What are the social functions of national customs?

What is the social function of national customs?

Folk custom is a kind of classification of culture, which has both cultural connotation and cultural form. Culture is an artificial environment and cannot be inherited biologically. Man must go through the process of learning, that is, cultural adaptation, and learn the culture of the society and community where he was born. So a baby needs to learn language, etiquette, customs, religion, values and so on after birth. Folklore can be any culture. It may be language, social organization, etiquette, customs, beliefs, knowledge, rituals, religion, humor, entertainment, socialization and so on. These are actually traditional cultures. Folklore is a process of cultural adaptation and socialization, which makes a biological person become a social person through learning.

Tian Zhaoyuan: In my opinion, folk custom is colorful music of life and a cultural element to enhance the realm of daily life. Folk custom is a manifestation of culture, that is, the living form of tradition and culture. It is the product of the combination of cultural essence and reality after thousands of years of elutriation. Folklore has a strong identification function for specific groups, so it plays an irreplaceable role in contemporary social construction.

Hasen: You mainly locate folk customs from the perspective of social function, and I focus on locating folk customs from the perspective of individual growth. In fact, the purpose is the same, because folk customs are all about people's cultural forms. When a person was a child, folk customs appeared in his life, affecting his life and being influenced by traditional folk customs until his death. Folklore exists with human life. Folklore must be traditional, and tradition needs the continuation of time and space. Many folk stories have a history of hundreds or even thousands of years. There are also habits, superstitions, rituals, art and so on. From generation to generation. These are all learning processes.

Tian Zhaoyuan: What you care about is how people grow up under the education of folk customs. What I care about is how the society is constructed under the influence of folk customs. I think folk custom is a compound structure, which consists of narrative system and behavior system. In order to realize the function of building society, folklore must have three attributes: high cultural content, strong regularity and rich aesthetic characteristics. To say that folk culture has a high content means that folk culture is the essence of culture. For example, festivals and celebrations, such as the Spring Festival in China, the Dragon Boat Festival and Christmas in the West, are beyond the daily realm, aesthetic, full of faith and the out-and-out cultural essence.

Original text: "Folk custom is an important element of social construction"

The famous American folklorist Hasan M.EI-Shamy and Professor Tian Zhaoyuan of East China Normal University