Грижа за традициите
Care for Traditions

Summary/Abstract: The discussion proceeds from the ambiguous concept of "globalization". In seeking a possible minimal area of consensus as to the contents and legitimacy of the term, the author points to the generally shared view that in the epoch of modernity, there is a tendency to intensifying the economic, political, and cultural intercourse between separate geographic regions and states, a tendency which decreases the differences between them, and hence leads to the homogenization of culture. This process is perceived as irreversible. The article raises the question of the forms in which different cultural traditions exist in the context of globalization. The author then examines the two fundamental ways in which the modern European cultural self-consciousness responds to tradition: anti-traditionalism and traditionalism. He concludes that the premise of both responses lies in the break in traditions through countering their power. This break occurs by abandoning the view that people inhabit a completed, permanent kind of world, by the new conviction that the world can be different from what it is. For antitraditionalists, this break in traditions is a gain of liberty; to traditionalists, it represents a loss of identity. The answer to contemporary anxiety about the survival and purity of cultures lies in the "care for traditions". Measures for such care would preserve the authentic features of cultures, but only by isolating them in special, well-guarded cultural "reservations". The author concludes that the care for cultural traditions is a specific way in which traditions live on in the epoch of globalization.

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