Derived from:
The Director's Lectures — Anthony Giddens
Runaway World: The Reith Lectures revisited
Lecture 3: 24 November 1999

Tradition involves a different claim to truth from other kinds of behaviour, such as those associated with science, rational understanding of the world, or democracy. Tradition's truth is ritual and bound up with its practice.

Taking part in a tradition doesn't involve the cognitive question of whether what you're doing approximates to something valid in the world. Tradition's truth and authenticity is carried in its ritual, and it is the ritual which gives it its power.

Tradition is primarily social and collective, and it's something to do with the relationship between ritual repetition and collectivity that defines something as traditional. I don't think you could have traditions which were wholly individual patterns of behaviour. You sometimes have personal rituals, but you wouldn't call them traditional.

Traditions always have guardians and guardians are different from experts. They have access to the ritual truth of tradition and are like priests or shamans. To get at the truth of tradition you would need an interpretation by one of the tradition's guardians.

The key role of the guardians of tradition is that they are the repositories of the knowledge which the ordinary lay individual in the ceremonial does not have. In more encompassing traditions you always have some group of people who are believed to have special knowledge related to the ritual which defines the tradition. This is different from expertise because expertise is, in principle, available to anyone.

Tradition is the emotional element, the emotional engagement with the ritual of a traditional ceremony. Without this, then I don't think the ritual is working. It's not like sitting in a library reading a book, trying to get more knowledge of the social sciences.

Tradition has a hold because it's something to do with personal identity and how we locate our emotions, and it's even something to do with a sense of self, especially in more 'traditional' cultures where a sense of self is strongly defined through the ritual properties of tradition and the emotional relationship to the wider society which this gives you.