This paper sets out from the assumption that a decolonization of theory requires a shift in conceptual and methodological orientations. In this respect, the descriptive concept "post-tradition" will be proposed to broaden the debate on social organization and the areas of informal association and everyday life communication and performance. The concept "post-tradition" is also meant to inscribe in the master narratives of Tradition and Modernity the contradictions of everyday performances and subaltern life-stories and worldviews. A point will be made to the effect that post-tradition does not summon origin, purity, homogeneity or continuity. Rather, it is a process that is already in the making. Similarly, the task of the post-traditional researcher is not to conceptualize hegemonizing views of history but to document the fractured histories and life-stories of groups and communities as they surface in people's everyday practices. Thus, from a post-traditional perspective, culture becomes a seamless ebb and flow of endogenous practices and exogenous leisure experiences, of performed resistances and ceremonial rituals, and of conjured up identities and anticipated possibilities.
Last modified: 7 May 2001