Traditionalism

The attempt to make a set of activities appear to be identical to or thoroughly consistent with older cultural precedents can be called “traditionalization.” As a powerful tool of legitimation, traditionalization may be a matter of near-perfect repetition of activities from an earlier period, the adaptation of such activities in a new setting, or even the creation of practices that simply evoke links with the past. The more obvious forms of traditionalization include the use of ancient costumes, the repetition of older social customs, and the preservation of archaic linguistic forms. For example, the Amish communities in Pennsylvania retain the dress, customs, and speech patterns of the late 17th and early 18th century, when Jacob Amman led them to break with the less conservative Mennonites in Europe. Likewise, the Hasidic communities concentrated in and near New York City and Jerusalem maintain the basic dress of Eastern European Jews from more than a century ago, often with the same finetuned distinctions in dress that marked important differences in social and religious status.26 These methods of traditionalization tend to privilege an older historical model and make assimilation into the modern world both difficult and highly suspect. Such dramatically traditionalized patterns of dress establish a high-profile identity for those closely following the older ways, thereby helping to maintain the boundaries as well as the authority of the traditional community.

Most rituals appeal to tradition or custom in some way, and many are concerned to repeat historical precedents very closely. A ritual that evokes no connection with any tradition is apt to be found anomalous, inauthentic, or unsatisfying by most people. Thus, traditionalism is an important dimension of what we tend to mean and identify as ritual, while activities that are not explicitly called “rituals” may seem ritual-like if they invoke forms of traditionalism. Often formalism and traditionalism go together and underscore the nonutilitarian nature of activities, further heightening their ritual-like nature. Yet traditionalism can also be invoked without much concern for formality. For example, a Thanksgiving dinner may not be particularly formal if there is the usual chaos of cooking and company, but it makes a clear appeal both to a supposed historical precedent when the early Puritans and their friendly

Indian neighbors shared a plentiful meal of turkeys and corn and to the particular domestic customs of the family itself. Such customs may be as simple as always using great grandmother’s lace tablecloth, having rhubarb pie instead of the more common pumpkin or apple pie, or always delegating a particular person to say grace and carve the turkey. Indeed, most families are more likely to observe their own little traditions than simply to formalize the meal. Although Thanksgiving Day’s “myth of origins” is far from solid historical fact, a clear national tradition of Thanksgiving has been institutionalized in American public life. Yet it is clearly an event that is traditionalized primarily in domestic ways.27

The British use of judicial regalia dating from the late 17th century is another example of an appeal to tradition that heightens the ritual-like nature of court proceedings in Great Britain. Judges and lawyers are required to don wigs, robes, buckled shoes, breeches, jabots (the lace neck ruff), and tippets (hood or cape) among other items of dress before appearing in court. Although the style of dress, roughly

146 Rites: The Spectrum of Ritual Activities

dated to the time of Charles II (1630–1685), was soon discarded by clergymen and courtiers, it was retained as mandatory dress in the court system except for the very lowest courts. Recently, when the British lord chancellor and lord chief justice suggested abandoning such archaic dress, those opposed to the change tried to convey some of the function and ethos of this traditionalism. A deputy administrator at

Britain’s main criminal court, the Old Bailey, argued that traditional garb added to the awe and mystery that is necessary to the authority of the courts. He said, “It is not unlike going into a high church where the priests are robed. There is a sense of respect.”28 While some defend the traditional dress in terms of the dignity it confers on court procedures, others argue that it reinforces elitism and intimidation. Even pragmatic arguments concerning the monetary costs and the physical discomfort of such garb in hot weather have been met by counterarguments, including the odd conclusion that “criminals expect a little bit of spectacle before they are sent away to prison. They would be terribly disappointed if they did not find the courtroom full of people in elaborate and rather ridiculous costumes.”29 Clearly, these elaborate costumes have long been thought to heighten the solemnity, authority, and prestige of court proceedings. Whether or not costumed judges are usually likened to priests, their gowns ensure that they are immediately taken to be the special bearers of a sacred tradition and a solemn set of duties.

