288 ANALYZING DATA
might attempt. They argue that meanings or beliefs arise from the internal relations of self-sufficient
discourses. Clearly though, we do not need to throw out the concept of situated agency along with
that of autonomy. Just because individuals start out from an inherited tradition does not imply
they cannot adjust it. On the contrary, the ability to develop traditions is an essential part of our
being in the world. We are always confronting slightly novel circumstances that require us to
apply tradition anew, and a tradition cannot fix the nature of its application. So, traditions are
products of individual agency—they develop out of activity individuals undertake for reasons of
their own—even as agency only ever occurs in the context of tradition—activity is always situ-
ated against the background of tradition. It is the need to allow for situated agency that makes
tradition a more satisfactory concept than rivals such as language, paradigm, and episteme. The
latter concepts all appear to invoke a social force that determines the beliefs of individuals. By
contrast, tradition suggests a social heritage that comes to individuals who can adjust and trans-
form this heritage through their own activity.
A particular relationship must exist between beliefs if they are to make up a tradition. Tradi-
tions must be made up of beliefs that were passed from generation to generation. Socialization—
the relaying of beliefs and practices from teacher to pupil—may be intentional or unintentional.
The continuity lies in the themes developed and passed on over time. As beliefs pass from teacher
to pupil, the pupil adapts and extends the themes linking the beliefs. Although we must be able to
trace a historical line from the start of a tradition to its current finish, the developments introduced
by successive generations might result in beginning and end having nothing in common apart
from such temporal links. Traditions also must embody suitable conceptual links. The beliefs a
teacher passes to a pupil display a minimal level of consistency. A tradition could not have pro-
vided someone with an initial starting point unless its parts formed a minimally coherent set of
ideas. Traditions cannot be made up of purely random beliefs and actions that successive indi-
viduals happen to have held in common.
Although the beliefs in a tradition must be related to one another both temporally and concep-
tually, their substantive content is unimportant to their ability to explain. Because tradition is
unavoidable, all beliefs and practices must have their roots in tradition; they must do so whether
they are aesthetic or practical, sacred or secular, legendary or factual, premodern or scientific,
valued because of lineage or reasonableness. The explanatory concept of tradition differs, there-
fore, from that concept of tradition that some human scientists use to describe customary ways of
behaving or the entrenched folklore of premodern societies. At the heart of the explanatory con-
cept of tradition are individuals using local reasoning consciously and subconsciously to modify
their contingent heritage.
Concepts such as dilemma, problem, and anomaly help to unpack the role of situated agency
in traditions. Our capacity for situated agency implies that change originates in the responses of
individuals, albeit these responses are always influenced by traditions. Whenever someone adopts
a new belief or action, he has to adjust his existing beliefs to make way for the newcomer. To
accept a new belief is thus to pose a dilemma that asks questions of one’s existing web of beliefs.
A dilemma here arises for an individual or institution when a new idea stands in opposition to
existing beliefs or practices and so forces a reconsideration of these existing beliefs. Human
scientists can explain change within traditions, therefore, by referring to the relevant dilemmas.
Tradition changes as individuals make a series of variations to it in response to any number of
specific dilemmas.
Dilemmas often arise from people’s experiences. However, we must add immediately that this
need not be the case. Dilemmas can arise from theoretical and moral reflection as well as experi-
ences of worldly pressures. The new belief that poses a dilemma can lie anywhere on a spectrum