Lecture
Tradition (from Lat. trāditiō, «a handing down», custom) — a system of norms that has taken shape anonymously, as a result of accumulated experience, the most generalised and stable rules, notions, rules and models by which a fairly broad and stable group of people in a given society guides its behaviour, tested by time and existing over a long period.
Traditions are passed down from generation to generation and serve as one of the regulators of social relations.
Tradition is elements of culture that are passed down from generation to generation and preserved over a long period of time. Traditions, to one degree or another and in one form or another, are present in any society and in practically every sphere of culture. A tradition can be embodied in particular institutions, norms of behaviour, values, ideas, customs, rites, etc. The concepts of style and tradition are sometimes used with regard to formally (outwardly) similar phenomena.
The concept of «tradition» goes back to the Latin trāditiō, from the verb trādō, meaning «to hand over, to pass on». Originally the word was used in its literal sense, denoting a material act: thus the ancient Romans applied it when speaking of the need to hand someone a certain object, or even to give one's daughter in marriage. But the thing handed down need not be material. It could, for example, be a particular skill or ability: such an act, in a figurative sense, is likewise traditio. Thus the boundaries of the semantic range of the concept of tradition point firmly to the main qualitative distinction of everything that can be subsumed under this concept: tradition is, above all, that which is not created by the individual and is not the product of his own creative imagination — in short, that which does not belong to him, having been handed down to him from outside, a custom.
This basic distinction often recedes into the background of consciousness, giving way to another, also significant but derivative, one. For the ordinary consciousness of the modern age, the word «tradition» is associated above all with what belongs to the past, has lost its novelty and, for that reason, stands opposed to development and renewal — something that is by its very nature unchanging, symbolises stability to the point of stagnation, and relieves one of the need to reflect on a situation and make a decision.
According to Anthony Giddens and others, the modern meaning of tradition developed in the Age of Enlightenment, in opposition to modernity and progress . Tradition may also refer to ancient beliefs or customs of lost or mysterious origin, existing since time immemorial . Originally traditions were passed down orally, without any need for written preservation. The process of memorisation was aided by poetic devices such as rhyme and alliteration. Stories preserved in this way are also referred to as tradition or as part of an oral tradition. However, it is supposed that even such traditions arose (were «invented» by people) at some point in time . Traditions are often considered ancient, unchanging and very important, although sometimes they may be far less «natural» than is supposed . It is assumed that in order to regard some practice as traditional, its transmission across no fewer than two generations is necessary . Some traditions were specially invented for one reason or another, often in order to emphasise or reinforce the importance of a particular institution . Traditions may also be adapted to the needs of the present day, and changes can become part of an ancient tradition [10]. Tradition changes slowly, with changes from one generation to the next, and may be regarded as substantial[11]. Thus, those who adhere to traditions will not consciously be aware of the changes, and even if a tradition undergoes serious changes over the course of many generations, it will still be regarded as unchanging[11].
The notion of tradition in the sense of respect for the past also has its place in political and philosophical discourse. For example, the political concept of traditionalism is based on it, since it in turn rests on various world religions, including traditional Catholicism.. In an artistic context, traditions are used to define the correct representation of a form of art. For example, in the performance of traditional genres (such as traditional dance), adherence to the traditional principles of creating this art form is more important than the performer's own preferences. A number of factors, such as industrialisation, globalisation, and the assimilation or marginalisation of particular cultural groups, can lead to the loss of traditions. In response, many countries around the world today try to preserve traditions, and people pay particular attention to such aspects as traditional languages. Traditions are usually contrasted with the goals of modernity, and should be distinguished from conventions, laws, norms, procedures, rules and similar concepts.
There are various sources and areas of tradition; they may relate to:
Many objects, beliefs and customs can be traditional. Rituals of social interaction can be traditional, with phrases and gestures such as saying «thank you», sending birth announcements, greeting cards, and so on. Tradition can also refer to broader concepts practiced by groups (family Christmas traditions ), organizations (a company picnic), or societies, such as the practice of national and state holidays. Some of the oldest traditions include monotheism (three millennia) and citizenship (two millennia). It can also include material objects such as buildings, works of art, or instruments.
