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What is Tradition? Nelson H. H. Graburn n her opening essay to the wonderful catalog of This takes us back to the origin of the concept of the exhibition Memory and Imagination: The tradition in the European world, but I want to make Legacy of Maidu Indian Artist Frank Day, it clear that we can probably draw parallels in most I of the rest of the world: a consciousness of tradition Rebecca Dobkins (1997:1) asks the almost impossi- ble question "What are the meanings of'tradition'?" arose primarily only in those historical situations What a question! She might as well have asked where people were aware of change. Tradition was "What is life?" And at the Memory and Imagination the name given to those cultural features which, in in Twentieth-Century Native American Art Sympo- situations of change, were to be continued to be sium on April 19, 1997, Frank LaPena and I were handed on, thought about, preserved and not lost. supposed to answer this question in our thirty min- Although it is somewhat of an exaggeration, the an- ute presentations.1 thropologist Claude Levi-Strauss (1966:233-34) has divided up societies into two types: those that Just as life has death as its opposite, so tradi- believe that every generation recreates the past and tion is often said to be opposite to innovation. But that time is a series of cycles, which he calls "cold" just as within Christianity and other religions there societies, and those that are conscious of change and is life in or after death, so there is a "tradition of in- of the irreversible direction of history, which he la- novation," as in contemporary Western art tradi- bels "hot" societies. In a lecture given at Berkeley in tions, or there may equally be the "innovation of 1984, he tried to trace the emergence of one kind tradition," as in the commonly referred to "inven- from the other by reference to ninth-to-eleventh tion of tradition." The latter topic has been the sub- century Japanese Heian court society. During that ject of a growing body of literature in the last two period the usual marriage rule requiring the mar- decades, following the publication of Hobsbawm riage of men to their cross-cousins (mother's and Ranger's book by that title (1984). brother's daughters or father's sister's daughters) In my discussion of tradition, I am indebted to broke down when people began to break the rules the work of Alice Horner, whose Ph.D. dissertation and marry strategically for status and personal in anthropology, "The Assumption of Tradition," is gain. He was able to show how the former kind of so- perhaps the best thing ever written on the topic (see ciety, found traditionally in much of the world, is Horner 1990). Horner reminds us that tradition re- one that reproduces the social structures every gen- fers both to theprocess of handing down from gener- eration (so that men fell into the same positions as ation to generation, and some thing, custom, or their fathers and grandfathers, and women, their thought process that is passed on over time. Thus mothers and grandmothers). Whereas in the latter we can say, for instance, that a multi-generational kind, every generation is different and, according to dance is an item of custom, a performance, and at the literature of that age, more exciting, so that new the same time, such a dance is an occasion for the family relationships and kinship structures were passing of the technique and the feeling of the per- formed every time. This kind of excitement and pe- formance from older to younger generations. Until riod of intrigue he called "The Birth of Historical So- recently, this handing on was a natural, cieties." unself-conscious part of the dance. Until the conti- nuity was threatened, until the possibility of the in- Originally the concept of tradition, literally ability to hand things down arose, people were not from the Latin meaning "something handed over," so self-conscious of the process of the handing on of in slowly changing societies was almost equivalent tradition. to inheritance. Tradition was both the means of Museum Anthropology 24(2/3):6-11. Copyright ©2001 American Anthropological Association. making a living and the symbols, stories, and mem- teenth century when science and evolution made it ories which gave one both identity and status. So we appear that the Christian religion, the core tradi- can say that even in situations where society stayed tion of the Western world, was perhaps itself an un- almost the same from generation to generation, necessary feudal tradition, an impediment to "tradition," or whatever people of that society might reform or to the progress of science and society. This have called it in their own language, was something was ironic because it was Christianity that had sup- pretty central or important. In situations of percep- plied most of the key social values which the social tible change, in Levi-Strauss's "hot" societies, the sciences were trying to "scientifically" bring about: concept of tradition has taken on even more impor- egalitarianism, democracy, protection of the vul- tant, perhaps more ominous, meanings. In the Eu- nerable, universal justice. At the same time as ropean Enlightenment of the eighteenth century, Christianity was an expanding proselytizing reli- when science and rationalism came to the fore, the gion, it was also the main bulwark against the ram- rulers began to think that society could be logically pages of capitalist expansion, against slavery, and rearranged for the calculated benefit of the majority against the cruelties of forced labor, pillage and or for everyone, leading to notions such as the social rape.2 Christianity may have thought itself pro- sciences, socialism, and the welfare state, so that gressive, but it was also a "pre-modern tradition" guided change was the norm. that was very much threatened by scientific ratio- The planners and rulers of that age often nalism, while it in turn threatened the ways of life, thought that tradition, i.e., that which was handed and particularly the religious beliefs and associated down unchanged, unthought out, unchallenged arts, of many smaller groups of people around the from generation to generation, was perhaps a hin- world. drance to the perfection of society. One began to Another series of doubts or crises brought about hear about the weight of tradition or people bound further changes in the status of tradition and tradi- by tradition, as though it should be thrown aside or tional societies. Anthropologists, some missionar- destroyed. In fact, tradition became synonymous ies, and other renegades, people often called with that which was being overtaken by science or "romantics," thought that the maligned customs of modernity. Tradition consisted of things on their many conquered peoples were not only not neces- way out. With the rise of social evolutionary theory sarily immoral, but often artistically and function- in the mid-nineteenth century, this idea was given a ally equal or better than what was being offered by scientific underpinning: in the survival of the fit- the so-called civilized world. We can see some of test, tradition was doomed by progress, thought to these changes of attitudes in the depictions of colo- be an accidental survival of an earlier age, a carrier nized peoples and in the growing appreciation of of backwardness, such as feudalism and supersti- their arts and crafts, which were collected not just tion and, most ominously, aspects or ways of life as booty but for their inherent beauty, craftsman- which, it was hoped, like the major diseases, would ship or mystery. As the pace of change sped up all give way to progress and be destined for extinction. over the world, scientists and others began to look Indeed, European anthropologists and folklorists for and want to preserve the traditional, i.e., threat- commonly studied and collected what they consid- ened ways of life, both because of their status as rep- ered curious customs, games, and beliefs among the resentatives of other, disappearing ways of life, but lesser educated and rural lower classes of their soci- also for their aesthetic and functional values as well eties, believing them to represent the vestiges of as out of curiosity. We can see even in the crude dis- earlier forms of human society. Well into the twenti- plays of dependent peoples and their arts in the eth century, anthropologists and archaeologists world's fairs and museums of the nineteenth cen- studied non-modern, usually non-Western, societ- tury (Benedict 1983) not only prurient curiosity but ies and technologies for clues they could give about plain admiration for their exhibition of forbearance earlier eras and ways of life labeled, for instance, and humanity in the face of oppression, for the qual- Cave Man, Stone Age, hunting and gathering, ity of their personal relationships, and their obvious preliterate, small scale, or natural societies. skills and creativity. In the Western world a series of crises brought As manufactured goods replaced handmade about a change from this negative valuation of tra- traditional utensils and skills were in danger of be- dition. One crisis came in the middle of the nine- ing lost, a few upper middle class Euro-Americans 8 MUSEUM ANTHROPOLOGY VOLUME 24 NUMBER 2/3 encouraged the continuity of tradition, even teach- which has been overtaken by something newer ing themselves about techniques and materials (though not necessarily devalued or threatened such as basketry, making them the recorders and with extinction). carriers of culture. A moral superiority of the hand- So far I have mainly been talking about the made and the personal began to grow (Lee 1991).