8 Islam and Modernity
civilisations facilitating the emergence of multiple modernities (Arnason 2003).
The macro-sociological dimension of tradition becomes the cultural component
of a specifi c civilisation. A civilisation always combines power and culture in
original ways; therefore, the constitution and mutual relations between politi-
cal and cultural elites are crucial to the working of civilisations. A civilisation
transcends the closed boundary of a specifi c, national society and articulates
across time (epochs) and space (geo-cultural units) the spectrum of possibilities
of societal organisation allowed within culturally specifi c notions of power and
within power-determined confi gurations of cultural traditions. The way power
is exercised and legitimised is therefore dependent on cultural traditions: on
the codes of legitimacy elaborated by cultural elites, but also on the concrete,
everyday practice and judgement of the commoners. The dialectic of power
and culture is specifi c to each civilisation. Such dialectic also determines the
specifi cities of Islamic civilisation, as we will see in more detail.
The cultural dimension of civilisation, represented by traditions, is high-
lighted by Arnason’s interpretation of Marshall Hodgson’s understanding of tra-
dition, developed in the latter’s study of Islamic civilisation (Hodgson 1974) and
in his comparisons between the Western and the Islamic civilisations (Hodgson
1993). This approach helps specifying the relation between the micro- and the
macro-dimensions of a civilisation, between a tradition of practice and com-
munication and its structural underpinnings. Not by chance were Hodgson’s
ideas developed in the context of his study of Islam and therefore critical of
the prevalent, trivialised notions of tradition developed and used within the
modernisation theory circles. Instead he stressed creative action and cumulative
interaction as essential traits of traditions. In this sense, civilisations by necessity
rely on traditions and are defi ned by them (Arnason 2006a), via their capacity
to support the social bond at a micro-level (Salvatore 2007a).
In order to understand the dimension of power inherent in Islam as a tra-
dition or as a set of bundled traditions, we can refer to some interventions by
Talal Asad (1986), who responded to the functionalism still at work within the
approach of several anthropologists and sociologists of Islam. Re-evaluating tra-
dition does not mean to obliterate structures of – or constraints upon – actions,
which are ultimately determined by how power works and is instituted in a
given social context. It should not lead to neglect power and the accumulation
of wealth as a specifi c means to – and effect of – power as major factors imping-
ing on how traditions are articulated in a concrete social setting. Yet the pursuit
itself of power and wealth is to some extent dependent on how cultural tradi-
tions frame their desirability and on how social actors pursue their benefi ts: on
how material and immaterial ‘goods’ are culturally defi ned. The working itself
of power depends on how power is conceptualised and put into practice within
specifi c civilisational contexts, which are in turn infl uenced by cultural traditions
(Arnason 2003).