Introduction

The theme of this book derives from a course I taught on The Politics of Tradition’, which looked at the concept of custom: the ongoing tension between a concept of society grounded in rules, and one that focuses rather on social action, strategy and improvisation. Tradition’, as a form of legitimisation deriving from the posited continuity between past and present, appears to be unchanging, and yet as anthropologists and historians have increasingly pointed out, paradoxically traditions are constantly being invented and reinvented in the name of continuity with the past and fixed rules.