Preface

Summary

Over the last twenty years, a substantial body of literature has emerged on various aspects of cultural traditions in non-Western societies. Many of these works have celebrated the renaissance of indigenous cultural representations in the arts as well as in social life more generally, particularly in the context of post-colonial regeneration. Others, however, have been more critical of this renaissance, at least with respect to some of its important political implications. A number of studies in the latter genre have therefore scrutinized such processes as the ‘invention of tradition’, especially the way in which contemporary ‘neo-traditional’ formulations have been used as a means of legitimating certain forms of political authority. On the other hand, it has been pointed out that invention of this kind, as well as that which takes place in many other contexts, is an ineluctable feature of virtually all social and cultural life and that to imply otherwise is to deny the essentially dynamic nature of tradition itself. The present study acknowledges the value of both positions in several important respects. But it also takes a critical approach to contemporary assertions of tradition in the political sphere, not only in terms of the manipulation of cultural traditions for political purposes, but also in relation to the way in which a reified notion of tradition has often been used to mark off the ‘West’ from the ‘non-West’.