2.

Tradition1
Agnese Vardanega, University of Teramo, July 2010

DRAFT: NOT TO BE QUOTED OR CITED FOR PUBLICATION

1. Introduction
Tradition as modern orientation towards past. When we Moderns talk about tradition, we are
generally talking about ourselves and the changes we are facing, and that force us to reflect upon
our past, in order to understand where we are going (or where we want to go).

This is one of the reasons why social sciences have developed a concept of ‘tradition’ difficult to
define both on a theoretical and on an empirical level: How can we unambiguously identify an
element of a social structure as ‘traditional’ rather than ‘modern’?

A common trait of all the different sociological interpretations of the concept of tradition is the
opposition (or difference) itself between tradition and modernity, connected to that between
conservation and innovation.

Identities between Tradition and Progress/Development. A characteristic feature of modernity is in

fact the accelerated pace of change, together with the positive value accorded to the idea of
‘velocity’ (of transportation systems, calculation tools, processes etc.) and to the ‘future’ — both
attributes of progress and development. Tradition may be considered — in this respect — as the
modern orientation towards the past (Luhmann 1992, Giddens 1994 and 1999), often representing a
quest for identity, roots and values, for something in a word that is strong and reassuring.

«When contemporary society calls itself “modern”, it identifies itself by the help of a differentiation
from the past. It identifies itself in a temporal dimension» (Luhmann 1992, p. 32) Thus, «the
discourse on modernity is most often conducted on a semantic level [... while] we remain without
adequate structural descriptions of the characteristics of modernity» (ibi: pp. 1–2).

1 A previous (longer) version of this text has been published (in Italian) as A. Vardanega, 2009, «La tradizione come
ambivalente risorsa per lo sviluppo. Note di ricerca», Il Risparmio Review (Riv. trimestrale dell'ACRI), n.1 gen-mar
(it is possible to request a copy sending an email to avardanega@gmail.com).
2 ed. cit. (engl. trad.: Observations on Modernity) 1998 Stanford Univ. Press

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This is one of the reasons why tradition becomes an object of special attention when changes are
too rapid and radical (even for modernity), threatening the stability and the functioning of the
society, or the dominance of interest groups that may appeal to tradition — the way in which things
have always been done (Weber 1922) — in order to resist innovation and change.

If the “Moderns” (since Descartes) have generally had this ambivalent relationship with tradition,
this is particularly true for those countries that experienced the so-called “peripheral
modernization”, and where this ambivalence has been often embodied and objectified in the
structure of social differentiation: besides the typical difference “town / countryside”, we may also
recall “north / south” or “middle class / rural class”. Similarly, ethnic conflicts have dominated the
modernization of countries with a colonial past, or without a dominant national identity (and/or self-
definition).

We may come to the conclusion that different and conflictual visions (or utopias) about the future
are often the basis of conflicts over “authentic” traditions and identities. In this sense, identity may
be conceived as a socially constructed “fil rouge” that links the past to the future, and that serves to
give a sense to the present.

Tradition as a mode of social action orientation, that plays a specific role in modern societies.
However, ‘tradition’ is not a form of social and cultural organization, all-pervasive and internally
consistent, that can be sensibly contraposed to ‘modernity’, but a modality of meaning construction
(and therefore of social action orientation) and a form of social legitimacy, which may relate
potentially every kind of institutions, in different historical and social contexts.

As a consequence, tradition keeps a place and a role in modern (post–traditional) and late modern
societies, in a problematic relation with ‘rationalised’ institutions that, although dominant, are
internally plural.

2 The modern construction of Tradition

2.1. Moderns talk with forked tongues

In view of an empirical and operational use of this concept, we should accept the suggestion of
Luhmann (1992), and distinguish between system operations and semantics, between historical and
structural processes and their (self–) representations.

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This does not imply that ‘tradition’ is a mere ‘word’, or just a theoretical concept without empirical
meaning. Indeed, the ideological implications of this category are not irrelevant at all in the
organization of social practices of modernity (and late modernity).

According to Latour, the point here is that Moderns do things by saying the contrary: they ‘talk with
forked tongues’! ‘By means of’ — not ‘although’ — saying the contrary3: apart from the
rationalised nature of tradition in a post-traditional society (emphasised by Giddens) this particular
orientation towards time (underlined by Luhmann) has been of great importance for the
development of modern culture.

