Articles

Waldemar Kuligowski

"Globalization lies at the heart of modern culture; cultural practices lie at the heart of globalization - John Tomlinson wrote in his book Globalization and Culture - (...) This is not a reckless claim: it is not to say that globalization is the single determinant of modern cultural experience, nor that culture alone is the conceptual key that unlocks globalization's inner dynamic. It is not, thererfore, to claim that the politics and economics of globalization yield to a cultural account which takes conceptual precedence. But it is to maintain that the huge of transformative processes of our time that globalization described cannot be properly understood until they are grasped through the conceptual vocabulary of culture"(1). In many (may be too many) academic works about globalization we can found very famous formulations - like "McWorld" (Barber), Coca-colonization (Howes), McDonaldization (Ritzer) and even "McDisneyzation" (Ritzer and Liska) - and formulations not so famous - for example "flows", "networks", "interconnections", "informational superhighway". In this sense, globalization suggests a radical disassociation between "the global" (multinational corporations, the entertainment industry, virtual spaces of the Web) and "the local" (the sense of place, neighbourhood, ethnicity, and other old sources of identity).

World is a single, common place: the white spots on the map are gone, and there are probably no peoples left who have not been in contact with the modern, globalised world. But expectation of world homogenization in the image of the West, a world in which all cultures are one cultures, moderned, developed, speaking variously accented English, and fulfilling their obligations, their needs, and their dreams as producers and consumers in the "global village", has gone sour. From anthropological point of view one very important word in Tomlinosn's "conceptual vocabulary of culture" is still tradition. Traditio - one, little, 'vintage' word. In this essay I'd like to present problem of tradition in the context of globalization, because this notion lies at the heart of contemporary anthropological reflections.

In the vocabulary of studies on the society and culture, the words 'tradition' and 'traditional' belong to the most commonly used terms. The main reason is that each culture has its past and each element within culture has its roots. On account of the past, memory and tradition - describing our attitude to things gone by in their own different ways - ex nihilo novelties seem to be present almost exclusively in futuristic prose. In their classical analysis of the concept of culture, Alfred L. Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn distinguished a certain type of definitions laying the greatest emphasis on problems of heritage and tradition(2). They quoted anthropologists who - like Sapir, Malinowski, Lowie, Linton, Park and Burgess - claimed that culture is an "inherited assemblage of practices and beliefs", "the whole of social tradition", "social heritage" and that it "comprises inherited artefacts, goods, technical processes, ideas, customs, and values".

Today, over 50 years after the publication of their paper, the concepts of culture and tradition require a new perspective. A fundamental change would be for these notions to go beyond the boundaries of the professional vocabulary of academic ethnology and become an element of a general social debate, also within those societies that have been routinely described by scholars using these two concepts. In his famous article, Marshall Sahlins wrote about the Kayapo inhabiting the tropical rainforests of Brazil. The natives that had only spoken their mother tongue until then, started to talk about the cultura at the end of the 1980s. The tendency is, incidentally, visible all over the world, with the Tibetans and the Hawaiians, the Kwakiutl and Inuit, the Kazakhs and the Mongols, the peoples of Bali and Kashmir recently discovering that "they have a \'culture\'"(3). It seems difficult to find another concept in the intellectual glossary of any academic discipline that could boast of a similarly stunning career. The concept of culture has, beyond doubt, been globalised.

The concept of tradition has shared a similar fate. Just like the majority of societies functioned perfectly well throughout most of their history without the concept of culture, for a long time tradition was not a problem, either. People would not know their tradition, for they simply lived in it. Since they knew how they should live, there was no need to actually use the word 'tradition': things simply are as they are - scholars were talked to as children - and this is how it must be. However, the last decades of the 20th century caused tradition (the word itself or some local equivalent) to be on everyone's lips; paraphrasing Sahlins one could claim that human societies found that they could not exactly be themselves without tradition. All now discover they have a 'tradition'. For centuries they may have hardly noticed it. For long centuries, but not today. The global spread of the notion was taking place in specific conditions that were aptly captured by polish sociologist Jerzy Szacki some years ago when he wrote that "tradition" popularly appeared as something that substitutes for reason, absolving humans from the obligation of reflection. In actual fact, the problem is by no means that simple, which is best evidenced in the activity of the defenders of tradition themselves, aiming at (...) a maximum rationality of justifying tradition and designating it as an object of systematic reflection"(4).