A similar ethos is evoked by the use of academic robes.30 In comparison to judicial attire, academic robes, hoods, and hats are related to what was once everyday dress for scholars and clerics in an even earlier period. Maintaining this garb on formal occasions despite centuries of radical sartorial change in society in general has served to heighten the contrast between the academic world and everybody else. Such distinctions foster the ethos that scholars are the custodians of timeless truths—or the useless minutiae of ages past—even though the adoption of ancient academic garb is fairly recent in most countries other than England.31 People are visibly impressed by a long line of university professors filing past in full regalia, their long black robes setting off a colorful assortment of hoods and hats that denote different academic degrees, disciplines, and universities. This type of traditionalism evokes an authority rather different from that of institutions of uniformed military, medical, or postal workers; indeed, the ridiculous inefficiency of the outfits dramatizes an authority heavily dependent on its sheer endurance in time. The symbolic messages of such traditionalism do not stop at distinguishing the proud historicity of academia; they are also designed to distinguish the hierarchy of institutions, degree ranks, and organizational position. Indeed, two of the most ancient universities, Oxford and

Cambridge, resolutely differentiated themselves from each other in the design of their gowns, hoods, and hats; although the Oxford and Cambridge gowns are the prototype for almost all university gowns in the world, institutions tend to adopt distinguishing features of their own.32 Of course, it is such hollowed traditionalism that elicits symbolic counterstatements—either political protest or simply undergraduate antics. Decorating mortarboards with slogans or dispensing with any clothing under the gown are familiar ways to challenge the authority served by the traditionalism of academic ritual.33

Traditionalism in dress goes beyond the legal or ivy-covered walls of the court or classroom. The use of a Victorian-style bridal dress and the groom’s tuxedo is a

form of traditionalism that heightens the ritual nature of the ceremonial event, primarily by stressing a view of the bride and groom that appears to transcend current history and evoke eternal values. Traditionalism also goes well beyond mere dress, of course. Liberal recourse to Greek and Latin mottoes inscribed on university walls and letterheads attests to classical erudition and, it is hoped, enlightened morality. A dramatic form of traditionalism has been the use of Latin and Hebrew as liturgical languages when they were no longer spoken among the general population, although the Roman Catholic Church dropped the liturgical use of Latin in the mid-1960s and Hebrew was revived as a spoken language with the Zionist settlement of Israel in the late nineteenth century.

A particularly complex and diffused form of traditionalism can be seen in the social practice and significance in Chinese society of the teachings of Kongfuzi or Master Kong, otherwise known by the latinized name of Confucius (551– 479 B.C.E.). His teachings have been taken as the basis for a loose system of social order and morality that grounds Chinese life in a deep sense of respect for tradition and cultural continuity. Li, a term variously translated as ritual, ceremony, propriety, etiquette, moral conduct, or correctness, embodied for Confucius and subsequent forms of Confucian culture the proper ordering of all human relationships and, hence, the proper conduct of the moral person toward others. From a very early period on, this understanding of li made little appeal to gods and spirits, leading some analysts to suggest that it is primarily a philosophical idea rather than a religious one, although a philosophical reading does not do justice to the force of this notion.34 For example, the writings attributed to Confucius state the following: “If (a ruler) could for one day ‘himself submit to ritual,’ everyone under Heaven would respond to his Goodness.” 35 For Confucian philosopher Xunzi, rites put heaven and earth in harmony, make the sun and moon shine, and order the four seasons, the stars, and the constellations. They regulate people’s “likes and dislikes, their joys and their hates.” They are “the highest expression of the hierarchical order [of the cosmos],” and as such they are the basis for the strength, authority, and legitimacy of the state. In ritual, human action is brought into harmony with the principles that govern the cosmos itself.36 As one modern interpreter notes, people “become truly human as their raw impulse is shaped by li. And li is the fulfillment of human impulse, the civilized expression of it.”37 This is the framework in which the presentation of simple offerings to one’s ancestors can act as a linchpin for the whole social order.