Tradition is often used as an adjective in contexts such as traditional music, traditional medicine, traditional values, and others. In such constructions, tradition refers to certain values and materials pertaining to the context under discussion, passed down from generation to generation.
The Panhellenic Games were a tradition in Ancient Greece, where only Greek men from Greece and the Greek colonies could compete. The term «invention of tradition», introduced by E. J. Hobsbawm, refers to situations in which a new practice or object is introduced in a way that implies a connection with the past that is not necessarily present. [20] A tradition can be created and spread deliberately in personal, commercial, political, or national interests, as was done in colonial Africa; or it can be adopted rapidly on the basis of a single widely publicized event, rather than developing and spreading organically among the population, as was the case with the white wedding dress, which became popular only after Queen Victoria wore a white dress at her wedding to Albert of Saxe-Coburg.
An example of the invention of tradition is the rebuilding of the Palace of Westminster (the seat of the British Parliament) in the Gothic style. Similarly, most of the traditions associated with the monarchy of the United Kingdom, which are considered to reach deep into history, in fact date back to the 19th century. Among other examples is the invention of traditions in Africa and other colonial possessions by occupying powers. Seeking legitimacy, the colonial authorities often invented a «tradition» that could be used to legitimize their position. For example, a particular line of chiefly succession might be recognized by the colonial power as traditional in order to favor its own candidates for the position. Often these inventions were based on some form of tradition or another, but were exaggerated, distorted, or slanted toward a particular interpretation.
Invented traditions are a central component of modern national cultures, providing a shared experience and promoting a unified national identity sustained by nationalism. Common examples include state holidays (especially those specific to a particular nation), the singing of national anthems, and traditional national cuisine (see National dish). Communities of expatriates and immigrants may continue to observe the national traditions of their home country.
Up until the modern era, the Latin concept of «tradition» (trāditiō) was associated only with what pertained to the past of a culture, had lost its novelty, and symbolized a certain stagnation[12]. The understanding of tradition within European culture, marked from the modern era onward by this shift, is on the whole based on a historical approach. The dynamic character of this understanding, which allows one to perceive and assess the role and significance of tradition in light of ongoing social changes, is nevertheless also manifested in the emergence of a general tendency toward inflation of the concept. If the original meaning of the concept of «tradition» included an aspect of special respect for what is handed down as a gift, and, accordingly, for the very process of transmission, this aspect was later gradually lost in secular culture. Already in late antiquity, the development of the concept of tradition into a central category of Christian theology led, on the one hand, to its normative expansion, and, on the other hand — to the emergence of conceptual difficulties connected with the constitution of the opposition between tradition and ratio.
Subsequently, the formation of a secular worldview and the accompanying growth in the authority of the individual critical mind stimulated a deepening of this confrontation. The critical attitude toward tradition as such, and above all toward the church as its supporting social institution, reached its apogee in the Age of Enlightenment; the concept of «tradition» was then a synonym for the word «backwardness»[12]. It was at this time that a properly historical understanding of tradition as a phenomenon bounded by time and subject to change actually took shape.
In the Age of Enlightenment, the concept of tradition stood at the center of debates connected with the problem of the socio-political emancipation of the third estate. Since the latter was understood and regarded as the liberation of man in general, as the emancipation of the individual mind and the overcoming of the coercive force of tradition, the concept of tradition became an element of socio-anthropological discourse. Interpretations of it were highly varied, ranging from a demand for critical reconsideration of the bounds of recognition of tradition to the complete rejection of all traditionality as the main obstacle on the path of the individual to his authentic self. As traditionalist authors later held, in particular J. de Maistre, it was precisely the fierce rejection of tradition by the thinkers of the Enlightenment that served as the ideological justification for the French Revolution.
The reaction to the wholesale rejection of tradition by the Enlightenment was an enthusiastically apologetic attitude toward it on the part of conservative Romanticism. Thus, by the beginning of the 19th century, an ambivalent attitude toward tradition had taken shape in European culture, one that included both an understanding of its universal historical role, reflected in the assessment of J. G. Herder, who regarded tradition as the chief driving force of history, and, at the same time, called it a «spiritual opium» that lulls individual initiative and critical thinking to sleep. However, in the course of the further development of the mentality of modernity, the attitude toward tradition as a whole steadily became more and more negative, a trend aggravated by the successes of scientific knowledge and by technical and technological achievements oriented toward innovation as the opposite of tradition.