There are doubtless many such cases nowadays. Neither the Tibetans and the Hawaiians, nor the Kwakiutl and Inuit, nor the Kazakhs and the Mongols, nor the peoples of Bali and Kashmir want to have any tradition as such. They do not want to talk about their tradition normally and it is not enough to demonstrate it. Their own tradition cannot be left to its own devices any more: it is now an object of care, struggle, pride, sometimes even adoration. It exists in order to distinguish them from others and place them above others. It is supposed to be a source of exclusive knowledge and concrete financial benefits. The custody of tradition is now less and less frequently (and less eagerly) entrusted to anthropologists and other researchers coming from outside. On the contrary, different communities deal with their own traditions, delegating their own specialists for that purpose, with markedly visible specific endeavours taken in the process, resulting in what Szacki referred to as the "created tradition"(5), which - after Erick Hobsbawm(6) - is now usually called the "invented tradition". Neither of the researchers meant regular processes of idealisation of selected elements of tradition, but rather the incorporation within tradition of certain behaviours, values and symbols which were never actually a part of it. When independent Ghana referred to its alleged Roman past, a problem emerged - as Szacki wrote - the essence of which "was not so much the relationship between a given model and the actual past of any given group of people, but rather its relation to the group's current needs and aspirations"(7). The situation, by no means isolated, warrants a restatement of what I have already postulated above: the concept of tradition needs rethinking. The reflection discloses a number of critical contradictions that I would like to discuss below.

The first contradiction is fairly obvious. It is a well-known fact that local communities tend to use the concept of tradition in a positive sense, while often some of their members - and not only the youngest, brought up in the world of TV and hypermarkets - are of a different opinion. This is probably one of the reasons why tradition has now become a particularly meticulously cherished value. Tradition understood subjectively comprises not only cultural values, identified as the heritage of a local community, but also their evaluation. In this context, it is predominantly the values of the living, not the dead, which are significant; this is how the so-called heritage comes into being(8). Ann Fienup-Riordan argues that heritage is a self-conscious tradition, a certain "conscious culture"(9), reproduced in old and new public contexts, meant to protect those historical experiences that were lost. In this way heritage becomes a cultural buffer of localness over sub-local currents.

Clifford investigates the problem in a greater detail, analysing "heritage work". He writes: "heritage work includes oral-historical research, cultural evocation and explanation (exhibits, festivals, publications, films, tourist sites), language description and pedagogy, community-based archeology, art production, marketing and criticism (...) Heritage projects participate in a range of public spheres, acting as (...) ways to reconnect with the past and say to others: "We exist", "We have deep roots here", "We are different"(10) . Very intense \"heritage work" takes place in local communities all over the world. Clifford points to the fact that tradition understood in this way is never politically neutral and plays a key role in the movement revolving around identity and recognition. Heritage used to proclaim to others "We are alive and we are different" forces anthropologists to take a new type of actions. Clifford refers to the example of the museum exhibition called "Looking both Ways"(11). The intention of the exhibition was to show the life of the Alutiiq, the indigenous people of Kodiak Island and the southern coast of Alaska. The exhibition presented the continuity of the Alutiiq culture. Artefacts dating from over 100 years ago were accompanied by new objects, such as a mask commemorating the ecological disaster that struck the local community in the wake of the sinking of the "Exxon Valdez" tanker. Contacts with these artefacts aroused strong emotions among the Alutiiq, including the respect for their ancestors, the feeling of a bond between them, occasionally joy at locating something familiar. The success of the exhibition was mainly in showing the perception of the American anthropologist, in the "coordination" of the scientists and the natives, in the achievement of an equal status of both partners, in the attainment of the "outlook from both ways" declared in the exhibition's title. And even though Clifford wonders what happens to scientific freedom in such conditions, his overall assessment is positive. His evaluation is mainly determined by the conviction that in the globalisation era there simply cannot be any way other than the unconditional recognition of another person's subjectivity. Dialogue in the global era still means not only the negotiation of a common version of reality but also the essential readiness to listen.

