The 'exotic' is uncannily close . . .' 1 'Anthropologists in particular are viewed with profound distrust by ever-growing segments of the CandomblΓ© 2 community . . .' 3 The story is told of a traditional men's club in London which resolved to honor a certain member of royalty who, unfortunately, confounded the routine by insisting that his wife accompany him. The club members debated whether to cancel the visit or to break the tradition and allow the woman to enter. After heated debate, a third option was elected: to secretly make the woman, for the duration of her visit, an honorary man. 4 A close observer of the story is drawn beyond the obvious anthropological issue, of how a woman is ritually made into a man, to more elusive questions: why bother at all?. What kinds of attraction are in play between the royal visitor and the club members which necessitate the unpleasant jostling of 'tradition'? I would suggest that, far from the mere unpleasant jostling of it, the negotiations revolve around the very making of 'tradition'. The club's continued elite reputation depends on such intermittent prestigious visitors. Similarly, the nobleman's reputation requires his circulation. 5 In order for his status to remain visible, he must from time to time allow himself to be honored by such well-bred company. Both parties' identities, under the rubric of 'tradition' are constructed in the meeting.
The approximation rather generically referred to as 'participant observation' entails a similar negotiation. Why all the bother by a 'traditional' religious group to transform an outside observer into a legitimate member of the social body? In my case, studying the Afro-Brazilian religion CandomblΓ©, why the lengthy series of initiations, a quite liberal 'making of the head' (fazer cabec ΒΈa)? On the other hand, why the effort and expense on the part of the scholar to participate in a 'traditional' Afro-Brazilian group? As in the story of the English men's club, I suspect that both parties have interests at stake. CandomblΓ© communities' 'traditional' identity, and the reputation of such, gain a rationalized form in the gaze of the scholar. Hobsbawm, for example, suggests that customary oral knowledge passes into 'tradition', with its attributes of fixity and formality, precisely by being written. 6 In this sense, the scholar is a primary agent in the demarcation and creation of 'traditional' Afro-Brazilian practices. The anthropologist, for his part, gains his professional identity qua anthropologist through contact during field-work with 'traditional' groups.
In these notes, I assess the problems and opportunities created out of the dialectic between 'tradition' and field-work. Part one illustrates the necessity and pervasiveness of 'tradition' in popular and Afro-Brazilian discourse. Part two considers the scholar's role in the construction of Afro-Brazilian 'traditions'. Part three examines what might be called a third moment in this dialectic: the use, within the community of CandomblΓ© itself, of the construct 'tradition' for the community's own identity and defense. Part four concludes with vital signs of 'traditions' less seduced by the anthropologist and suggestions towards a form of field-work less seduced by images of the 'traditional'.