7 - Conclusions and programme

Summary

In the course of this book I have left aside some problems which are usually considered crucial in a characterisation of tradition, concerning, e.g. the classical opposition of ‘tradition’ and ‘modernity’, the question of ‘traditional societies’ and of a ‘traditional mentality’, the problem of the relationship between literacy and oral traditions, etc. Although these problems should all be dealt with in a theory of tradition, it is difficult to go beyond common platitudes if we do not have a precise description of traditional interaction itself. In this chapter I will try to re-examine these questions in the light of the hypotheses put forward about the intellectual processes involved in traditional discourse. I will start with a general picture of the theory so far, then examine some of its possible implications, and finally suggest some directions for further research.

We examined here a limited domain of traditional interaction, namely the cognitive processes involved in traditional discourse. This way of approaching the subject is not meant to suggest that traditions are just series of statements. Obviously, many aspects of traditional situations are non-verbal; these elements are remembered and repeated and constitute traditional objects, often but not always in combination with verbal communication. In presenting a mainly ‘verbal’ account of traditions, I do not mean to imply that non-discursive aspects are secondary; my reason for choosing to focus on utterances was mainly tactical. In the common anthropological views, traditions are described as founded on some set of conserved underlying propositions about the world.