The above postulate is extremely important and topical. Owing to the global circulation of information, there is more and more to listen to. Even a lay person would admit that tradition is talked about more and more frequently and in an increasing number of locations, with local subjects all around the world announcing \"We are alive!\". Every now and then news bulletins report on conflicts between the tradition and the desire to maintain sovereignty and uphold state control. Certainly, the notion of the state must go beyond the narrow identification of the institution with the apparatus of the state. Michel-Rolph Trouillot is right in postulating: "In the age of globalization, state practices, functions, and effects increasingly obtain in sites other than the national but never entirely bypass the national order. The challenge for anthropologists is to study these practices, functions, and effects without prejudice about sites or forms of encounters"(12).

What "encounters" do we mean? Here is the huge social debate in France concerning the legitimacy of wearing Muslim headscarves and other religious symbols in public schools. Here is the international pressure to change laws - the punishability of public spitting in Singapore and New Guinea, the ban on public gatherings in Haiti, the order to show respect to Japan's emperor. Here is the ongoing dispute in Great Britain concerning the right to burn the bodies of the dead demanded by the British Hindu and Sikh community who traditionally follow that practice with the mortal remains of their dead. The problem is, however, that the ban on staging open-air cremations in Britain has been in force for over 70 years now. Body cremation is only allowed in special gas-fuelled crematoriums. Installations of this type are used to cremate a considerable number of dead bodies a day. For the Hindu and Sikhs, however, this technologically advanced solution carries a genuine risk of the mixing of ashes which, in turn, may have a very adverse effect on the incarnation process. Consequently, a number of Hindu and Sikhs decide to take the cremains of their ancestors to scatter them in the Ganges and thus ensure their souls the desired peace. In order to transfer the ashes, thousands of kilometres must be covered, considerable funds raised and a number of official procedures met. The immigrant communities are less and less eager to accept the hassle. At the moment, negotiations with local authorities are in progress. However, if the tradition of burning dead bodies in open-air funeral pyres is not legalised, the Hindu and Sikhs will appeal to a court in London and, if necessary, even to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. They announce their readiness to fight until the end.

Traditional practices and lifestyles conflict not only with the laws of different countries. Occasionally a party to the dispute is an international organisation referring to universal (in their own opinion) values. For some years now, environmental movements worldwide have been stepping up their efforts in protesting against seal pup hunts that are still organised in the north of Canada. In their campaigns, animal rights activists raise two basic arguments. Firstly, they underscore the barbaric nature of such hunts, during which mostly very young pups are drowned in nets under the ice or clubbed to death. Secondly, activists claim, the hunts are not justified from the economic viewpoint of the communities that practice them. Advocates of the legality of seal hunts respond by stressing the fact that the hunts are an element of the traditional way of life of the indigenous population inhabiting the north of Canada and, furthermore, they remain an important source of income for a number of small communities.

I would not like to go into the details of the conflict. However, while on this topic, attention should be drawn to a different aspect of the problem: the interests of global ecologism, focused on the Earth as a whole, are increasingly taking priority over local interests and practices (forbidding Inuit communities from wahling or seeking to deny Chinese people their CFC-emitting refrigerators). John Vidal points to a truly astounding fact: "the San people can be excluded from the Kalahari, where they have lived for thousands of years, because they are considered by the Botswana government too dangerous for the fragile ecology"(13). Greenpeace, the global icon of environmental movements, defining their goals and tasks mainly in global terms, inevitably comes into conflicts with local interests. For Vidal, the well-known environmental catchphrase "think globally, act locally" is currently not so much a dialectical strategy so much as a "paradoxical mantra".

Obviously, the activity of international organisations is not only limited to movements for the conservation of the natural environment and the protection of animal rights. Their main pillar are organisations focused on respecting human rights (as universal - in their view - as animal rights). It is exactly at the point of contact between "universal" and local values that the discreet form of "heritage work" manifests itself together with its contradictions. An excellent example illustrating the specific nature of these contradictions concerns the marriage rules practiced by the Roma in Romania. On one Saturday 2003 in a Pentecostal Church in the Romanian city of Sibiu, a grand marriage ceremony was held, with vows taken by Ana-Maria Cioabã, a daughter of the self-proclaimed king of the Gypsies, and Mihai Biriþã. The bride failed in her attempt to run away from the church; she was captured and forced to return to the altar. Ana-Maria spent the wedding night with her newly wed husband. In this case, witnesses reported that she was under coercion. The situation was all the more drastic because Ana-Maria was barely 12 years old at the time, while her husband was 15. The alarmed European Parliament wrote to the Government of Romania about an "extremely grave violation of the rights of a child", while the wedding night was referred to as the "ritual rape"(14).

