Ritual

1
Ritual

• 29.11.2006

2
Readings

• Turner, V. 1969. The Ritual Process Structure
  and Anti-Structure. Chicago Aldine Publishing,
  pp. 94-113, 125-30. (Reprinted as Liminality and
  Communitas in Lambek).
• Metcalf, P., and R. Huntington 1991. Chapter 5
  Death Rituals and Life Values Rites of Passage
  Reconsidered. In Celebrations of Death The
  Anthropology of Mortuary Ritual. Cambridge
  Cambridge University Press.

3
Discussion topics

• Conceptualizing ritual
• Selected anthropological approaches

4
Selected definitions

• Durkheim (Elementary Forms of Religious Life)
• Rites are rules of conduct which prescribe how a
  man should comport himself in the presence of
  sacred objects.
• Marrett (Encyclopaedia Britannica)
• Ritual is a term of religion defined as the
  routine of worship. Ritual is to religion what
  habit is to life.
• Turner (Drums of Affliction)
• Prescribed formal behaviour for occasions not
  given over to technological routine, having
  reference to beliefs in mystical beings or
  powers.
• Firth (Elements of Social Organization)
• Ritual may be defined as a kind of patterned
  activity oriented towards the control of human
  affairs, primarily symbolic in character with a
  non-empirical referent, and a rule socially
  sanctioned.

5
Selected definitions

• Alexander
• Ritual defined in the most general and basic
  terms is a performance, planned or improvised,
  that effects a transition from everyday life to
  an alternative context within which everyday is
  transformed.
• Richards
• against looking for a dsingle and simple
  explanation
• single explanation would deny the nature of
  symbolism
• Debates upon the term and approaches
• C. Bell (1992) Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice
• C. Humphrey, J. Laidlaw (1994) Archetypal Actions
  of Ritual

6
Common features

• Ritual
• always associated with action
• always associated with formality
• Forms of action involved in ritual
• different from everyday life
• with different purposes (related to the meaning
  attached)
• Eg. ingesting bread during holy communion

7
Common features

• Rituals are associated with symbols / symbolic
  expression
• Tambiah Ritual is a culturally constructed
  system of symbolic communication.
• rituals have expressive value
• Eg. Geertzs study of the Balinese cockfight
• Symbolic equivalence
• the fighting cock ? social and sexual status of
  its male owner
• Cockfight ? social hierarchy, group solidarity,
  rivalry etc

8
Types of ritual

• With respect to purpose
• Eg. Fertility, curing, rite of passage etc.
• With respect to timing (Titiev)
• 1) calendrical rites
• Regular, cyclical
• Concerned with the natural world
• 2) critical rites / rites of passage
• Situational, occasional
• concerned with the social world
• La Fontaine
• life-crisis rituals
• transition from one age group to another
• Initiation rituals

9
Types of ritual

• Catherine Bell 6 categories of ritual action
• Rites of passage or life crisis rituals
• Calendrical and commemoriative rites
• Rites of exchange and communion
• Rites of affliction
• Rites of feasting, fasting and festivals
• Political rituals

10
Anthropological approaches to ritual

• 19th c
• Inevitable discussion but not specified focus
• Esp. Frazer, Robertson-Smith
• I half of the 20th c
• Few focused studies
• Eg. Hertz, van Gennep ( Durkheim)
• II half of the 20th c
• Increasing attention
• (structural) functionalism other approaches
• Eg. Gluckman, Turner

11
Robert Hertz

• Interest in death rituals
• "The Collective Representation of Death (1907)
• Study of burial practices in Borneo
• the dead buried twice
• Death
• not event but process
• transition to the world of spirits
• Metcalf and Huntington
• Celebrations of Death The Anthropology of
  Mortuary Ritual (1992)

12
Death rituals

• Studies of emotions during rituals
• Radcliffe-Brown
• Andaman Islanders (1922)
• crying during the death rituals is often
  ceremonial
• Godfrey Wilson (1930s)
• study of Nyakyusa rituals
• happy and noisy
• death is laughed at
• sadness is gendered (women cry, men dance)
• Metcalf and Huntington (1992)
• drums among the Berawans in Borneo
• Rhythm heartbeats
• Loudness vitality

13
Death rituals

• studies of death and body
• Metcalf and Huntington (1992)
• Body of the leader
• symbol for communal unity and well-being
• aging and death of the leader
• a danger to the whole community
• subject to various rituals
• kings (symbolically) killed before weakening (eg.
  Shilluk)
• kings buried alive (eg. Dinka)
• kings effigy during interregnum (France,
  England)

