catalog resemble each other but are clearly very different both in format and in content. The course catalog, however, mainly has a functional purpose and is therefore more accurately described as a routine or through the language of convention. Its main purpose is to serve the practical use of being a collection of essential information for (mainly) current students to access and use. This means that it is not a true tradition because it does not include ritual or symbolic aspects and, though it contains ideological aspects such as a specific narrative about the history of Kenyon College, its main purpose is technical.

Bibliography

Hobsbawm, Eric. 2011. “From ‘Introduction: Inventing Tradition’.” Pp. 271-274 in The Collective Memory Reader, edited by J.K. Olick, V. Vinitzky-Seroussi, and D. Levy. New York: Oxford University Press.

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