Ritual as metaphor

The explanations of ritual practices observed in archaeological contexts often proceed on the representationalist basis that the human mind contains the social constituted ideas or representations that underpin the practice of rituals. Such a view remains widespread and, despite the often proclaimed rejection in contemporary theory of the Cartesian mind-body and other dualisms, it perpetuates the Enlightenment representationalist heritage according to which mental contents represent social reality and, as such, drive ritual practices and human action more generally. This article illustrates the meaning and value of rejecting such a representationalist view of human (ritual) action in favour of what we call an institutional view. In such a view, a ritual can be conceived as a form of recurring activity involving temporally and geographically dispersed actors active in differing roles and hence also with differing interests and levels of knowledge of the ritual and the associated belief system.

In E Østrem, MB Bruun, NH Petersen & J Fleischer (eds), Genre and Ritual: The Cultural Heritage of Medieval Rituals. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, pp. 49-64., 2005

An approach to ritual involving a development of the concept of the virtual whereby ritual practice can constantly maintain relevance in ongoing changing realities

2008

Can a theory be extrapolated based solely on a single ethnographic study? Can the examination of a single form of ritual suffice to create a blanket research method which is applicable to all forms of ritual? Is meaning merely a construct which participants lull themselves into believing that ritual possesses? And does intentionality have an effect on the consideration of meaning within ritual? I will attempt to elucidate several aspects of the responses to these questions within the context of James Laidlaw and Caroline Humphrey’s work, The Archetypal Actions of Ritual. I will also comment upon and demonstrate the difficulties inherent in the creation of the authors’ model of ritual theory.

Yearbook for Liturgical and Ritual Studies/Jaarboek voor Liturgie-Onderzoek, 2011

The authors inquire into the special quality which has the ability to transform non-ritual action into ritual action – ritualization. Borrowing concepts and terminology from the complex theory of James Laidlaw and Caroline Humphrey, the article demonstrates that non-ritual action – once transformed by ritualization – becomes ‘deliberately non-intentional’. At the same time, it also shows that even though Humphrey and Laidlaw’s theory provides a firm terminological frame, it is mistaken in the conclusion that ritualization is limited solely to the context of established rituals and that rituals themselves are phenomena primarily static, subject to little or no change. In the subsequent argumentation it builds on the method of Ronald L. Grimes and within the frame of his discourse strives to show that ritualization, as the dynamic quality of both emerging and established rituals, is sustained by the ritualists’ corporeality and that it is only by bodily comprehending the physical value of ritual action that we can study the foundations of rituals themselves. It tries to demonstrate that it is possible to develop a certain ‘sensitivity’ to ritualization in its many forms through physical training of a special type and explain in what way this training applies to the concept of ‘deliberate non-intentionality’ characteristic of ritualization. This will be done through an ac- count of a teaching technique called dialogical performance, which was founded in the year 1968 by professor Ivan Vyskoil and which is practiced today at the Theatre Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (the Czech Republic). The authors argue that developing such sensitivity to bodily expressions should form an integral part of training for those scholars who wish to investigate rituals in the field.

EUROPEAN HUMANITIES STUDIES: State and Society

The paper addresses the importance of crosscultural notions' studies in terms of anthropological paradigm development. In the focus of a research lies the notion of a ritual as an interdisciplinary issue hence the fact of it being utilized by the range of various scientific branches. Ritual is analyzed from its anthropological, ethological, historical, sociological, philosophical, lingual, cultural, religious, cognitive and psychological aspects. The work explicates the original value of ritual performance. Moreover, the research crystallizes the issues of myth-ritual relation. The genesis of language and culture and the process of worldview formation are viewed with respect to their ritualized character.

Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 2003

Caste and Equality in India, 2021

Chapter 8 depicts and analyses the festival of the local goddess, Rāmacaṇḍī. I suggest that we can identify potential cultural resources in the ritual that provide the foundations of people’s moral–ethical agency for overcoming the postcolonial predicament. The ritual goes through three phases: (a) the arrival of the goddess’s power from the forest into the fort-village through the tribal medium, which manifests the value of ontological equality; (b) the union of the divine power with the royal authority mediated by the brāhmaṇa priest, which affirms the value of hierarchy; and (c) the consumption of the product of the union in the form of sacrificial meat, which represents the value of the centrality of power. I argue that this ritual can be seen as an enactment of the sacrificial drama of regeneration, where the three values and social configurations of ‘equality’, ‘hierarchy’ and ‘centrality’ unfold and interact to reproduce the community. The three phases of the ritual represent ‘revolving values’ which are legitimate, plural and multifaceted cultural resources utilised by the people to valorise their existence as well as their social practices. This chapter also analyses how the ritual form and the structure of patronage changed historically (‘ritual in history’) and how the ritual invokes historical memory in the form of myths, legends and family narratives (‘history in ritual’). The ritual can be said to be a representation of local history not in terms of linear transformation but of an accumulation of the past: tribals worshipping the goddess, the gradual migration of peasant-warriors and other caste members into the area, the chief challenging and being defeated by the medium/goddess, royal patronage of the goddess in the form of royal sacrifice, the introduction of the new rich as new patrons of the ritual during the colonial era etc. The entanglement of history and ritual enable the people to reflect upon their past and present. This has the effect of not only legitimising the status and power of the upper castes but also unsettling their hegemony by calling into question the prevailing practices. In the postcolonial situation, there is, on the one hand, the hegemonic attempt by the old and new elites to ritually assert the colonially constructed structure of status and power and, on the other hand, also the subaltern attempts to emphasise the importance of devotion and service, thus placing weight on ontological equality in the face of divine power. It is noteworthy that, in the ritual, there is an increasing number of people making offerings individually and approaching the medium/goddess directly on the hill outside the village. Also, the medium/goddess now enters every house, instead of a chosen few as in the past, to bless family members, particularly married women who cannot come out in public. These changes suggest that more emphasis is now placed on the devotion and service of individuals and direct ties and contact with the goddess. Here, we observe dilemma and contestation between the superalternate values of hierarchy and centrality and the subalternate value of ontological equality. In this way, the ritual not only leads to the reproduction of the structure of status and power, but also illustrates the potential of subaltern resistance against the hegemonic structure.

Social Analysis, 48, no. 2: 1-32, 2004

Calvin, who introduces this collection of essays on ritual in its own right, understands ritual as well as many anthropologists. Calvin is dramatizing thematics that I am trying to avoid. Complaining about the peanut butter, spoiled because his mother did not observe the proper ritual for scooping it out, he is telling us: do the ritual correctly. It exists because it has a function-control. Perform control in your ritual, and you will have control in your life. The ritual of how to scoop out peanut butter is a representation of life. Living produces its own symbols, its own reflections, and these are the ritual, existing to enact themes of living-here that of control. The ritual has meaning, otherwise why the argument