Ritual

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Ritual

• 7.4.2005

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Discussion topics

• Conceptualizing ritual
• Definitions and typology
• Selected anthropological approaches
• Van Gennep, Gluckman, Turner, Bettelheim, Leach,
  Bloch
• Death rituals
• Hertz, Metcalf Huntington
• Video Mirja Metsolas Kuoleman juhlat (1991)

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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.

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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.

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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
• Debates upon the term and approaches
• C. Bell (1992) Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice
• C. Humphrey, J. Laidlaw (1994) Archetypal Actions
  of Ritual

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Types of ritual

• With respect to purpose
• Eg. Fertility, curing, rite of passage etc, etc.
• With respect to timing
• 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

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Anthropological approaches to ritual

• 19th c
• Evolutionary anthropology
• Inevitable discussion but not specified focus
• Esp. Frazer, Robertson-Smith
• I half of the 20th c
• Few focused studies
• Eg. Hertz, van Gennep
• II half of the 20th c
• Increasing attention
• 1950s/60s - British (structural) functionalism
• Eg. Gluckman, Turner

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Arnold van Gennep

• The Rites of Passage (1908)
• Focus on life crisis rituals
• 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
• Transition from room to room rites of passage
• common underlying pattern

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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

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(Structural) functionalism

• Britis anthropology in the 1950s and 60s
• Gluckman
• Turner gt symbolic approach
• Influence of Durkheim
• Emphasis on the integrative function of ritual
• gt supports social structure
• gt increases social solidarity

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Max Gluckman

• Maintaining social equilibrium is problematic
• conflicting values and principles
• conflicting interest groups
• gt ritualised conflicts rituals of rebellion
• exaggerate the real conflicts
• 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

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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 normally patriarchal society

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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 normally authoritarian society

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Max Gluckman

• gt 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
  institutions

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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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Critique of Gluckman

• Beidelman Swazi Royal Ritual (1966)
• inadequate interpretation
• Too much emphasis on conflict
• Too little on cosmology
• Incwala ritual
• Symbolic separation of the king from other people
• Frees him to assume the mystical powers
  associated with the kingship

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Victor Turner

• Betwixt and Between (1967)
• follows Van Genneps tripartite analysis
• Focus on liminal phase interstructural
  situation
• Ambiguous condition
• sexless or bisexual
• unclean or polluting
• embryo or dead
• Suspension of normative obligations
• Seclusion separated from normal life
• Dissemination of secret knowledge (the sacra)
• the crux of liminality

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Victor Turner

• The Ritual Process (1974)
• liminality is an expression of communitas
• dualistic model of social life
• Social structure
• system of social relationships, positions and
  statuses
• implies hierarchy and exploitation
• Communitas
• a metaphorical concept
• opposite to social structure
• marginal behaviour, groups and movements

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Victor Turner

• Features of communitas
• 1) association with certain characteristics and
  values
• submissiveness
• silence
• humility
• anonymity
• spontaneity
• immediacy
• homogeneity
• comradeship
• equality
• simplicity
• sacred

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Victor Turner communitas

• 2) association with certain groups, movements and
  behavior
• marginal states and outsiders (counterculture)
• shamans, diviners, mystics, mediums, priests,
  monks, hippies, gypsies
• advocates of poverty and renouncement of worldly
  property
• St Francis of Assisi, Buddha, Gandhi, Tolstoy
• millenarian movements, cults and sects
• reduction of all to the same status
• minimization of sexual distinctions
• abolition of rank
• total obedience to the prophet or cult leader
• pilgrimages
• retirement from the world
• stress of equality and bonding between pilgrims

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Victor Turner communitas

• 3) Tendency to become social structure
• Instutionalization
• Eg. Sect -gt church
• Routinization of charisma (Weber)
• Charismatic authority
• gt Traditional authority
• gt Legal-rational authority

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Critique of Turner

• social structure
• not all structural relationships unequal,
  impersonal and alienating
• communitas
• hierarchical nature of religious institutions
• relationship between religion and political
  authority
• the ideological nature of religion

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Other examples

• Bruno Bettelheim psychoanalytical approach
• 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.
• Edmund Leach strucuralist approach
• Time and false noses (1955)
• Time not experienced with sensory organs
• Rituals divide time into intervals
• gt Rituals structure time

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Other examples

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

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Death rituals

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

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Death rituals

• Studies of emotions
• 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

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Death rituals

• Metcalf and Huntington Celebrations of Death
  The Anthropology of Mortuary Ritual (1992)
• Berawan and Western death rituals
• Death as a rite of passage
• Biological vs social death
• Death and body

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Video

• Mirja Metsola Kuoleman juhlat (1991)