Talking Tradition
Tradition - A Critical Primer - Steven Engler
Steven Engler [+]
Mount Royal University
Description
This chapter lays groundwork. It first looks at how ‘tradition’ gets translated into other languages, at the meaning of that word in English, and at its many, often vague, uses in the study of religions. It then sets out different dimensions of the idea of tradition: content (things passed down); lineages (themes and variations over time); carriers (types of people who play roles in transmission); processes (transmission, emergence, consolidation, transmission etc.); normative evaluations (whether reified or constructed); social effects (functions of traditional authority); and social boundaries (the line between those who follow a tradition and those who do not). This book’s approach is to explore connections between ‘tradition’ and other concepts. This brings up the issue of ideology: how believing certain things about tradition gives some people more power than others. The focus is less on what tradition is than on what different groups of people believe about it.