This can be traced in the philosophical systems and macrosociological theories of the first half of the 19th century (G. W. F. Hegel, A. Comte, K. Marx). Whereas in Hegel tradition occupies an important place in the process of the world-historical objectification of spirit, in Marx's conception it is interpreted as an expression of class and group interests, as a component of ideology, and, through the prism of the total critique of religion and the church — as an instrument for manipulating mass consciousness. Negative connotations of the concept of tradition are also apparent in Nietzsche, for whom the latter is the quintessence of philistine inertia, hindering the emergence of the overman and subject to negation.
The «fundamental politicization» of social life, in K. Mannheim's phrase, which constitutes the main characteristic of the first half of the 20th century, manifested itself, in particular, in the fact that almost all of the numerous political currents and mass movements that arose in this period, while basing themselves on a critical rejection of existing social traditions, nevertheless displayed a striving to devise and perpetuate new traditions of their own. E. Hobsbawm pointed to this trait common to them all, seeing in this striving a need to provide a historical grounding for their views. This fact in itself, however, only irrefutably testifies to the attributive character of tradition for social reality. The elaboration of this idea in contemporary socio-philosophical discourse has entailed the constitution of a number of distinct conceptual approaches to understanding the essence and social significance of tradition.
The term «Tradition» (often capitalized) is central to integral traditionalism.
In it, the concept of tradition refers exclusively to a chain of esoteric knowledge and practices possessing the ontological status of a channel of ascent, and to a body of forms of culture and social organization based on sacred experience[13].
«Tradition has nothing in common with local color, or with folk customs, or with the quaint doings of local inhabitants that folklore students collect. This notion is bound up with origins: tradition — is the transmission of a complex of deeply rooted ways of facilitating our understanding of the essential principles of the universal (cosmic) order, since without outside help man is not given to understand the meaning of his own existence», — wrote the leader of the new right Alain de Benoist[14].
Conceptual approaches to understanding the essence and social significance of tradition can be grouped according to their general orientation. The group of approaches that can conventionally be designated as modernism and progressivism includes conceptions of tradition as the negatively marked «dialectical pair» of innovation. In the paradigm of progressivism, tradition — is that which ultimately retreats under the pressure of the new; it is doomed and historically relative. This understanding can be seen in many quite different authors. In the opinion, for example, of Hannah Arendt, traditionality as a characteristic of society exhausts itself completely in the age of modernity, since the logic of industrial development requires the replacement of tradition as a social point of reference by an orientation toward universal human rationality. This idea was most clearly formulated by Max Weber, who was the first to contrast, on a conceptual level, the traditional and rational modes of social organization. Tradition and rationality in the universe of progressivism constitute two poles, between which there exists a tension that determines the direction of social dynamics.
Traditional society is understood as a type of social organization radically different from modern society, characterized by slowness of change, if not their complete absence. Its second feature consists in the fact that it makes entirely different demands on its members, the main one of these — that they must fully subordinate personal intellectual and social initiative to the authority of tradition.
From this follows the recognition of a close connection between tradition and stereotype. Indeed, if one limits the consideration to the behavioral perspective, it is obvious that following tradition presupposes the stereotyping of social and individual behavior, the rigid domination of stereotype over individual will, personal traits and aspirations. Social stereotype constitutes the mechanism for the realization of tradition. The well-known Russian scholar E. S. Markaryan draws attention to this, defining tradition as follows: «Cultural tradition — is group experience expressed in socially organized stereotypes, which, through spatio-temporal transmission, is accumulated and reproduced in various human collectives»[15].
