International rituals: An analytical framework and its theoretical repertoires (original) (raw)
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Ritual performance and the politics of identity: On the functions and uses of ritual
Journal of Historical Pragmatics, 2003
The theory of ritual presented in this article is based on the notion of “territory.” Ritual performance encompasses a set of techniques to affect the identity of participants: away from individuality and by communal demarcation of a symbolic territorial model in space or time. The form of ritual is seen as autonomous, i.e. as relatively independent of meaning. As a set of identity-affecting techniques, the elements of ritual can be integrated into both religious and secular settings. There is a natural tension between individuality, responsibility and the potentially totalitarian implications of ritual discourse. Ritual is claimed to be relatively harmless with respect to the symbolic territories of designated “sacred spaces”, while it is considered dangerous under conditions of “overflow”, when the elements of ritual are brought into public space. The harmful secular religions of the past two centuries are discussed, culminating in a plea for the separation between Ritual and State.
Homiletic, 2012
Travel to a foreign country provides opportunities, sometimes frustrating and other times enjoyable, to discover and experience different languages, cultures, and social and religious rituals. We learn not only about other people, we also gain new insights and clarity about ourselves. When we read books that lie outside our areas of expertise, new vistas appear, which can deepen and enrich our own discipline. Brosius and Polit's edited work is a double journey, intellectual and cultural. In this edited collection, scholars interested in cultural anthropology engage questions of identity, culture, ritual, and politics given a globalized, postmodern world, relying mostly on illustrations taken from the India's diverse and rich society. The journey begins with an observation that in an increasingly globalized world, ritualized performances "are not clearly tied to and defined via national territories and identities." (2) Moreover, the book, the editors note, is a response to the tendency of UNESCO to treat rituals as heritage and the political and societal implications for doing so. The authors raise new questions about ritual and heritage and their relation to politics, power, and commodification of rituals. Questions arise, as well, about the relation between ritual and communal and social identity, especially given the movement within and between nations or groups of people and their respective cultures. What are the social and communal functions of rituals? How are rituals related to heritage-a creative process of individual and group imagination conveying intangible meanings? (21) What is the relationship between ritual and culture, given the fluidity of movement between and among groups in a pluralistic society? Who owns ritual performances? The authors of these intriguing chapters take pains to define ritual, heritage, and identity as they take up these and other questions from the perspective of cultural anthropology and the laboratory of Indian society. There are always reluctant travelers who must be given good reasons to embark. I believe this may be true of some readers who are ensconced in their own traditions and rituals. A detailed review of the various chapters of the book may provide people with enough information to entice them to read it, but space limitations make this approach impossible. Instead, I suggest several benefits one may obtain in reading this book and, if not the whole book, various chapters that spark one's interest. Let me first note that, as ministers and seminary professors, religious rituals and the Judeo-Christian traditions are our bread and butter. We recognize that the practice of our rituals and heritage provide the basis for religious identity and community in a society that is increasingly complex, varied, and secular. One benefit of this book is that it provides clear definitions and illustrates how concepts such as ritual and heritage are integral to individual, social, and communal identity. Another important advantage of this book is that it shifts our perspective, helping us to see the growing impact of globalization vis-à-vis our own religious heritages and "performances" of ritual. Many ethnically rooted Christian denominations in the U.S. are losing members, suggesting that some of our religious rituals and heritages may be slowly moving to museum status. The loss of members for some may be gain for others. Brosius and Polit's book also provides a way of thinking about cultural fluidity and changes vis-à-vis those cultural and religious rituals that become moribund, while others gain in importance. A related benefit of this book is its addressing how macro variables such as political and economic systems, can both shape ritual performances, as well as undermine them. Put differently, there are occasions when
Reassembling Democracy: Ritual as Cultural Resource
Bloomsbury eBooks, 2020
democracy: Democracy and hospitality in times of crisis Agnes Czajka 37 Part 2 Reassembling communities 3 Enchanting democracy: Facing the past in Mongolian shamanic rituals Gregory Delaplace 53 4 Indigenous rituals remake the larger-than-human community Graham Harvey 69 5 Becoming autonomous together: Distanced intimacy in dances of self-discovery Michael Houseman 87 6 Walking pilgrimages to the Marian Shrine of Fátima in Portugal as democratic explorations Anna Fedele 7 The interreligious Choir of Civilizations: Representations of democracy and the ritual assembly of multiculturalism in Antakya, Turkey Jens Kreinath Part 3 Commemoration and resistance 8 The ritual powers of the weak: Democracy and public responses to the 22 July 2011 terrorist attacks on Norway Jone Salomonsen 9 The flower actions: Interreligious funerals after the Utøya massacre Ida Marie Høeg 9781350123014_txt_print.indd 5 28-07-2020
The emergence of a supranational political order has given rise to new political rituals. Empirical examples are: the dramatisation of European governance via a European ceremonial, the celebration of European memory in Europe Day, the European anthem and voting in European elections. These European rituals in the making pose many theoretical questions. Given the difficulty today of inventing traditions in relativist and disenchanted societies, the possible obsolescence of the notion of ritual itself may be put at stake. The configuration of the European political system leads to more specific considerations. In a multi-level polity, the centre (Brussels) is challenged by national peripheries as master of ceremonies and its ability to stimulate or enforce a common narrative that underlies homogeneous rituals in member states is far from obvious. The development of European symbolism is more likely to follow well-established, national paths and pass via a crossfertilisation of national and supranational references. These national processes may facilitate the incorporation of the European dimension in national identities and practices but not their articulation in trans-national and/or supranational schemes. Within national societies themselves, European rituals offer different opportunity structures to domestic political and cultural actors, either by reinforcing existing patterns or by promoting alternative forces to take advantage of new resources that are more in tune with European integration. To this extent, European rituals may as much be instruments of social integration as of social fragmentation. 7. Goffman E., Les Rites d'interaction, Paris, Éditions de Minuit, 1974, p. 43, p. 85. 8 Medrano J. D., Framing Europe. Attitudes to European Integration in Germany, Spain and the United Kingdom, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2003. 9. Abélès M., Politique de la survie, Paris, Flammarion, 2006, p. 94. 10. Ibid., p. 104-105. 11. Ibid., p. 135-155. 12 This is not to be taken as an idealised vision of rituals that have also been mechanisms of domination, division and alienation, as well as vectors of protest by the established authority or the community through counter-uses or diversion.