The person of the bride's father adds another dimension to the situation. Ion Cioabã proclaimed himself king of all Gypsies in 1992, crowning himself with a gold crown during a coronation ceremony held in an Orthodox church. He did not enjoy his "power" long, though, with his cousin proclaiming himself emperor a year later(15). Commentators note that if the wedding had taken place in a "normal" Roma family, the chances of anyone paying attention would have been slim. However, since the wedding took place in the royal family and was planned as a huge spectacle, people and institutions involved in the protection of human rights immediately responded. "King" Cioabã addressed them, trying - via the television - to justify his decision to marry off his daughter. "As the father - he explained - I know best what is good for my children. There are certain rights that must be respected. We, the Roma, have a tradition of marrying young". His speech, however, did not convince the decision makers. The Romanian authorities took a decision to separate Any-Maria and Mihai. Competent social services were to send both to state juvenile care facilities. For the polish gypsyologist Lech Mróz, the outcome of the situation is "ethically dubious and even more nonsensical from social and educational viewpoints"(16).

Perhaps one of the most important consequences of the above-mentioned case is the fact that marriages contracted by under-age Roma teenagers have become a topic of debate taking place not only in gypsyologist circles, which another example confirms, this time related to Poland. At the beginning of 2006, the public prosecutor accused a 21-year Roma from the Opole region of engaging in a sexual intercourse with a minor - his wife was just 15 years old at the time of entering into marriage. The prosecutor invoked Art. 200 of the Criminal Code which penalises paedophilia and is punishable with imprisonment for 10 years. The Polish Roma are both shocked and outraged at the situation. Kwiatkowski, the Chairman of the Polish Roma Union, claims that early marriages are a part of the Roma tradition. "It never happens that a girl that is 12 or 14 years old is forced to get married. If she says no, nobody can force her" "Nobody will take a girl as a bride if she does not look like a woman" - explains previously quoted Cioabã in the same vein - This is our tradition and culture, which is stronger than the law. Thanks to them, our community has existed for so many centuries"(17).

From the viewpoint of the Polish law, a sexual intercourse with a person below 16 years of age is a punishable act. Furthermore, the domestic law takes a priority over any customary law; at the same time, the Constitution commands to respect other cultures and traditions. Without doubt, the problem must be handled delicately and the Romanian example is not a good one to follow. The consequences of the imprisonment of the 21-year-old should definitely be calmly considered, especially in view of the fact that, as witnesses claim, the marriage was not contracted under coercion and the married couple are now a loving family.

The court's judgment in the case against Marek K. is, however, only of secondary importance. From the point of view of an anthropologist and Clifford's idea of "heritage work", a different aspect of the problem deserves our utmost attention. Can it be assumed that public statements of the Polish and Romanian Roma on their marriage traditions are their way of announcing "We are alive" to the world? Should the same approach be taken to girls wearing Muslim headscarves in French public schools, the Hindu and Sikhs wanting to cremate the bodies of their dead and pup seal hunters? Should an anthropologist stand up in defence of these traditions? Can each of these traditions be justified in the same manner? How can one differentiate the differences? How can one "harmonise" all the conflicting viewpoints?

Timothy garton Ash offers a number of valuable insights on the topic. In one of his articles published in "The Guardian", Ash explored reasons for the alienation of the British Muslims from the society in which they live. "In a poll conducted for the Channel 4 documentary, only half the British Muslims questioned said they thought of Britain as \"my country\", whereas nearly a quarter said they thought of it as \"their country\" - meaning someone else\'s. The younger respondents were, the greater the alienation. One in three British Muslims aged between 18 and 24 said they would rather live under Sharia law than under British law". Ash claims that the slavish attachment to tradition is not the exclusive cause. Through their heritage, British Muslims perform a different type of work. "It\'s clear from what young British Muslims themselves say that part of their reaction is against this kind of secular, hedonistic, anomic lifestyle. If women are reduced to sex-objects, young Muslim women say, I would rather cover up. Theirs is almost a kind of conservative feminism". Unfortunately, such a perception of tradition is an exception. "The idea that these young British Muslims might actually be putting their fingers on some things that are wrong with our modern, progressive, liberal, secular society; the idea that rational persons might freely choose to live in a different, outwardly more restricted way; these hardly feature in everyday progressive discourse. But they should. Articulate British Muslims, as encountered on Jon Snow\'s Channel 4 documentary and in magazines such as Q-News and Emel, are not merely telling us non-Muslim Brits a lot about themselves. They are also telling us something about ourselves".

