Lecture 7
Introduction to Ritual
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What is ritual, why is it important
Lecture structure
• Definitions: biological, psychological, functional,
expressive/ communicative.
• Theories: Durkheim, Turner.
• Examples: funerals.
Next lecture (first week of new term);
• Rites de passage?
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Ritual
•
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTSTojpCZhs
•
Al Jazeera's Teresa Bo attends the Tinku festival in Bolivia, where thousands of
indigenous people gather for a ritual that involves fighting until blood is spilt
on the ground. The blood is thought to guarantee a good harvest.
•
•
Budhist healing ritual
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmHAx5o0gj0
•
dhapi' initiation ceremony for a Djinba boy in north-central Arnhem Land.
Djinang-, Djinba- and Burarra-speaking clanspeople participated in this
ceremony, which reached its conclusion on the final day with the
circumcision of the young boy (Dhuwa moiety).
Powerful scene of men enacting shark, after the circumcision of the boy.
Actual 'cutting' scene is not shown, nor other sensitive or restricted material.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bwSfMscIZ0&NR=1
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Videos of state, secular and healing
rituals
• Graduation
• http://video.google.co.uk/videosearch?q=haka+site%3Anz&hl=en&e
mb=0&aq=f#q=graduation+ceremony+&hl=en&emb=0
• Coronation
• http://www.vimeo.com/148912
• Openning of Parliament Blackrod
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20eRxRNua7Q&mode
=related&search=
• Haka
• http://video.google.co.uk/videosearch?q=haka+site%3Anz&hl=en&e
mb=0&aq=f#
• Christening
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2FIl8njWSE
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Roy Rappaport. Ritual and Religion in the Making
of Humanity. 1999 Cambridge University Press. p.24
•
•
•
“I take the term “ritual” to denote the
performance of more or less invariant
sequences of formal acts and utterances not
entirely encoded by the performers….
First this definition encompasses much more
than religious behaviour. Psychiatrists, for
instance, have used “ritual” rather similarly
conceived, or the closely related if not
synonymous term “ceremony”, to refer both to
the pathological stereotyped behaviours of
some neurotics (Freud 1907) and to certain
conventional , repetitive but nevertheless
adaptive interactions between people (Erikson
1966:337).
In sociology and anthropology “ritual” and “ceremony” many designate a
large range of social events, not all of which are religious, or may denote
the formal aspects of such events …and application of the term has not
been restricted to human phenomena. ”
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Victor Turner A Forest of Symbols Cornell
University Press 1967 p.19
• “By “ritual” I mean prescribed formal
behaviour for occasions not given over
to technological routine, having
reference to beliefs in mystical beings
or powers. The symbol is the smallest
unit of ritual which still retains the
specific properties of ritual behaviour;
it is the ultimate unit of specific
structure in a ritual context.
• A “symbol” is a thing regarded by
general consent as naturally typifying
or representing or recalling something
by possession of analogous qualities
or by association in fact or thought.”
http://www.wou.edu/las/socsci/anthro/turner.gif
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Durkheim: sacred and profane
• “Durkheim defines religion in terms of a
distinction between the sacred and the
profane. Sacred object and symbols, he
holds, are treated as apart from the routine
aspects of existence – the realm of the
profane.
• What is the origin of the sacred? According
to Durkheim totems or other sacred objects
are the symbol of the group itself; it stands
for the values central to the group or
community. The reverence which people feel
for the totem actually derives from the
respect they hold for central social values. In
religion, the object of worship is actually
society itself.
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Durkheim: sacred and profane
• Durkheim strongly emphasizes the fact
that religions are never just a matter of
belief. All religions involve regular
ceremonial and ritual activities, in what
a group of believers meets together. In
collective ceremonials, a sense of
group solidarity is affirmed and
heightened.
• Ceremonials take individual away from
the concerns of profane social life into
an elevated sphere, in which they feel
in contact with higher forces. These
higher forces attributed to totems,
divine influences or gods, are really the
expression of the influence of the
collectivity over the individual. [c.f. The
Elementary Forms of Religious Life]
•
http://www.prov.vic.gov.au/native
police/images/Im11-L.jpg
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Durkheim cont.
• Ceremony or ritual is Durkheim’s view are
essential to bind members of groups
together. This is why they are found not
only in regular situations of worship but in
the various life crises at which major
social transitions are experienced, for
example birth, marriage and death. In
virtually all societies, ritual and ceremonial
procedures are observed at such
gatherings. Durkheim reasons that
collective ceremonials reaffirm group
solidarity at a time when people are
forced to adapt to major changes in their
lives.
• Funeral rituals demonstrate that the values of the group outlive the
passing of particular individuals, and so provide a means for
bereaved people to adjust to their altered circumstances. Mourning
is not the spontaneous expression of grief – or, at least, it is only so
for those personally affected by the death. Mourning is a duty
imposed by the group.” Anthony Giddens Sociology Polity 1989 p.459
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Expressive function of ritual
• “Life always throws up threat to ontological
security – suffering and misery, calamities and
disasters, the inhuman actions of some of our
fellow beings and so on – that are hard to
explain. From this perspective, non-scientific
knowledge and beliefs are necessary to help us
make sense of such senseless features of our
lives.