The main problem connected with tradition, in this case, becomes the problem of the relationship between stereotyped experience and emerging innovations, as well as the problem of the nature of the innovations themselves. According to E. S. Markaryan, «the dynamics of cultural tradition — is a constant process of overcoming certain kinds of socially organized stereotypes and forming new ones», and innovations arise in the process of the organic recombination of elements of tradition. In this understanding, as S. P. Ivanenkov notes[16], the qualitative difference between the traditional and the innovative moments of sociality is leveled out. For a deeper penetration into the problem, he believes, it is necessary «to find a categorial basis for a definition in which tradition would be posited as the other of innovation, and vice versa». Such a basis, in his opinion, can only be the relation of the two realities — the traditional and the innovative — to time as an attributive parameter of social being.
At present, the preservation of traditions in folk art is acquiring ever greater relevance. Professional education in the field of traditional decorative and applied art has been conducted at the Moscow School of Artistic Crafts since 1928. A broad study of this subject is being carried out by the International Apollo — Soyuz Foundation, USA.
Customs and traditions have common features[17]. Both contain elements of social and cultural heritage, possess traits of stability, and rely on the support of public opinion and on psychological factors, in particular on a person's sense of connection with the people around them and the desire to follow a widespread example[18]. At the same time, traditions, compared to customs, are broader formations and are less connected with people's feelings and emotions[19]. These social regulators also differ in that customs take shape over the course of several generations, while traditions — over a shorter time[20]. Among the newly forming traditions one can name sponsorship, that is, the financing and support of some event by wealthy individuals or organizations.
In science, tradition is often used in the literature to define the relation of an author's thought to the thought in his or her field. [24] In 1948, the philosopher of science Karl Popper proposed applying to science a «rational theory of tradition», which is fundamentally sociological in nature. According to Popper, every scientist who takes up a particular line of research inherits the traditions of the scholars who preceded them, since he or she inherits their research and any conclusions that superseded it. [24] Unlike myth, which is a means of explaining the natural world by means other than logical criticism, the scientific tradition is inherited from Socrates, who proposed critical discussion, according to Popper. [25] For Thomas Kuhn, who set out his thoughts in a paper presented in 1977, it has historically been the sense of such critical inheritance of traditions that distinguishes the best scientists who change their fields - it is the acceptance of traditions. [25]
Traditions are the subject of study in several academic fields of the social sciences - primarily anthropology, archaeology, and biology - with somewhat different meanings in different fields. It is also used in various contexts in other fields, such as history, psychology, and sociology. Sociologists and other specialists have worked to refine the common-sense concept of tradition in order to turn it into a useful concept for scholarly analysis. In the 1970s and 1980s, Edward Shils examined this concept in detail. [18] Since then, a wide range of sociologists have criticized traditional notions of tradition; meanwhile, «tradition» has come to be used in biology with reference to non-human animals.
Tradition as a concept, defined differently in different disciplines, should not be confused with the various traditions (viewpoints, approaches) within those disciplines. [26]
Tradition is one of the key concepts of anthropology; one could say that anthropology is the study of «tradition in traditional societies». However, there is no «theory of tradition», since for most anthropologists the need to discuss what tradition is seems both unnecessary (everyone can be expected to know what it is) and unimportant (minor differences of definition would be merely technical). However, differing opinions do exist; scholars such as Pascal Boyer argue that defining tradition and developing theories about it are important for the discipline.
