Bruner's Culture

I’m interested in the way Bruner describes the tension between “classical, objectivist ethnography” and “a more reflexive, processual, critical interpretive mode” (5). I read this as a central issue underwriting Culture on Tour, and I think it’s worth considering in light of Nora.
Touristic ways of seeing have more in common with older objectivist ethnography, according to Bruner, because both fail to locate cultural performance in historical time. Touristic and objectivist ways of seeing view culture as perpetually present, so to speak, as the same across time and space, and in this way the emphasis is on identity and sameness – continuity, tradition, timelessness. Culture is perpetually present, in this view, because it’s not perceived as separate – but rather inseparable – from structures of the past. There is no sense of distance or difference in this first model. In Bruner’s account there’s also a strong whiff of naiveté.
Reflexive models are more sophisticated and adult. The focus is on history, agency, and context: performances are constructed and tradition is always changing. The “critical interpretive mode” turns away from presence-oriented perspectives to engage a sense of the separateness from the past. Such critical models are linear, historical, and secular: consciousness has fallen into time. Individuals, as well, play a much more significant role.
I’m interested in the tension between these models because I’ve seen similar conflicts in poetry. Nora’s pure memory sounds to me like innocence (“equilibrium,” “the warmth of tradition,” “the silence of custom,” “repetition,”), while history looks more like experience – something similar to Bruner’s more complex, troubled or adult mode. Questions of human agency also remind me of Blake’s Milton. I’m not sure I understand Nora, but the title suggests he wants something “Between Memory and History” – part innocence and experience, sacred and profane. Is that why we hear so much nostalgia? Bruner falls more firmly on the side of experience and agency.