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Title
Learning to consume: What is heritage and when is it traditional?

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https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6jx218bc

ISBN
9780415239417

Author
Graburn, NHH

Publication Date
2013-12-16

Peer reviewed

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What is Tradition?

Nelson H. H. Graburn
This takes us back to the origin of the concept of

I
n her opening essay to the wonderful catalog 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
Rebecca Dobkins (1997:1) asks the almost impossi- of the rest of the world: a consciousness of tradition
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 changefromthis 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). meanings of tradition for the mainstream societies
The so-called disappearing "savages" (meaning which have come to dominate much of he world. But
people beyond the grasp of the law) were looked to as as smaller societies have encountered or been incor-
human exemplars, not by all, but by a significant porated into the larger multi-cultural society, what
few. All over the world, not just in the expansion of some have called the world system (Wallerstein
Western powers, people began to feel what Renato 1974), or systems of material and cultural flows,
Rosaldo (1989) has called "imperialist nostalgia," capitalist or otherwise, almost everyone has come to
the regret over having destroyed something or share the concept of tradition even if it is imbued
someone after the fact. This is not just a Chris- with different local meanings.
tian-based guilt, but a nostalgia for having changed Many native peoples in North America are the
the world in a homogeneous direction, for having object of admiration of some members of the sur-
eliminated ways of life and ingenious time-tested rounding society: they have survived in spite of all
customs that had suited some peoples for eons. This the pressures towards assimilation or extinction in
form of nostalgia is one of many modern forms of the near past, they have come to represent tradi-
nostalgia which most of us come to experience; in tion, they are survivors from other ages par excel-
changing societies, it is often felt over the passing of lence. But as we all know, this force of imperialist
a way of life. Perhaps even in Levi-Strauss's "cold" nostalgia can be dangerous, too: it can be a judg-
societies nostalgia is felt about the passing of a mental force which looks to Native Americans as
stage of life, such as childhood into adulthood, or representatives of a frozen past, some sort of indica-
middle into old age. tor against which to measure the speed of change or
Tradition is usually seen as the opposite to mo- the measure of progress in the ever fickle main-
dernity, yet it is much loved by modernity. Tradi- stream society. This is an attitude which then only
tions are continually being created, not in some past judges native peoples positively if and when they
time immemorial, but during modernity. Even act like the past and don't show that they live in the
these new, historically created phenomena are of- modern world, too. This romantic image is perpetu-
ten quickly assumed to be age-old or timeless, be- ated through the media and even in educational in-
cause people want them to be so and because the stitutions. At the same time it may be purposely
customs become invested with authority that is dif- adhered to by Native Americans who want to
ficult to challenge. Here are some recent examples: commoditize their time-honored traditions, perfor-
Anthropologist Edmund Leach became Provost of mances, and cultural products. Unwittingly, many
Kings College, Cambridge, at a time in the 1970s Native American habits, for instance religious be-
when women were first admitted. When this first havior, just by being handed on relatively un-
happened, Prof. Leach inaugurated a welcoming changed, can become subject to inspection and
ceremony for the young men and women to get used commoditization.
to being in college together. This was a success and The native peoples of North America have al-
was repeated every year. After a few years, the new ways been conscious of their particular identities,
students began to believe that this must be an because all of them (except one 3) were always in so-
age-old, medieval ritual still preserved by Kings cial, trade, or warlike contacts with the people
College! Here in Berkeley, I recently saw an adver- around them. The concept of what was steadfastly
tisement in the Daily Californian about surrogate theirs, the equivalent of the English words tradi-
motherhood, where the clients wanted the "in tion, culture, heritage, must have been very strong.
womb," or "traditional" kind. It makes one wonder Notice, I did not use the more neutral words habits,
how long commercially advertised surrogate moth- doings, and customs, which although accurate do
erhood has been around and what the nontradi- not express the power and importance.that we now
tional kind is! In these examples we see tradition as attach to the words tradition, heritage, and culture.