In archaeology, the term « tradition» refers to a body of cultures or industries that appear to develop out of one another over a given period of time. This term is especially common in the study of American archaeology. [18]
Biologists, studying groups of non-human beings, have observed recurring behavior that is taught within communities from one generation to another. Tradition is defined in biology as «a behavioral practice that is relatively enduring (i.e., performed repeatedly over a period of time), that is shared among two or more members of a group, and that depends in part on socially supported learning for its transmission to new practitioners», and has been called a forerunner of «culture» in the anthropological sense. [27]
Behavioral traditions have been observed in groups of fish, birds, and mammals. In particular, groups of orangutans and chimpanzees can display a large number of behavioral traditions, and among chimpanzees the transmission of traditional behavior from one group to another (and not only within a group) has been observed. Such behavioral traditions may have evolutionary significance, allowing adaptation to occur more quickly than genetic change. [28]
In the field of musicology and ethnomusicology, tradition refers to systems of belief, repertoire, techniques, style, and culture that are passed down from generation to generation. Tradition in music implies a historical context within which distinguishable patterns can be perceived. Along with a sense of history, traditions possess fluidity, which causes them to develop and adapt over time. Although both musicology and ethnomusicology are defined as the «scholarly study of music» [29], they differ in their methodology and subject of study. «Tradition or traditions can be presented as the context for studying the creative work of a particular composer or as part of a broad historical perspective». [30]
The concept of tradition in early sociological research (at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries) referred to the concept of traditional society as opposed to more modern industrial society. [12] This approach was most clearly manifested in Max Weber's conceptions of traditional authority and modern rational-legal authority. [12] In more recent works, «a hundred years later», sociology treats tradition as a social construct used to contrast the past and the present, and as a form of rationality used to justify a particular course of action. [12]
Traditional society is characterized by the absence of a distinction between family and business, a division of labor determined primarily by age, sex, and status, the high standing of custom in the value system, self-sufficiency, a preference for saving and the accumulation of capital rather than productive investment, and relative autarky. [12] Early theories positing a simple unilinear evolution of societies from a traditional to an industrial model are now regarded as overly simplistic. [12]
In 1981, Edward Shils, in his book « Tradition», proposed a definition of tradition that has become widely accepted. [12] According to Shils, tradition is anything that is handed down or transmitted from the past to the present. [12]
Another important sociological aspect of tradition relates to rationality. This too is connected with the work of Max Weber (see Theories of rationality) and was popularized and redefined in 1992 by Raymond Boudon in his book « Action» . [12] In this context, tradition refers to a way of thinking and acting justified by the fact that «it has always been so». [12] This line of reasoning forms the basis of the logical fallacy of appeal to tradition (or argumentum ad antiquitatem), [31] which takes the form of «this is right because we have always done it this way». [32] In most cases, such an appeal can be refuted on the grounds that the promoted «tradition» may no longer be desirable, or, indeed, may never have been, despite its former popularity.
The idea of tradition is important in philosophy. Twentieth-century philosophy is often divided into the «analytic» tradition, dominant in the English-speaking and Scandinavian countries, and the «continental» tradition, dominant in German-speaking and Romance-speaking Europe. An increasingly central place in continental philosophy is occupied by the project of deconstructing what its proponents, following Martin Heidegger, call «the tradition», beginning with Plato and Aristotle. By contrast, some continental philosophers, most notably Hans-Georg Gadamer, have attempted to rehabilitate the tradition of Aristotelianism. This move was reproduced within analytic philosophy by Alasdair MacIntyre. However, MacIntyre himself deconstructed the idea of «tradition», instead presenting Aristotelianism as one philosophical tradition in rivalry with others.
The concepts of tradition and traditional values are often used in political and religious discourse to establish the legitimacy of a particular set of values. In the United States, in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the concept of tradition has been used as an argument for the central role and legitimacy of conservative religious values. [33] Similarly, representatives of orthodox theological thought in a number of world religions openly identify themselves as desiring a return to tradition. For example, the term «traditionalist Catholic» refers to people such as Archbishop Lefebvre, who want the church's worship and rites to remain as they were before the Second Vatican Council of 1962–65. [34]Similarly, Sunni Muslims are called Ahl al-Sunnah wa'l-Jama'ah (Arabic: أهل السنة والجماعة), literally «the people of the tradition [of Muhammad] and the community», emphasizing their commitment to religious and cultural traditions. .