14
Arnold van Gennep

• The Rites of Passage (1908)
• Focus on life crisis rituals
• birth, puberty, marriage and death
• diminish the negative effects of these changes
• The life of an individual in any society is a
  series of passages from one age to another.
• Society a house
• rooms, doors, doorsteps / thresholds
• Limen threshold
• Transtion from room to room rites of passage
• common underlying pattern

15
Arnold van Gennep

• Rite of separation (preliminal/liminal phase)
• purification rites, the removal of hair,
  scarification
• Transition (liminal phase)
• person symbolically placed outside society
• suspension of normal rules
• application of taboos and restrictions
• Rite of incorporation (liminal/postliminal phase)
  
• transit to a new status
• lifting of restrictions

16
Arnold van Gennep

• Strong influence on Turner, ( Douglas, Leach,
  Bloch etc.)
• Criticism
• Bruce Lincoln Emerging from the Chrysalis (1991)
• Van Genneps model not applicable to female
  intitiation
• Less emphasis on passage
• Women usually initiated singly
• No bonding or communitas
• Focus on dressing and decoration rather than
  stripping
• Lincolns structure
• Enclosure metamorphosis/magnification
  emergence
• Women made to accept socialized cultural roles
• productive workers, faithful wives, nurturant
  mothers etc

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Anthropological approaches to ritual

• II half of the 20 c. two main approaches
• (Structural) functionalist approach
• supports social structure
• bolsters prevailing social order
• Marxist approach
• legitimizes social authority
• conceals prevailing social order
• Other
• Ritual as performance
• Psychoanalytical
• Structuralist
• Practice-centered

18
(Structural) functionalism

• British anthropology in the 1950s and 60s
• Esp. Gluckman
• Influence of Durkheim
• Emphasis on the integrative function of ritual
• supports social structure
• increases social solidarity
• Ritual a direct representation of society
  itself
• studying ritual tells us important things
  about society

19
Max Gluckman

• Maintaining social equilibrium is problematic
• conflicting values and principles
• conflicting interest groups
• ritualisation of conflicts
• exaggerate the existing tensions
• have a positive functional (cathartic) value
• eliminate the threat of disunity
• Rituals of Rebellion in South East Africa (1963)
• two examples of rituals of rebellion

20
Max Gluckman

• Agricultural rites performed by Zulu women
• beginning of the planting season
• in honor of the female spirit associated with
  rain, fertility
• involves obscene/abnormal behavior
• wearing mens garments
• milking the cows
• walking naked
• singing lewd songs
• Temporary dominant role of women
• in a normally patriarchal society

21
Max Gluckman

• The Incwala ceremony of the Swazi
• a royal ritual extending over several days
• performed annually on the occasion of the first
  fruits
• Involves
• sacred songs
• king hated and rejected by his subjects
• king walking naked in front of his people
• Temporary dominant role of masses
• in a normally authoritarian/hierarchical
  society

22
Max Gluckman

• Rituals of (symbolic) rebellion
• conducive to social well-being
• function as a mechanism of social unity
• Common in loosely integrated state systems
• where strong tensions but no controlling
  (secular) institutions

23
Critique of Gluckman

• Norbeck African Rituals of Conflict (1963)
• rituals may be periodic relaxations of social
  rules
• Zulu ceremonies
• also male rites of rebellion
• transvestism, sexual license, and obscene
  behavior
• characteristic of many types of ritual
• particularly widespread in boys circumcision
  rituals
• Incwala ceremony
• ritual drama portraying the dangers the King must
  face

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Marxist approach

• Maurice Bloch
• Emphasis on ideological function of ritual
• conceals prevailing social order
• legitimizes social authority
• From Blessing to Violence (1989)
• Ritual
• a form of ideology
• highly formalized
• restricts debate and contestation
• Prey into Hunter (1992)
• Ritual
• power of the transcendental over the everyday
• transcendental the sacred king

25
Bloch

• Association of rituals with violence
• Prey into Hunter (1992)
• rites of passage death of certain human
  features
• Orokaiva rituals in PNG
• spirits of the ancestors chase children
• promise to kill them and take them to initiation
  hut
• when get out of the hut, join the hunt for pigs
• Newborn possess both the features of humans and
  pigs
• Pig soul mortal
• Human soul immortal
• pigness killed during the ritual

26
Psychoanalytical approach

• Bruno Bettelheim
• Symbolic Wounds Puberty Rites and the Envious
  Male (1954)
• study of mens circumcision ritual
• Due to pregnancy envy
• Bleeding after circumcision
• an analogue of menstruation
• Burial as symbolic of sexual intercourse (eg. MH
  - Baras)
• Rebirth into the other world