I will develop these two aspects of the modern ambivalence towards tradition.

a) The ambivalent reference to the past

Definition of tradition. In ‘traditional’ societies — i.e. those that differ from the ‘modernized’
Western societies — the concept of ‘tradition’, where present, indicates the set of knowledges,
practices and norms handed on from one generation to another: what is preserved because it is
handed on, and what is handed on because it is worth preserving. In this sense, for example, the
term is used to indicate religious interpretations, rituals and liturgies that are preserved and
maintained, or at least remembered and passed down.

The modern meaning of the term ‘tradition’ emerges when Modernity begins to systematically
reflect upon itself, producing rational self-representations, often organized around the opposition
traditional / modern: we may recall the polemic of the Enlightenment against tradition, as well as
the subsequent Romantic retrieval of traditional values, symbols, knowledges and practices.

In this polemic, one of the stakes was the source of the legitimacy of knowledges, practices and
norms: tradition and the authority of the past, or scientific knowledge and individual reason (Weber
1922). In both cases, however, we may identify a fundamental issue in the relationship of the
present with its past, considered as a resource or as a threat for a society increasingly ‘obsessed’ by
the future, and — above all — by the rational control and planning of change (what we generally
mean with the word ‘progress’).

At the same time, this identification of modern society in a temporal dimension shows its internal
3 Besides, believing in an ontological separation between ‘structures’ (‘facts’) and ‘representations’ (‘values’ or
‘concerns’) is typically ‘modern’ ...

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complexity, and its nature of an object doomed by definition to uncertainty: a modern society has to
be — without any doubt — different tomorrow from what it is today (ibi). As a consequence,
modernity needs a mirror to ask questions about itself, and finds its mirror in tradition.

b) Reading Weber: reference to values and rationalised institutions

Among other ‘classical’ reflections on modernity, Weber’s contribution appears of particular interest
because, avoiding the neat opposition traditional / modern, he provided a unified — although
pluralistic — interpretation of the modernization process.

In particular, as it is well known, between tradition and goal-oriented rationality (based on formal,
technical or bureaucratic attitudes) Weber introduced — as a sort of intermediate form — value
rationality, to preserve the centrality and the ‘solidity’ of the reference to values4, within a course of
action not ritualized nor routine, but rationally chosen by the actor (cfr. Boudon 1995 and 1999).

In Weber’s perspective, the reference to values may therefore be seen as the ‘core’ of the
rationalised institutions, necessary to guarantee a ‘sense’ for the institutions themselves (i.e. their
capability of regulating social action), otherwise destined to become ‘steel cages’, or to result in
hyper-individualistic and opportunistic actions, social disorganization and disintegration.

At the same time, the ambiguous status of value rationality appears to reflect/go along with the
ambivalent role of tradition in a post-traditional society (as Giddens considers modern societies):
factor of continuity and source of values and meaning, but also a potential antagonist of the process
of individualization and rationalization.

The need of an anchor in shared values and meanings, for modern institutions, seems to be fulfilled
by the modern rediscovery or reinvention of traditional symbols and beliefs, the more attractive and
functional, the more ‘obsolete’ and ‘useless’5 — purely symbolic — they are (Hobsbawm and
Ranger, ed, 1983).

In this second sense too, we may say that Moderns talk with fork tongues: they reject and at the
same time celebrate and revive some past culture traits. And — as a matter of fact – only in modern
societies tradition has this specific role.

4 As based on both rationality and believing, as noted elsewhere (Vardanega 2008).

5 Far from the instrumental technique in particular (see De Certeau 1983).

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3.Tradition in a post-traditional society

3.1. How tradition works

Cognitive aspects. To better understand how tradition works in a post-traditional society, and how
it contributes to defining collective identities, we have to look into the cognitive aspects of
traditional systems of knowledges and beliefs.

Traditional knowledge — as opposed to technical and scientific ones — generally present little or
no systematisation, and can be thought of as an unordered collection of signs, without a unique code
to interpret them (Valeri 1981). Everyone can find the good symbol for each occasion, and this
explains how traditional practices can survive or be revived outside of, or even without, a
community, according to the hyper-individualistic logic of the ‘symbolic consumer’ (Luckmann
1967).

Tradition ‘works’ effectively thanks to its polyvocity (De Certeau 1981), and guarantees a sense of
continuity by hiding its origins, represented as immutable and remote, out of/beyond the reach of
social reflexivity (Balandier 1988). This results in a form of ‘ontological security’ that, according to
Giddens, is systematically and progressively destroyed by the modern rationality.