More broadly, tradition has been used as a way of defining the political spectrum, with right-wing parties being closer to the past than left-wing ones. [35] Here the concept of adherence to tradition is embodied in the political philosophy of traditionalist conservatism (or simply traditionalism), which emphasizes the need for principles of natural law and a transcendent moral order, hierarchy and organic unity, agrarianism, classicism and high culture, and intersecting spheres of loyalty. [36]Thus traditionalists reject the notions of individualism, liberalism, modernity and social progress, but promote cultural and educational renewal [37] and revive interest in the church, the family, the state, and the local community. This view has been criticized for including within the concept of tradition practices that are no longer considered desirable, such as stereotypical views of women's place in domestic affairs. [38]
In other societies, especially those undergoing rapid social change, the idea of the «traditional» can be widely contested, as different groups seek to establish their own values as legitimately traditional. The definition and adoption of traditions can, in some cases, serve as a means of building unity between subgroups within a heterogeneous society; in other cases, tradition is a means of separating and keeping groups apart from one another. [33]
In the artistic context, when performing traditional genres (such as traditional dance), adherence to traditional principles matters more than the preferences of the performer. The often unchanging form of certain arts leads to their being perceived as traditional. In artistic endeavors, tradition has been used as a contrast to creativity, with traditional and folk art associated with unoriginal imitation or repetition, as opposed to fine art, which is valued for originality and uniqueness. However, more recent philosophy of art regards engagement with tradition as an integral part of the development of new artistic expression
Customs and traditions – specific elements of moral practice. Moral practice is the activity of people, their conduct. It is a constituent part of all types of social relations (social, political, and so on). Moral practice consists of moral acts (an action or the absence of an action) and a totality of acts (a line of conduct).
By the end of the 19th century, naturalism had fully exhausted its positive content and was superseded by Marxist ethics. Having been superseded, naturalism in ethics did not, however, cease to exist altogether. It persists in contemporary bourgeois ethics, but on the whole as a degrading branch of knowledge.
Proponents of contemporary naturalism (in particular, one of its main varieties — evolutionary ethics) trace their lineage back to the middle of the 19th century. They believe that the very origin of the naturalistic tradition in ethics is connected with the discoveries of C. Darwin and the works of H. Spencer. Such a claim cannot be considered entirely accurate, for naturalism as a definite ethical principle has a history of more than two thousand years. Aristotle himself derived his teaching on the virtues from the «nature» and «purpose» of man. And as G. V. Plekhanov justly observed, «in general, up until the eighteen-forties, there was hardly a single writer concerned with social questions who did not appeal, in one way or another, to human nature». However, beginning in the second half of the 19th century, naturalism ceased to be a form of ethical conventions, a general principle opposed to supernatural speculations' in ethics, and it became directly bound up with the data of the biological sciences. Now «human nature» is understood as man's biological nature; concrete scientific data describing the world of individuals' natural drives, the biologically determined character of their behavior, is granted the dignity of a substantial basis of human existence; regularities characterizing the behavior and evolution of animals are directly transferred onto the human world, and ethics turns out to be a simple continuation of zoology, physiology, ethology, and other sciences of that kind. This kind of naturalism, which ceases to be a mere form of ethical science and instead means the transfer into it of the methods and conclusions of biology, does indeed appear for the first time in the 19th century.
But it is precisely owing to this change in the interpretation of human nature that ethical naturalism largely loses its philosophically positive significance and reveals those negative traits that, in a less overt form, were also characteristic of pre-Marxist ethical naturalism.
Proceeding from the fact that, for every human individual, other people are merely external conditions, an environment, naturalism inevitably leads to a militant ethical individualism. The necessity of the coexistence of individuals requires, of course, some moderation of the passions and regulation of behavior, but even so the innermost designs, the ultimate moral aspirations, turn out to be focused on the self. From naturalism, if one is to be at all consistent, it is impossible to derive a social morality, the necessity of moral goodness and self-sacrifice. It is no accident that H. Spencer called himself «the chief defender of the idea of individualism».
It is not only the individualistic tendency that turns naturalistic ethics into a phenomenon of contemporary bourgeois ideology. Naturalistically oriented ethics, as a rule, paints an image of man possessing a rigidly fixed and finished essence. Thereby the possibilities for the development of the personality turn out to be fundamentally limited. It turns out to be deprived of a future. The biopsychic bases of its ignorance and needs are, in essence, identified with the biopsychic mechanisms and needs of animals. But how, then, is one to explain the vigorous progress of society, the constant and growing expansion of humanity's technical, social, and cognitive capacities? An answer to these questions can be given only by the Marxist teaching on man. From the standpoint of this teaching, man is situated in an endless process of becoming, and his essence coincides with a historically changing totality of social relations. Without the assumption that needs have a social nature and that they are capable of growth, it is impossible to understand the specificity of human existence.
