neotraditionalism
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What is neotraditionalism?
Neotraditionalism in politics involves reviving and revamping old cultures, practices, and institutions for new political contexts and strategies. It entails contesting culture and memory and can legitimize political strategies for both elites and ordinary people, especially during rapid social change or questioning of development or modern concepts.
Neotraditionalism isn't limited to authoritarianism or dominant groups. For example, the Grameen Bank uses historically-rooted practices of intergroup solidarity. In an era of globalization, it represents a local response or resistance to perceived external domination or cultural homogenization. Xenophobic nationalists and religious fundamentalists may use neotraditionalism to critique the dominant liberal democratic capitalist order.
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How does neotraditionalism relate to traditions in society?
Neotraditionalism involves reviving and reshaping old cultures, practices, and institutions for new political purposes. It acknowledges that traditions are not static but are resources that can be molded and contested.
Neotraditionalism differs from tradition by viewing historical institutions and values as adaptable to political and social changes. It is often used to strengthen group identity during confusing social shifts and can be employed to legitimize political power, as seen in postcolonial states. Unlike static traditions, neotraditionalism is a response to globalization and standardization, offering a way to critique modernization and assert local values against external influences.
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Why might some people or groups support neotraditionalism?
Neotraditionalism appeals to diverse groups for varied reasons. It surfaces prominently during periods of rapid social change or when the benefits of development and modernization are questioned. Elites and ordinary people alike use it as a strategy for political legitimation, especially in postcolonial contexts, where authoritarian leaders justify their regimes by claiming to revive precolonial traditions.
Moreover, neotraditionalism can be a response to globalization, as seen in the actions of xenophobic nationalists and religious fundamentalists. These groups often idealize a more authentic past to critique the alienation they associate with liberal democratic capitalism. Communitarian activists, indigenous rights advocates, and environmentalists also utilize neotraditionalism, evoking historical patterns of harmony with nature as alternatives to the perceived irresponsibility and unsustainability of modern systems.
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How is neotraditionalism different from traditionalism?
Neotraditionalism deliberately revives and revamps old cultures and practices for new political contexts. It treats historical institutions and values as adaptable resources, subject to ongoing social and political contestation.
Traditionalism, from the 1930s through the 1950s, emphasized the formal structures and rules of political and governmental institutions. Traditionalist scholars were descriptive and qualitative, focusing on how political institutions ought to function, often normatively, rather than empirically studying how they worked in practice.
Neotraditionalism differs by recrafting culture and memory, and its analysis requires understanding who does the recrafting, with what power, and in whose interests. It represents a response to globalization and standardization, with actors reformulating tradition for new purposes.
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What are examples of neotraditionalism in modern politics or culture?
Neotraditionalism involves reviving old cultures, institutions, and practices for new political strategies, especially during rapid social change. It's deployed to legitimize political actions, not necessarily by authoritarians, but by various social actors.
Examples include the Grameen Bank's use of historic intergroup solidarity for modern revolving credit systems and the redeployment of agrarian-era cooperation by manufacturers in Denmark and Italy to achieve economies of scale. Xenophobic nationalists and religious fundamentalists also utilize neotraditionalism to critique globalization, while communitarian activists and environmentalists evoke historical patterns of harmony with nature as alternatives to liberal democratic capitalism. These examples show neotraditionalism as a response to external domination, offering a basis for political mobilization through the recrafting of culture and memory.
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How do sociologists and political scientists study the effects of neotraditionalism on society?
Sociologists and political scientists study neotraditionalism by examining how societies revive and reframe old cultures, institutions, and practices in contemporary political strategies. This approach treats historical institutions and values as adaptable resources that are subject to social and political contestation.
Neotraditionalism is used to consolidate group identity during periods of rapid social change and as a response to globalization, which can be a form of resistance to perceived external domination. It can be used to achieve political goals, and it can be a tool for political legitimation, especially by authoritarian elites in postcolonial states. Analysis of neotraditionalism involves understanding how culture and memory are recrafted, who does the recrafting, and with what degree of power.
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neotraditionalism, in politics, the deliberate revival and revamping of old cultures, practices, and institutions for use in new political contexts and strategies.