This mode of social action orientation is thus intrinsically ‘contextual’ and bound to a place and / or
a community: tradition is deeply embedded in social practices, with no identifiable external causes
and origins and therefore valid in and of itself. Traditional knowledge and practices can be learned
only by direct transmission and through socialization, thus establishing a clear demarcation between
those who belong to the community and those who do not (Giddens uses the term “adepts”).

Traditional systems of action are not completely incompatible with change and innovation: in fact,
traditions and popular cultures have changed, and not disappeared, with the modernization process.
Tradition “outwits the movement” (Balandier 1988): it preserves its continuity — that is its
justification (the way things have always gone) — by means of the repetition, that in turn could end
up to show up its ‘real’ nature, cultural rather than natural, and determine their final placing in
question.

To summarise the difference between a traditional mode of orientation and a post-traditional one we
may say that in the first one:

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 1) there is no separation between society and nature, or it is not relevant: knowledge, beliefs
and norms are all part of the natural order;

2) there is no separation between transcendence and immanence: knowledges, beliefs and

norms may plausibly have a transcendent foundation;

In post-traditional societies, «appeals to traditional symbols or practices can themselves be

reflexively organised and are then part of the internally referential set of social relations rather than
standing opposed to it» (Giddens, 1991, p. 150). In fact, in post-traditional societies:

1) the separation between society (internally referentiated) and nature (as ‘environment’) is
considered ‘natural’: knowledges, beliefs and norms are all part of the social order, and
therefore objects of reflexivity;

2) there is a neat separation between transcendence and immanence: knowledges, beliefs and
norms cannot have a transcendent foundation, but a rationalised one (and this is a very
critical point, that will not be discussed here).

Consequently/therefore, it is my opinion that traditions should be studied as ‘social constructions’ or

‘reflexive objects’ rather than ‘relics’. That is to say, that

Since it is well known that “memory” is a selective process, it could be thus interesting to analyse –
from the outlined perspective and in order to interpret the processes of identity construction – some
of the elements that underlie this selection (see also iii).

3.2. Identity and the symbolic dimension

The identitarian valence of traditions derives — in general terms — from their being embedded in a
community and a territory: members are able to recognize each other, distinguishing themselves
from “strangers”, because they are familiar with the traditions, habits and idioms of a place. This
connection between a place and its culture is what makes a territory and its history identifiable from
its typical artistic and architectural forms, from its crops and foods, even from the smells of its wild
vegetation.

This héritage can turn into added value, e.g. in recent years with the introduction and commercial

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exploitation of foods earmarked by locality (DOP, DOCG, etc.)6, or with the so-called “economy of
the experience” grounded on the mise en espace of products and services, thus on the construction
and marketing of a peculiar consumer experience (Pine and Gilmore 1999). It is their contextual
character, that makes local products non-fungible, restoring the opacity and the non-calculability of
their traditional (asserted) origins, and making them absolute aesthetic value: what makes each
experience a unique, priceless one7.

In this perspective, local products can be, concurrently, territorial trademarks and vehicles of
community recomposition (Salvatore 2008), promoting both sustainable development and the
reinvention and redefinition of local identities and belongings. This was also the destiny of many
‘invented’ traditions, that contributed to elaborate or re-elaborate national identities, and that have
constituted the ethical grounds of nation-states. These processes produce a renewed liveliness of
social activities, and enhance development by creating meanings, the reorganization of the social
fabric around shared symbols, including values and norms.

To contribute to social and economic development — defined as rational control over production,
promotion, distribution and consumption — these symbols must be operative, that is to say that a
local community and/or a group should recognize them as ‘true’ symbols of their own identity, or, at
least, of a sort of organisational mission.

Invented and ‘authentic’ at the same time, like all cultural phenomena, in order to make the
‘uniqueness’ of a local product, these symbols must be effective as tools of social practices within
the local community, and, besides, be appreciated also for the ‘strangers’. That is to say that, since
identity has an inner and outer face, typicity must be authentic (embedded), and, at the same time,
identifiable and understandable even by non-adepts.

Tradition insists on playing with change and (post-) modernity, hiding its artificial — if not artful —
origins, and representing itself as “authentically authentic”.

6 An example of the global-local conflict leading to a new form of local recomposition. In fact, the idea of local food
or local product has emerged as a reaction/counteraction to the trends of economic concentration in the fields of
agriculture and food production.
7 As already observed by Simmel. Also in the luxury market, authenticity, aesthetic value, and the rarity of products
and experiences play a fundamental role (Bourdieu 1983).

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