27
Structuralist approach

• Edmund Leach
• Time and false noses (1955)
• Time not experienced with sensory organs
• Rituals divide time into intervals
• Rituals structure time

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Ritual as performance

• Schechner (1994)
• Ritual as performance of cultural drama
• Similarities between various types of performance
• eg, play, games, sports, theatre, and ritual
• special ordering of time
• non-productive value attached to objects
• special place set aside for performance
• Ritual vs theatre
• Determine by context and function
• Efficacy ? entertainment

29
Ritual as performance

• Efficacy Ritual
• Results
• Link to absend other
• Symbolic time
• Performer processed, in trance
• Audience participates
• Audience believes
• Criticism discouraged
• Collective creativity

• Entertainment Theater
• Fun
• Only for those there
• Emphasis now
• Performer knows what he or she is doing
• Audience watches
• Audience appreciates
• Criticism flourishes
• Individual creativity

30
Practice-oriented approaches

• Focus on practice and agency
• disjunction between interpretations of ritual by
  participants
• Ritual symbols read and interpreted in different
  ways
• Eg. anthropological approaches to carnival
• carnival
• a moment of genuine potential dissent
• with very real political consequences
• Abner Cohen (1993)
• A study of the Notting Hill carnival in London
• object of political, ethnic and racial conflict
• means of expressing these differences
• means by which these differences were constructed

31
Religious movements cargo cults
32
Readings

• Worsley, P. 1959. Cargo Cults. In Scientific
  American, Vol. 200, pp. 17-28. (Reprinted in
  Lehmann and Myers)
• Lattas Telephones, Cameras and Technology in
  West New Britain Cargo Cults (in Oceania 70, 2000)

33
Discussion topics

• Anthropology of social movements
• Linton, Wallace, Aberle
• General characterisitics of cargo cults
• Terminology
• Ethnographic examples from Melanesia/PNG
• Overview of major anthropological studies
• Cargo cults as madness / deviant behaviour
• Cargo cults as a political protest
• Cargo cults as a manifestation of local culture /
  mimicry

34
Nativistic movements

• Ralph Linton (1943)
• First attempt at systemic approach to non-Western
  social movements
• Nativistic movement
• "Any conscious, organized attempt on the part of
  a society's members to revive or perpetuate
  selected aspects of its culture."
• when the existence of culture is threatened
• by-product contact with other societies

35
Nativistic movements

• Two dimensions
• Revivalistic vs perpetuative
• Magical vs rational
• Revivalistic vs perpetuative
• Revivalistic nativism
• Revive extinct or moribund elements of culture
• eg. Celtic revival
• Perpetuative nativism
• perpetuate current elements of culture
• eg. Rio Grande pueblos

36
Nativistic movements

• Magical vs rational
• Magical nativism
• prophet
• apocalyptic and millennial aspects
• magical formula of revival
• Rational nativism
• Not necessarily millenarian
• psychological, not magical use of symbols
• reestablishment and maintenance of self-respect
• maintenance of social solidarity

37
Nativistic movements

• Hence four types of movements
• Revivalistic-magical
• Revivalistic-rational
• Perpetuative-magical
• Perpetuative-rational
• 1 and 4 most common
• General feature of all
• Emerge in culture contact
• dominant vs dominated culture
• situations of acculturation

38
Revitalization movements

• Anthony Wallace (1956)
• deliberate, organized, conscious effort by
  members of a society to construct a more
  satisfying culture.
• in societies undergoing rapid social change
• Various forms
• Nativistic movements
• Elimination of alien persons and values
• Revivalistic movements
• Revival of old customs and values
• Millenarian movements
• Apocalyptic world transformation
• Messianic movements
• A divine savior
• Cargo cults
• Importation of alien elements

39
David Aberle

• The Peyote Religion among the Navaho (1966)
• the most influential classification of NRMs in
  anthropology
• two dimensions social movements
• the locus of the change sought
• individuals
• supra-individual system (eg. political order)
• the amount of change sought
• Total / partial
• Four types of movements
• transformative movements
• total change in supra-individual systems
• reformative movements
• partial change in supra-individual systems
• redemptive movements
• total change in individuals
• alternative movements

40
Cargo cults

• Ethnographic context
• Melanesia, PNG, Polynesia
• Several hundred cargo cults described by
  anthropologists
• Historical context
• First described in 1893
• Most during / immediately after World War II