Neotraditionalism entails a degree of contestation over culture and memory. It can serve as a strategy of political legitimation, and it is deployed in different ways by both elites and ordinary people. Neotraditionalism can be especially prominent in contexts of rapid social change or when people question the nature or benefits of that which is presented as “developmental” or “modern.” Neotraditionalism suggests that the form a regime takes, the nature of law, the means by which the arbitrariness of rulers can be blocked, and other forms of interaction between state and society should take into account or resonate with local definitions of authentic culture and historical memory.
Contested traditions
As a concept, neotraditionalism breaks with notions of deeply rooted cultural essences or characterizations of static antimodern tradition. An approach focusing on neotraditionalism treats seemingly historical institutions, practices, and values as moldable resources, subject to ongoing social and political contestation. In that sense, one cannot speak of politically unproblematic “traditions” of, for example, democratic participation (e.g., panchayat village councils in India and Pancasila democracy in Indonesia) but rather of specific efforts to identify and promulgate particular and always modified versions of remembered culture and institutions as neotraditions.
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Neotraditions serve political goals and are the subject of political contestation over the definitions of historical memory and “authentic” culture. They can be especially useful tools for the consolidation of group identity in circumstances of rapid and confusing social change. Thus, the British historian Eric Hobsbawm described the invention and deployment of neotraditions surrounding the mythic hero Ossian, bagpipes, and kilts in constructing a new Scottish national identity in the 18th century at a time of rapid class transformation, urbanization, and the decline of feudal forms of social solidarity. Likewise, in southern Africa, historians have shown how the massive migration of men to mines and factories around the turn of the 20th century precipitated new understandings of “traditional” culture, emphasizing women’s subordination, powerful elder male chieftaincy, and rigid customary land laws. Those neotraditional customs and institutions enabled absent men to retain control over key resources (especially their wives and their farms). Neotraditionalism has also been used as a powerful tool of political legitimation in postcolonial settings, whereby authoritarian elites, from Mobutu Sese Seko in Zaire to Suharto in Indonesia, sought to justify single-party authoritarian regimes as “democratic” because one-party rule supposedly revived and updated precolonial traditions of village-level inclusive consensus decision making.
Neotraditional analysis does not suggest that the story of Ossian, powerful elder male chieftaincy, or village democracy are fabrications and simple instrumentalist manipulations of an entirely plastic and moldable culture. Rather, it accepts that some forms of those stories, practices, and informal institutions represent ethnographic and historical realities, and it recognizes that there is a political process in which actors filter and select particular elements of remembered culture as the central and salient definitions of “tradition” in any given moment.
Political uses of neotraditionalism
Although often monopolized by state-level postcolonial elites as legitimating cultural patina, neotraditionalism by definition need not serve authoritarianism nor operate only in the hands of dominant groups. Thus, the much-celebrated Grameen Bank and other systems of revolving credit can be understood as neotraditional redeployments of historically rooted practices of intergroup solidarity and trust (which compel borrowers to repay loans so that kin or neighbours can receive their credit) in new, more modern circumstances. Likewise, small and medium-size specialty manufacturers in Jutland, Denmark, and Emilia-Romagna, Italy, redeployed and revamped old practices of cooperation, some rooted in agrarian practices, to achieve economies of scale and international competitiveness in the later 20th century. In those cases, social actors at various levels, not state elites, reformulated tradition for new purposes, crafting new institutional solutions that enjoyed the benefit of social familiarity and apparent embeddedness in a local culture. Thus, analysis of neotraditionalism demands an understanding not simply of how culture and memory are recrafted but of who does that recrafting, with the application of what degree of power, and in pursuit of what interests.
In an era of rapid globalization of trade and communication, as well as the standardization of liberal democratic politics and free-market economics, neotraditionalism represents an important mode of localist response or resistance to perceived external domination or cultural homogenization. Thus, xenophobic nationalists and religious fundamentalists redeploy visions, values, practices, and modes of social organization of a purportedly more-authentic uncorrupted past as a means to critique the alienation and “mongrelization” associated with the dominant liberal democratic capitalist order. Likewise, some communitarian activists, proponents of indigenous rights, and environmentalists evoke historical patterns of holism and harmony with nature as neotraditional alternatives to the perceived irresponsibility, materialism, imperialism, and unsustainability of the same liberal democratic capitalist order. Neotraditionalism provides a language and a basis for political mobilization for many forms of critique of modernity.
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