The problem of tradition in the work of Anthony Giddens

This paper seeks to problematise the notion of ‘tradition’ presented in the recent sociology of Anthony Giddens on reflexivity and late modernity. Three broad areas of critique are highlighted and discussed: the view of tradition as simultaneously static and reflexive; the view that within the ‘post‐traditional’ world tradition survives and flourishes; and the view that tradition and reflexivity are historically mutually exclusive phenomena. In the final section, Mellor's (1993) conception of ‘reflexive traditions’ is introduced and developed as a possible hermeneutic tool for the study of contemporary traditions with reference to the author's recent ethnographic fieldwork with the Brahma Kumaris World Spiritual University, a millenarian new religious movement of Indian origin.