41
General characteristics

• Cargo
• kago in Melanesian Pidgin English
• manufactured goods possessed by Europeans
• (money)
• Produced by technologically-wise ancestors
• To be sent to the islands
• By ships and planes

42
General characteristics

• Prophet (man) with a millenarian message
• influence of Christianity syncretism
• New era
• sudden, miraculous transformation
• cargo will arrive
• the dead would come to life
• the whites would disappear
• skins of the faithful would turn white

43
General characteristics

• Specific courses of action to be taken
• Imitation of Western paraphernalia
• construction of airfields, docks, and warehouses
• mock airplanes
• flag-poles and mock radio masts
• Imitation of Western behaviour
• military-style marching and drilling
• Millenarian action
• Destruction of wealth

44
General characteristics

• Social conditions for the arrival of cargo
• social harmony and consensus
• setting aside disputes and sorcery
• sexual abstinence
• Reasons for cargo not arriving
• Westerners have stolen the industrial knowledge
• Westerners have hijacked the cargo boats and
  planes
• Locals do not follow necessary rules

45
General characteristics

• Short-lived (most till mid-1950s)
• Failure of prophecies
• Negative impact of colonial regimes
• suppression of cults
• detention of cult leaders
• Few exceptions
• Institutionalization into local churches
• The Christian Fellowship Church (Solomon Islands)
• Peli Association (Papua New Guinea)
• Institutionalization into political movements or
  parties
• Jon Frum movement (Tanna)
• Paliau Movement (Manus)

46
Terminology

• The term cargo cult
• 1945 Norris Bird in Pacific Islands Monthly
• Taken over by anthropologists
• Inselmann and Holkter 1946
• Mair 1948
• Popularized in 1950s and 60s
• Lawrence and Worsley
• major puzzle of post-World War II anthropology

47
Terminology

• Anthropological usage of the term in decline
• Misleading
• bundles together different phenomena
• Cargo material goods
• But other aspirations involved
• Pejorative
• Cult
• Movements as a diseased reaction to European
  contact
• Emphasis on irrationality, obsession
• In reality cultural creativity common to
  Melanesia

48
Ethnographic examples

• Several hundred in total
• Examples from Melanesia/PNG
• Tuka movement (Fiji)
• Vailala Madness (Vailala)
• Mambu movement (North-West New Guinea)
• Jon Frum Cult (Vanuatu)
• Marching Rule Movement (Solomon Islands)
• Paliau Movement (Manus Islands)
• Prince Philip movement (Vanuatu)

49
Tuka movement

• Fiji
• towards the end of the 19th century
• traditional Fijian priest, Ndugomoi
• Revivalist/millenarian
• revival of ancient religious practices
• traditional ceremonies
• return of the ancestors
• role reversal in which whites would serve locals
• Fattening of a white pig
• a symbol of the European
• to be slaughtered when the ancestors return

50
Vailala Madness

• The Evara on Vailala Island (Papua Gulf)
• Papuan 'Vailala madness' (of 1919)
• No central prophet but various local leaders
• Characteristics
• destruction of native ceremonial items
• return of the ancestors
• arrival of a world of material abundance
• hopes for a cargo ship manned by the ancestors
• foreigners driven away
• Altered states
• Trance, hysteria, bodily jerking and glossolalic
  speech
• Seized by the spirits of ancestors

51
Mambu movement

• North-west New Guinea (1930s)
• founded by Mambu "Black King"
• a convert to Roman Catholicism
• Prophesies
• arrival of a new era
• cargo wealth from Europeans to native peoples
• Conditions
• Not paying taxes
• Not sending children to missionary schools
• baptizing in water
• wearing European dress

52
Jon Frum Cult

• Tanna (Vanuatu, New Hebrides) - 1940s
• American troops
• Tannese recruited to work at military bases
• Impact on locals
• Material wealth
• Arriving by planes
• Egalitarianism of the Americans
• Black soldiers
• Americans left in 1946
• No more cargo

53
Jon Frum Cult

• Jon Frum
• a mythic messianic figure
• Jon "from" America
• the 'king of America'
• a god who lives in the crater of a mountain with
  an army
• conflation of Uncle Sam, Santa Claus and John the
  Baptist
• Jon Frum Day
• 15 February
• Frum arrives by plane with cargo
• various rituals

54
Jon Frum Cult

• Cultural inventions
• mock radio masts and stations
• landing strips
• warehouses
• khaki uniforms
• US flags
• red cross as a symbol (from army ambulances)
• New rituals
• military routines
• marching with bamboo rifles
• flag raising ceremony
• Revitalization of traditional practices
• dancing
• the use of kava
• restoration of pre-colonial residence patterns

