Detraditionalization and Retraditionalization

Cultural globalization accompanies the economic and financial processes of globalization. Many students of high or postmodernity link those processes and claim that modernization erodes or even eradicates local or national traditions, and the most radical expression of this view maintains that the process of detraditionalization is unstoppable. The position that will be taken in this essay is that there is, indeed, a process of detraditionalization that, however, is coupled with retraditionalization in many societies.

As a number of research projects show, traditional culture is alive and well. Native traditions are spreading; syncretistic religions are strong in Africa and Latin America. There are growing efforts to synchronize traditional cultural and religious values with the changing and modernizing structures of society. This entry examines the complex processes that ...