either valued for its existence over time or, in the And, except for some progress-minded people in the
second case, as a label for a superseded custom, one Western world after the Enlightenment (and simi-
 lar cases around the world) tradition is a strong, local troublemakers who still hated, feared or were
positive concept. jealous of Indians.
Under the attacks suffered at the hands of ex- But as the overwhelming power of science and
panding Spanish, French, British and American the faith in progress came to be questioned, nostal-
peoples, many Native Americans probably did not gia and romanticism softened attitudes. In the
at first know what hit them: was it an unprece- wake of the agricultural and industrial revolutions
dented apocalypse, a spiritual whirlwind, the end of of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, local,
the world, or what? But as soon as contacts became especially rural, traditions became the source of in-
more routinized, as in mutual trading, schooling, spiration and identity in many European nations,
missionization, they came to understand that even especially those such as Finland, Ireland, Hungary
if their lives were saved their lifeways were threat- and the German principalities which had no prior
ened. Whitemen, the qallunaat (the thunder people independent statehood.
or the eyebrow people) as the Inuit called them, Folklore and archaeology, the ultimate collec-
were out to eliminate many of their/our traditions, tors of tradition, became valued professions which
especially those of freedom of movement, language provided ammunition for respect, freedom, and au-
and religious behavior. tonomy, much as anthropology and ethnology have
Even so, ambivalence crept in. Right from the for many other colonized peoples. Having traditions
time of first contacts, the European newcomers and a culture became the sine qua non of nation-
wanted to collect many of the ingenious technologi- hood. If traditions were threatened, scattered or
cal items and beautiful products of the native peo- weak, they might be invented, collected, labeled,
ple. They may even have admired their dances and celebrated and museumized, much as Handler
songs, their fighting and hunting prowess as well as (1988) has shown that the French-Canadians of
their personal decoration, their women and chil- Quebec have been doing in the past few decades.
dren, and sometimes even their physique and skin And it is in roughly the same period that Indian
color. It must have been a puzzling surprise when nations or peoples have felt free to do the same.
some but not all native traditions were encouraged, Though Indian arts and crafts traditions have long
and frightening when it was always the outsider gathered admiration and have been encouraged
who seemed to decide which traditions native peo- both for collection, study and commoditization, this
ple could keep and which were punishable. by no means permitted full cultural freedom. For in-
Homer (1990) has pointed out that in Africa it stance, it has only recently been recognized or at
was the British who respected native tradition least granted that place names and relationship to
more than, say, the French or the German coloniz- the land are crucial bearers, and parts, of tradition.
ers. Unlike the post-revolutionary French and the Even still, most native people don't have full free-
new nation of Germany, the British cherished very dom to inhabit or name their own parts of the earth,
much their own historical traditions at home. And although this is well under way over the whole Ca-
as soon as they learned this, the Africans knew that nadian Arctic and most of the Subarctic (Mul-
they could continue many customs or get away with ler-Wille 1997).
many innovations in their own societies by calling Horner (1990:14-17) also raises consideration
them traditions. of the idea of tradition as a reservoir. In modern
Horner also notes that this admiration of native times, when tradition is not everything but is
t r a d i t i o n s was not a great feature of post- strictly defined as selected aspects of a past (though
revolutionary war American society. Once the di- not necessarily prehistoric) way of life, there often
rect military onslaught on Native Americans appears the choice: shall we pick from (our) tradi-
ceased, very little was clear to them about what as- tion or shall we go along with something main-
pects of their behavior would be tolerated. For in- stream or more modern? This choice might be ideal
stance, polygamy was illegal in the U.S. and for many people of the world, were it possible. Tradi-
potlatching was made illegal in Canada in 1884. tion as a reservoir is the concept that tradition is a
Peyote was illegal for anyone, and drinking alcohol strength to draw upon, a source of historically de-
was made illegal for most native peoples. Laws dif- fined identity, and a source of a sense of safety,
fered from place to place, changed over time, and specialness, or difference. But the tradition as res-
might not have been enforced or were exceeded by ervoir concept still suffers from real world draw-
10 MUSEUM ANTHROPOLOGY VOLUME 24 NUMBER 2/3