What is the consequence? Firstly, tradition is not only a traditional subject of anthropologist studies, a domain pervaded with nostalgia, calm emotions and values that do not provoke emotions any more. The heritage that face today carries an enormous political and ethical potential. Its political dimension is realised in debates on values, the law and public space. The ethical dimension is, in turn, linked to the fact that any reflection upon tradition concerns "them" to the same degree as it concerns "us". The purely analytical approach is not sufficient any more and a relation of dialogue must be established. The traditions that I discussed do not need to be discovered as much as they need to be reconciled. Therefore, secondly, tradition in the global reality requires us to be open, prepared to listen to others and revise our own vision of the world, as well as being ready for a severe criticism of our own world by others (not only the Roma or Muslims mentioned above). We should notice the reflexive nature of the traditions that surround us and make increasingly active attempts to co-create the common world. This is - in my view - the essence of contemporary "heritage work" that puts up a challenge for the work of anthropologists. The chief problem presented by the tradition and "heritage work" phenomenon is how to place it within the other forms of common life: democracy, human rights, domestic law. Today we must always ask not only "What is tradition/traditional?", but also "When, where, how, under what conditions is it?". In my opinion, it's a challenge not only in Poland, not only in Central and Eastern Europe.

Notes:

1. J. Tomlinson, Globalization and Culture, Chicago 1999, s. 3.
2. A. L. Kroeber, C. Kluckhohn, Culture. A Critical Reviewof Concepts and Definitions, "Papers of the Peabody Museum of American Archeology and Ethnology", 1952, vol. XLVII, no 1, s. 47-49.
3. M. Sahlins, Goodbye to Tristes Tropes: Ethnography in the Context of Modern World History, "Journal of Modern History", 1993, vol. 65, s. 19.
4. J. Szacki, Tradycja. Przegl±d problematyki, Warszawa 1971, s. 165.
5. J. Szacki, Tradycja, op. cit., s. 179.
6. E. Hobsbawm, Introduction: Inventing Traditions, w: The Invention of Tradition, E. Hobsbawm, T. Ranger (eds.), Cambridge 1983.
7. J. Szacki, Tradycja, op. cit., s. 182.
8. J. Szacki, Tradycja. Przegl±d problematyki, Warszawa 1971, s. 187.
9. A. Fienup-Riordan, Hunting Tradition in a Changing World: Yup'ik Lives in Alaska Today, New Brunswick, 2000, s. 167.
10. J. Clifford, Looking Several Ways. Anthropology and Native Heritage in Alaska, "Current Anthropology", 2004, vol. 45, no 1, s. 8.
11. Op. cit. , s. 9-12.
12. M.-R. Trouillot, Close Encounters of the Deceptive Kind, "Current Anthropology", 2001, vol. 42, no 1, s. 131.
13. J. Vidal, Local Heroes: Is Greenpeace Just Another Multinational?, "The Printer's Devil", Issue G, 1995, s. 60.
14. See for example in the Web: Gypsy Child Bride a Rape Victim?, www.cbsnews.com oraz A. Mutler, Romanian Gypsy wedding ot the year goes wrong when 12-year-old bride bolts, www.romea.cz.
15. A. Bartosz, Nie bój siê Cygana, Sejny 2004, s. 207-208.
16. L. Mróz, Efekt uboczny, w: Horyzonty antropologii kultury. Tom w darze dla profesor Zofii Sokolewicz, Warszawa 2005, s. 156-157.
17. A. Jukowska, Prokuratura: To wspó³¿ycie z nieletni±. Romowie: Nasza tradycja tego nie zabrania, "Gazeta Wyborcza", 11-12. 02. 2006, s. 2.