55
Marching Rule Movement

• Solomon Islands
• the end of the 1940s
• US army clothing, marching
• similarities with Jon Frum movement

56
Paliau Movement

• Manus, Great Admiralty Islands
• 1950s
• founded by Paliau Maloat
• Studied by Margaret Mead
• New Lives for Old (1956)
• Beliefs
• total abandonment of tradition
• its replacement with European manners
• a successful political organization

57
Prince Philip movement

• Vanuatu, New Hebrides
• Prince Philip
• an ancestral spirit
• originally from Tanna
• head of the cargo suppliers
• Since the visit of 1974

58
Anthropological approaches

• Evolution of anthropological approach to cargo
  cults
• Psychological approach (1920s and 30s)
• Deviant/psychopathological behaviour
• Functionalist approach (1940s-80s)
• Reaction to external forces / political protest
• Culturalist / contextualist approach (1980s- )
• Manifestation of Melanesian culture / mimicry

59
Psychological approach

• 1920s and 30s
• Cargo cults as deviant / psychopathological
  behaviour
• Francis Williams
• The Vailala Madness and the Destruction of Native
  Ceremonies in the Gulf Division (1923)
• earliest study, governmental agenda
• abnormal psychology, madness,
  automaniac/deviant behaviour
• Vailala Madness initial term for cargo
  cult

60
Cargo cults as irrational?

• Ian Jarvie
• The Revolution in Anthropology (1964)
• Cargo cult desire for wealth pursued by
  irrational means?
• cargo cults are rational
• differences in information available, not quality
  of reasoning
• "rationality debate" of the 1960s
• "Rationality" edited by Bryan Wilson (1967)

61
Functionalist approach

• 1940s-80s
• Emphasis on psychological and social functions
• Cargo cults
• Melanesian version of universal millennarian
  movements
• founded in periods of social change and
  disruption
• response to relative deprivation
• Theories of "relative deprivation
• dominant in 1960s 1980s
• Charles Glock

62
Functionalist approach

• Manifest vs latent functions
• Manifest functions
• provide explanations of inequality
• Latent functions
• create unity to resist colonial or postcolonial
  oppressor
• provide a language of political protest

63
Functionalist approach

• Jean Guiart
• various studies of Jon Frum Cult
• Un Siècle et Demi de Contacts Culturels de Tanna,
  Nouvelles-Hebrides (1956)
• little impact upon anglophonic anthropology
• Cargo
• not just material objects
• symbol of the desire for development
• Cargo cults
• response to the colonial system
• forerunners of Melanesian nationalism
• focus on social cooperation and collective action

64
Functionalist approach

• Peter Worsley
• The Trumpet Shall Sound (1957/1968)
• an influential overview of the cargo literature
• Kenelm Burridge
• Mambu A Study of Melanesian Cargo Movements and
  Their Social and Ideological Background (1960)
• political / social conditions emergence of
  cargo cults
• Peter Lawrence
• Road Belong Cargo (1964)
• Five movements of Madang District in northern New
  Guinea
• translated into Tok Pisin
• sacred text in parts of New Guinea

65
Culturalist / contextualist approach

• 1980s-
• Cross-cultural comparison
• Eg. Garry Trompf Cargo Cults and Millenarian
  Movements Transoceanic Comparisons of New
  Religious Movements (1990)
• Deconstruction and nativization of the term
• Eg. Lamont Lindström Cargo Cult Strange Stories
  of Desire from Melanesia and Beyond (1993)
• Culturalist / contextualist approach
• Cargo cults particular Melanesian form of
  creativity and cultural imagination
• Reflection of fundamental patterns of Melanesian
  culture
• Reflection (mimicry, parody) of Western culture

66
Culturalist / contextualist approach

• I Exchange of goods and wealth objects
• creating and maintaining social relationships
• II Generous gift-giving
• to earn social reputation and political influence
• III Big Men
• charismatic leaders
• attract followers by managing the exchange of
  goods

67
Culturalist / contextualist approach

• IV Belief in ancestral powers
• fertility of people, gardens, and pigs
• traditional ceremonies that ensure ancestral
  benevolence
• V Spiritual communication with ancestors
• in dreams
• hints of the future, and instruction for proper
  living
• VI Melanesian structure of time and social
  transformation
• episodic rather than developmental
• sudden transformations as normal
• one cosmic order may replace another at any
  moment