backs. Will the real world allow you as Native counteract the beef salesmen and self-righteous
Americans to draw from tradition, to use peyote, to Yankees who are banning traditional native ways of
play gambling games, to marry multiple spouses, to feeding themselves (World Council of Whalers
practice local medicine and healing, to teach your 1997).
children in your own way, or even to speak your own Closer to the California native experience, I
language? These are very real questions, and al- have seen the Tlingit and Tsimshian of the North-
though some freedoms are greater now, there are west Coast come fully back into their traditions as
problems which will never completely go away in master artists, with the help of both other native
the modern world. peoples and whites (Graburn 1993). And none of
An even greater problem with the idea of tradi- these people are going backwards or leaving the
tion as reservoir is the question of whether tradition modern world at all. Tradition is not the opposite of
is still there or whether it has been drained away by modernity; perhaps it is modernity's strength, its
the forces of history. It is here where individuals richness, and one of its essential sources of meaning
like Frank Day are crucial. Not only was he a man in life.
with access to the reservoir of his own life experi-
ence, but he was willing to share and show the way. Notes
And he shared his knowledge not only with his own
people directly, such as many northern California 1. This paper has purposefully been kept close to the
style in which it was originally delivered at the sympo-
native peoples who learned at first hand of whole sium "Memory and Imagination in 20th Century Na-
ancestral worlds that were disappearing, but he tive American Art" at the Oakland Museum of
shared with sympathetic outsiders, who for reasons California on April 19, 1997.
of science, humanity, or nostalgia, or all three, en- 2 The Aborigines Protection Society (1838) developed
abled his expressions and recorded his knowledge. into a worldwide organization, allied with the
anti-slavery movement, against the exploitation and
That is, they strengthened the reservoir and have mistreatment of colonized peoples. Although a Chris-
been more than willing to share the contents with tian society, it led directly to the more humanitarian
those who are the inheritors. activist (i.e., not strictly scientific) tradition in anthro-
pology which remains with us today.
But the reservoir of tradition is not static. It
grows through activity and attention to mainte- 3 The Polar Inuit of northwest Greenland are an excep-
tion. After hundreds of years of separation from the
nance, it fills up with the creation and practice of Inuit of Canada, the Polar Inuit thought that they
traditions. It does not know whether the traditions were the only people left in the world at the time they
are old, modified or new, but that they are tradi- first encountered Europeans in the eighteenth cen-
tury.
tions, that they are strong and that they are the
strength of the people. I have witnessed many na- References
tive peoples in North America fighting for their tra-
ditions and continued identity in a rapidly Aborigines Protection Society
changing, threatening, homogenizing world. I have 1838 First Annual Report of the Aborigines Protection
long seen and helped the Inuit of the Canadian Arc- Society (Great Britain). London: W. Ball.
tic fight to have their language be the language of Benedict, Burton
their schoolchildren, and now even the teachers are 1983 The Anthropology of Worlds Fairs. Berkeley:
Scolar Press.
trained in inuttitut (Crago et al.1992:121-170). I
Crago, Martha, Betsy Annahatak, Mary Aitchison, and
have seen the people of Greenland reverse the trend Donald Taylor
toward Danification, such that even the Danes liv- 1992 Keeping it Alive: Linguistic, Cultural, and Social
ing in their country have to speak Greenlandic and Issues Related to Language Policy in Nunavik. In Lan-
their children educated in it (Langgaard guage and Educational Policy in the North. Nelson H.H.
Graburn and Roy Iutzi-Mitchell, eds. Pp. 121-170. Berke-
1992:177-186). I have seen the Inupiat of north ley: Occasional Papers of the Canadian Studies Program.
Alaska and more recently the Canadian Inuit re- Damas, David, ed.
cover both their rights to and their practice of whal- 1984 Handbook ofNorth American Indians. Vol. 5, Arc-
ing (Doubleday 1994; Freeman, Wein and Keith tic. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press.
1992). In 1996,1 helped lead the formation of an in- Dobkins, Rebecca J.
ternational native peoples whaling group, includ- 1997 Memory and Imagination: The Legacy of Maidu
Indian Artist Frank Day. With Carey Caldwell and Frank
ing the Nuu-cha-nulth and other Indians, to LaPena. Oakland: Oakland Museum of California.
 11

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Freeman, M.M.R., E.E. Wein, and D.E. Keith dation Lecture. University of California, Berkeley, Sep-
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Inuvialuit Subsistence in the Western Canadian Arctic. Lee, Molly
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1990 The Assumption of Tradition: Creating, Col-
lecting, and Conserving Cultural Artifacts in the Camer-
oon Grassfields (West Africa). Ph.D. dissertation in
anthropology, University of California, Berkeley. Nelson H. H. Graburn is Professor of Anthropology
and Curator of North American Ethnology in the
Langgaard, Per
1992 Greenlandic is not an Ideology, it is a Language. In Hearst Museum at the University of California,
Language and Educational Policy in the North. Nelson Berkeley. He has been conducting research on Ca-
H.H. Graburn and Roy Iutzi-Mitchell, eds. Pp. 177-178. nadian Inuit art since 1959.