For Confucius, these moral principles and the proper performance of li are laid out in the ancient classics, which contain the epitome of human wisdom, instructions for right conduct, and illustrations of the moral reasons behind the successes and failures of human affairs. To observe li, therefore, is to follow time-honored canons of ceremony and morality that equate such conduct with reverence for tradition itself. Hence, in teaching his ideas of moral behavior, Confucius denied that he was inventing anything new. The norms of traditional ceremony and virtue all come, he argued, from the example of the Duke of Zhou, who founded a dynasty one hundred years before the time of Confucius. Explicitly sidestepping the role of innovator, Confucius idealized the Zhou dynasty as a golden age of civilization that effectively provided models for how to live in the present, cultivate the self, control conduct, and perfect human virtue. He appealed to the idea of a preexisting tradi-

other, blatantly, places the bays of the ancient Roman emperors on his own head. . . .

Pomp and ritual, legend and magical ceremonies, are enacted round them with an éclat which outshines the time-honoured, historically-founded institutions of traditional monarchy.”41

It appears that Malinowski’s own sense of appropriate and time-honored institutions of leadership were molded by the very recent ritual reinventions of British royalty.

The establishment of special holidays, as seen in calendrical rituals, is a common means of traditionalization. For example, Bastille Day, which was described earlier, celebrates the storming of the prison that began the French Revolution, and multiple internal references throughout the holiday give the impression that the commemoration dates back to the years immediately following the revolution. However, it was not institutionally established until 1880, when the Third Republic very self-consciously invoked revolutionary imagery in order to assert its own political legitimacy and popular support. Organizing an official “Bastille Day” helped solidify a popular understanding of the revolution and its meaning. In fact, the French Revolution itself only gradually became a unified, coherent, and historically meaningful event—in response to very contemporary political needs and, at least in part, through the ritualizing strategy of traditionalization.42

The Pledge of Allegiance routinely taught to American schoolchildren is part of a daily patriotic ritual that gives the impression of great age and a scriptural solemnity that forbids tampering with the words. Yet the pledge is just one hundred years old. As written by Francis Bellamy, who modified an earlier version by James B. Upham, it was established in 1892 in conjunction with the Chicago World’s Fair and a national school program to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Columbus’s discovery of America. A 1954 congressional ruling further changed it by adding the words “under God.”43 Historical analysis suggests that the invention of this patriotic tradition around the turn of the century had a great deal to do with the enormous number of immigrants arriving in America and entering the school system. The 1954 addition occurred in the context of the cold war, when President Eisenhower heard a Presbyterian minister preach that the American Pledge of Allegiance “could be the pledge of any republic,” something even “little Moscovites [sic]” could pledge to their flag. The Reverend George Docherty concluded that the pledge was missing “the characteristic and definitive factor in the American way of life” best expressed by the phrase “one nation under God.”44 A recent argument for change would replace the Docherty-Eisenhower addition with “one nation, united in our diversity, committed to liberty and justice for all,” which conveys several new messages.45

Ultimately, it is hard to make any clear distinction between traditionalism and many other complex modes of ritualization. There is undoubtedly reason to debate whether traditionalizing is a way of ritualizing or an effect of ritualizing. Certainly, the conscious or unconscious creation of rituals often involves explicit appeals to some sense of tradition, even when that tradition is being created before one’s eyes. As one analyst has put it, ritual is uniquely able “to make traditional that which is unexpected and new.”46 Indeed, there has been no attempt to hide evidence of the recent origins of British royal pageantry or the American Pledge of Allegiance; the ceremonies themselves just imply age, and few people would even think to challenge the allusions to