What is tradition?

For sociologists, tradition has generally been seen as a barrier to social change; traditions are what “progressive” social movements are against. Traditions have tended to be viewed as habitual forms of behavior, legacies of the past that impede innovation and hold back progress. In social theory, as well as in progressive political ideologies, traditions have been characterized as conservative, even reactionary, ways of life that the forces of modernity have set out to transcend. The so-called project of modernity and its corresponding forms of rationality have thus often been portrayed as a battle against the past, a future-oriented struggle to free society from the constraints of cultural tradition.

As Anthony Giddens has recently argued, tradition is characterized by a “formulaic notion of truth” connected to magical rituals. Knowledge is not derived from experience or experimental observation, but from belief and magic.