• They do this in two ways:
– they give us explanations that help us cope; and
– they offer us ways of behaving that allow us to
express our desire for meaning and order in our
world.
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Expressive function of ritual
• Symbolic anthropology argues that ritual, for example,
should be seen as a kind of language, allowing those
who engage in it to symbolise their feelings about the
world – it enables them to articulate, through action, the
way they would like the world to be. Therefore, even if a
rite seems to be aimed at a particular goal, and even if
its participants describe this as its purpose, its real
significance lies elsewhere. That is, ritual works in the
same way that any language works – as a means of
expression”
• Bilton et al 2002 Introductory Sociology. Palgrave,
p.425-6
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Expressive character of ritual
• “[T]he whole procedure, or rite,
has an essentially expressive
aspect, whether or not it is
thought to be effective
instrumentally as well. In every
rite something is being said as
well as done. The man who
consults a rain-maker, and the
rain-maker who carries out a
rain-making ceremony, are
stating something: they are
asserting symbolically the
importance they attach to rain
and their earnest desire that it
should fall when it is
required…
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Expressive character of ritual
• [O]nce the essential expressive,
symbolic character of ritual.. has
been understood, it becomes
easier to answer the question
often asked: how is it that so
many people continue to believe
in and practise magic, without
either noticing its ineffectiveness
or attempting to test it empirically
as they test their practical
techniques. It is simply that there
would be no point in doing so, for
if and insofar as the rite is
expressive… it would be
inappropriate, even meaningless,
to put them to the kinds of test
which might disprove them.”
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a0/Potawatomi_rain_dance.gif
(Beattie, 1964, pp. 203-4)
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Kinds of ritual
• Victor Turner says - Ndembu rituals fall into two main types:
• Life Crisis Rituals : an important point in the physical or social
development of an individual, such as birth, puberty, or death.
…ceremonies or rituals designed to mark the transition from one
phase of life or social status to another…. What ever society we live
in we are all related to one another; out “big moments” are “big
moments” for others as well. examples - initiation ceremonies and
funeral ceremonies.
• Rituals of Afflication: Response to disease or misfortune. …
Ndembu have come to associate misfortune in hunting, women’s
reproductive disorders, and various forms of illness with the action of
the spirits of the dead. Furthermore, whenever, an individual has
been divined to have been “caught” buy such a spirit, he or she
becomes the subject of an elaborate ritual, which many people from
far and near attend, devised at once to propitiate and to get rid of
the spirit that is though to be causing the trouble.
• Haviland uses the terms: Rites of passage which pertain to stages in
the life cycle of the individual and rites of intensification which take
place during a crisis in the life of the group serving to bind
individuals together.
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Types of ritual by function
• 1. Cyclical rituals: weekly, seasonal, annual, which have
religious and communal functions; Sunday church,
harvest festival, Christmas dinner, state opening of
Parliament, Armistice day, ‘Obby ‘Os day etc.
• 2. Ad hoc rituals: enacted at specific times of crisis or
celebration for individuals or communities; rain making,
ritual cures, scoring a goal, greeting and farewell, etc.
• 3. Life stage transition rituals (rites de passage):
baptism, initiation, marriage, funeral, etc.
When do we send cards and give presents?
– Christmas, birthdays, mothers day
– Illness,
– birth, graduation, weddings, confirmation, retirement,
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What is the role of ritual in modern
western society?
• Secularisation
• Secular rituals
– Graduation
– State ritual
• Do they follow the same logic?
• Symbolic and ritual pluralism
– Diversity
– Individualisation
• What about modern secular funerals?
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Western funerals
• Ritualising death in the face of
secularisation and individualisation
• Diversity of disposal sites
• Diversity of ritual including secular and
custom designed
• Green funerals
• Pet funerals
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Ritual change; new forms of funeral
ritual
• Laying flowers at the
site of a sudden death
– Death by car accident
http://www.scu.edu.au/schools/arts/me
dia/showcase/journalism/images/devoti
onImage1.gif
http://www.virtualtucsonmagazine.com/main/sacred/images/matt.jpg
http://www.bath.ac.uk/news/images/roadside.jpg
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Ritual change; new forms of funeral
ritual
• Making the site, sacred and special with
memorials
– Not in home
– Special e.g. football ground, favourite walk
• Sacred geography, sacred time
• Special language “laid to rest”, “coming to
terms with”, “letting go”
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Further reading
• Death, mourning, and burial : a cross-cultural reader
/ edited by Antonius C.G.M. Robben. Oxford :
Blackwell, 2004.
• Barley, Nigel. Dancing on the grave : encounters with
death / Nigel Barley. London : John Murray, 1995
• Kate V. Hartig, and Kevin M. Dunn (March 1998)
“Roadside Memorials: Interpreting New Deathscapes in
Newcastle, New South Wales” Australian Geographical
Studies Vol.36(1):5-20
•
http://ejscontent.ebsco.com/ContentServer/FullTextServer.asp?format=fulltext&ciid=FB288FFF49
6DF24576E5583F7BFCD3294CFD7338FDCE507EFABE7C29542FB5E929AB2CB0360FD225&f
tindex=1&ext=.pdf
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