Rituals of world politics: On (visual) practices disordering things
Critical Studies on Security, 2020
Rituals are customarily muted into predictable routines Aimed to stabilise social orders and limit conflict. As a result, their magic lure recedes into the background, and the unexpected and disruptive elements are downplayed. Our collaborative contribution counters this move by foregrounding rituals of world politics as social practices with notable disordering effects. We engage a series of ‘world pictures’ to show the worlding and disruptive work enacted in rituals designed to sustain the sovereign exercise of violence and war, here colonial treatymaking, state commemoration, military/service dog training, cyber-security podcasts, algorithmically generated maps, the visit of Prince Harry to a joint NATO exercise and border ceremonies in India, respectively. We do so highlighting rituals’ immanent potential for disruption of existing orders, the fissures, failures and unforeseen repercussions. Reappraising the disordering role of ritual practices sheds light on the place of rituals in rearticulating the boundaries of the political. Rituals can generate dissensus and re-divisions of the sensible rather than only impose a consensus by policing the boundaries of the political, as Rancière might phrase it. Our images are essential to the account. They help disinterring the fundamentals and ambiguities of the current worldings of security, capturing the affective atmosphere of rituals.
The nature and function of ritual forms: A sociological discussion
Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses, 1980
This article sets forth a general sociological theory about the nature and-&dquo; function of ritual forms, differentiates among various kinds of rituals in relation to their manifest ritual objectives and latent social functions, and analyzes the contemporary shifts in ritual practices from the perspective of these conceptual assumptions.' 1 1 Phenomenological and functional characteristics of ritual forms Sociologists have often commented disparagingly on ritual activities. Like Merton they have tended to view rituals as meaningless routines, as unthinking habituated activities, or as the overly elaborated ceremonies accompanying certain kinds of political or religious practices. Protestant religious thinkers too have often viewed rituals critically because they sensed that a preoccupation with rites and liturgies detracted attention away either from real, inner religious experiences or from responsible moral action.2 These criticisms arise in part because of a failure to distinguish between rituals as cultural codes and certain stylized and habituated forms of behaviour, which may be acted out in keeping with these codes, and, in part, because of religious and moral critiques of particular rituals or ritualisms rather than ritual action as such. Rituals are cultural 1 This paper is based in part upon a research project, made possible by a grant from the Quebec Government's Ministry of Education, to study New Religious and Para-Religious Movements in the Montreal area. An earlier version of this paper was delivered as part of the Maurice Manel lectures in Symbolic Interaction at York University under the title: 'Symbolic Action in Contemporary Cults.' In its present form the paper was presented at the annual meeting of the Association for the Sociology of Religion, August 1979. I am indebted to other members of this research project, including Judith Castle,
Ritual and authority in world politics
Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 2021
The contributions to this Forum on Ritual and Authority in World Politics examine the role that ritual performances play in the constitution of positions of authority and the maintenance of relations of authority in historical and contemporary international relations. The Forum takes as its point of departure three related observations: (i) that recent years have witnessed a remarkable upsurge of interest in ritual as a recurring feature of international practice, but (ii) that this recent interest in ritual has not extended, thus far, to the study of international authority, (iii) in spite of political anthropologists' long-standing claim that the performance of ritual is absolutely crucial to the production of authority. The performance of ritual grounds, makes tangible and enhances various forms of authority, including forms of international authority, historical and contemporary. The contributions to this Forum demonstrate the veracity of that claim in five different empirical contexts-Byzantine diplomacy, early modern cross-cultural encounters, British imperialism in India, military lawyering in America's armed forces, and the casting of ballots in Crimea and the US-and attempt also to explain precisely how it is that ritual served to undergird and stabilise authority in these various instances.