Migrant Culture

Abstract

Whether referred to as ‘folk-life study’ or ‘(regional) ethnology’, our subject involves some concept of culture, as a means of defining its content and to categorize processes that generate and change ways of life. It suffices to recognize that culture exists in the minds of individuals as a structuring, or set of ‘rules’, which through performance generate manifestations, some of which are also often called ‘Culture’ (with an elitist connotation to the word). This wide definition brings together ‘material culture’ and ‘non-material culture’, the first by its nature leaving an enduring residue as a consequence of performance, the other surviving in memory or because of the intervention of some mechanism of recording. This view of culture is the necessary preamble to exploring how and why culture migrates, and some of the consequences of cultural migration.