Article Preview
TopTradition And Sustainability
Sustainability is understood here to mean “…the use of environment and resources to meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs…” (Natural Resources Institute, 2015, para. 3). This view derives from studies of the relationships between folk tradition and sustainability.
Tradition is seen as a way of describing what is essentially a negotiated compact between the collectivities that maintain it. It is a dynamic cultural process that involves the transmission of selected aspects and elements of the past into the present and so, inevitably, into the future. Conceptually, tradition is a complex of traditio – the processes through which cultural information, or traditum, is preserved and handed down.
While the means and methods by which this selection and transmission occurs are important, this essay focuses on the extent to which an understanding of tradition is central to the progression of any sustainability agenda/s. What elements, if any, of cultural practice and expression might be useful in relation to adapting to the consequences of climate change, biodiversity loss and resource consumption? Are there aspects of tradition that are antithetical to sustainability?
Tradition is usually understood and described as a conservative process, one in which ideas, cultural expressions and practices are preserved for as long as the bearers of a tradition need them. Thus terms like ‘hidebound’, ‘atrophied’ are often applied to tradition when it is perceived, by some at least, to be an obstruction to what is usually described as ‘progress’, development’ or some other form of change. A ‘break with tradition’ is likewise a frequent cliché for describing something believed to be new or different. G. K. Chesterton famously described tradition as ‘the democracy of the dead’ (Chesterton, 2014).