The naturalistic grounding of morality is, to a certain extent, also evidence of the methodological collapse of contemporary bourgeois ethics. This ethics began its path in the 20th century with a critique of the so-called «naturalistic fallacy»; in its further development it was inspired by ideas of the impossibility of a scientific grounding of normative conclusions, which it consciously counterposed to the naturalistic tradition. And if today in the West something like a new revival of naturalistic theories of morality is occurring, then objectively this means that bourgeois ethics has acknowledged the fruitlessness of its basic ideological premises: formalism and irrationalism.
Appeal to tradition (Lat. argūmentum ad antīquitātem — «appeal to prevalence») — a common type of fallacious logical argumentation, the essence of which is that something is taken to be true (or best) on account of its being traditional.
In the social sciences, tradition is often contrasted with modernity, especially from the point of view of entire societies. This dichotomy is usually associated with a linear model of social change, in which societies progress from the traditional to the modern. Traditionally oriented societies have been characterized as valuing filial piety, harmony and group well-being, stability and interdependence, whereas a society displaying modernity would value «individualism (with freedom of will and choice), mobility and progress». Another author discussing tradition in relation to modernity, Anthony Giddens, holds that tradition is something connected with ritual, where ritual guarantees the continuation of tradition. Gusfield and others, nevertheless, criticize this dichotomy as overly simplistic, arguing that tradition is dynamic, heterogeneous, and successfully coexists with modernity even within individual people.
Traditions should be distinguished from customs, conventions, laws, norms, routines, rules and similar concepts. While traditions are supposed to be unchanging, they are considered more flexible and susceptible to innovation and change. Whereas the justification of tradition is ideological, the justification of other similar concepts is more practical or technical. Over time customs, routines, conventions, rules, etc. can develop into traditions, but this usually requires that they cease to have (primarily) a practical purpose. For example, the wigs worn by lawyers were at first commonplace and fashionable; spurs worn by military officials were at first practical, but now they are both impractical and traditional.
1. Traditions are:
a) rules of conduct that are established and protected by the state.
b) rules of conduct that are established by public organizations themselves and protected by means of social measures provided for in the charters of these organizations.
c) spiritual and moral rules of human coexistence, based on people's conception of God as the creator of the universe.
d) the most generalized and stable rules of behaviour of people in a given society, tested by time and existing for a long period.
1. Which plant, according to folk legend, blooms only one night a year?
2. What colour dominates in Mezen painting?
3. Which place in the Russian izba was intended only for women?
4. What is the main equipment for playing spillikins?
5. What traditional Russian drink did foreigners nickname «Russian mulled wine»?
6. Let us speak of the legends of the shoemakers' craft of Vladimir Oblast. What, according to local superstitions, can happen to a girl if she meets a shoemaker?
7. What was the name of the rite performed during Trinity week in some regions of our country, when unmarried girls divined who would be first to marry?
8. A bathhouse besom made from which kind of tree or shrub drives out evil spirits?
9. What object was called a shirinka in Rus?
10. Which famous shawl warmed the shoulders of Lyudmila Zykina while she performed the song of the same name?
1. What else is the evening before Christmas called?
2. What dishes are usually prepared on Christmas Eve?
3 What is a didukh?
4. Which of the Christmas dishes was endowed with such symbolic meaning: symbol of the Sun, light, the Word of God?
5. On the first day of Christmas many delicious meat dishes were prepared. Among them «studen». What is this?
6. On Christmas Eve borscht «with ears» is usually prepared. What are these ears?
7. If you are offered Christmas bacon, what will you get?
8. In «Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors» the Christmas supper prepared by Palahna is described in fair detail. There are stuffed cabbage rolls, beans, and «lohaza». Incidentally, what is this dish?
9. How does the word «bogracs» translate from Hungarian? This dish is also traditionally prepared for Christmas in some places in western Ukraine.
10. What is «kerechun»?
11. Why do people leave a little Christmas bread after the winter holidays?
12. Koliada, koliadok, koliadnytsia .... And what comes next?
Military traditions
Origin myth
Folklore
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