Uses of Tradition: Tradition vs. modernity

• Tradition might be to propose solutions to contemporary problems that have resisted analysis in other ways
  
  
• Tradition might be to establish the identity of the members, implicitly against a dominating metanarrative (like a colonizer)
  
  
• Tradition might be meant to establish a sense of continuity with a past that European thought has no access to, and therefore no formative influence over.
  
  
• Tradition might be meant to establish a link to existing communities outside of European influence.
  
  
• Tradition might be meant to justify certain claims (e.g., land claims, use of cultural property).
  
  
• Tradition might be a way of learning about resistance to dominating structures. Many traditions employ "tactics" rather than "strategy" for survival. ". . .by carefully observing the tactics of tradition, valuable lessons can be learned regarding what might be called practical resistance – lessons in how to be oppositional in such a way as to challenge the dominant tendencies of the present without being destroyed by them."
  
  
• Tradition becomes (ironically) useful to capitalism, when it commodifies tradition to make a sale. While capitalism is essentially oriented toward the new, it uses the old for it's resonances.
  
  
• Tradition is re-appropriated as "traditionalism", a reactionary and nostalgic attempt to go back to better days (or at least, the memory, real or otherwise, of better days).
  
  
• Tradition is re-appropriated through the study of history. This is the 19th century German answer – either recapture the content of history (e.g., folklorists), or recapture the form of history (the "whole", the grand narrative). The problem with both is that history's "rational gaze" doesn't seem to get at what people hold as important in tradition.
  
  
• I might add one more failed attempt at recovery – tradition as causal agent. Some hope to find solutions to present-day problems by scouring the rain-forest of tradition. Recovery, then, becomes the search for a set of causes, specifically the causes that will alleviate current social ills, or perhaps the causes of the social ills themselves.