Ritual
A ritual is a set of actions, performed mainly for their symbolic value. It may be prescribed by a religion or by the traditions of a community. The term usually excludes actions which are arbitrarily chosen by the performers, or dictated purely by logic, chance, necessity, etc.
A ritual may be performed on specific occasions, or at the discretion of individuals or communities. It may be performed by a single individual, by a group, or by the entire community; in arbitrary places, or in places especially reserved for it; either in public, in private, or before specific people. A ritual may be restricted to a certain subset of the community, and may enable or underscore the passage between religious or social states.
The purposes of rituals are varied; with religious obligations or ideals, satisfaction of spiritual or emotional needs of the practitioners, strengthening of social bonds, social and moral education, demonstration of respect or submission, stating one's affiliation, obtaining social acceptance or approval for some event — or, sometimes, just for the pleasure of the ritual itself.
Rituals of various kinds are a feature of almost all known human societies, past or present. They include not only the various worship rites and sacraments of organized religions and cults, but also the rites of passage of certain societies, atonement and purification rites, oaths of allegiance, dedication ceremonies, coronations and presidential inaugurations, marriages and funerals, school "rush" traditions and graduations, club meetings, sports events, Halloween parties, veteran parades, Christmas shopping and more. Many activities that are ostensibly performed for concrete purposes, such as jury trials, execution of criminals, and scientific symposia, are loaded with purely symbolic actions prescribed by regulations or tradition, and thus partly ritualistic in nature. Even common actions like hand-shaking and saying hello may be termed rituals.
In psychology, the term ritual is sometimes used in a technical sense for a repetitive behavior systematically used by a person to neutralize or prevent anxiety; it is a symptom of obsessive-compulsive disorder.
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Ritual actions
Due to their symbolic nature, there are hardly any limits to the kind of actions that may be incorporated into a ritual. The rites of past and present societies have typically involved special gestures and words, recitation of fixed texts, performance of special music, songs or dances, processions, manipulation of certain objects, use of special dresses,++ consumption of special food, drink, or drugs, and much more. Religious rituals have also included animal sacrifice, human sacrifice, and ritual suicide. Ritual lamentation—song performed with weeping—in many societies was regarded as required to ritually carry the departed soul to a safe afterlife (Tolbert 1990a, 1990b; Wilce 2006).
Religious rituals
In religion, a ritual can comprise the prescribed outward forms of performing the cultus, or cult, of a particular observation within a religion or religious denomination. Although ritual is often used in context with worship performed in a church, the actual relationship between any religion's doctrine and its ritual(s) can vary considerably from organized religion to non-institutionalized spirituality, such as ayahuasca shamanism as practiced by the Urarina of the upper Amazon.[1] Rituals often have a close connection with reverence, thus a ritual in many cases expresses reverence for a deity or idealized state of humanity.
Social functions
Alongside the personal dimensions of worship and reverence, rituals can have a more basic social function in expressing, fixing and reinforcing the shared values and beliefs of a society.
Social rituals have formed a part of human culture for tens of thousands of years. The earliest known undisputed evidence of burial rituals dates from the Upper Paleolithic. (Older skeletons show no signs of deliberate 'burial', and as such lack clear evidence of having been ritually treated.) Anthropologists see social rituals as one of many cultural universals.
Rituals can aid in creating a firm sense of group identity. Humans have used rituals to create social bonds and even to nourish interpersonal relationships. For example, nearly all fraternities and sororities have rituals incorporated into their structure, from elaborate and sometimes "secret" initiation rites, to the formalized structure of convening a meeting. Thus, numerous aspects of ritual and ritualistic proceedings are engrained into the workings of those societies.
The social function of rituals has often been exploited for political ends.
Anthropological studies
Of particular interest to anthropologists has been the role of ritual in structuring life crises, human development, religious enactment and entertainment.
Among anthropologists, and other ethnographers, who have contributed to ritual theory are Victor Turner, Ronald Grimes, Mary Douglas, and the biogenetic structuralists. Anthropologists from Émile Durkheim through Turner and contemporary theorists like Michael Silverstein (2004) treat ritual as social action aimed at particular transformations often conceived in cosmic terms. Though the transformations can also be thought of as personal (e.g. the fertility and healing rituals Turner describes), they becomes a sort of cosmic event, one stretching into "eternity".
See also
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References
Bell, Catherine. (1997) Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions. New York: Oxford University Press.
Bloch, Maurice. (1992) Prey into Hunter: The Politics of Religious Experience. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
D'Aquili, Eugene G., Charles D. Laughlin and John McManus. (1979) The Spectrum of Ritual: A Biogenetic Structural Analysis. New York: Columbia University Press.
Douglas, Mary. (1966) Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo". London: Routledge.
Durkheim, Émile. (1912) The Elementary Forms Of The Religious Life.
Erikson, Erik. (1977) Toys and Reasons: Stages in the Ritualization of Experience. New York: Norton.
Gennep, Arnold van. (1960) The Rites of Passage. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
Grimes, Ronald L. (1994) The Beginnings of Ritual Studies. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press.
Malinowski, Bronisław. (1948) Magic, Science and Religion. Boston: Beacon Press.
McCorkle Jr., William W. (2010) Ritualizing the Disposal of Dead Bodies: From Corpse to Concept. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc.
Rappaport, Roy A. (1999) Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Smith, Jonathan Z. (1987) To Take Place: Toward Theory in Ritual. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Staal, Frits (1990) "Ritual and Mantras: Rules Without Meaning". New York: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc.
Turner, Victor W. (1969) The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company.
Durkheim, E. 1965 [1915]. The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. New York: The Free Press.
Fogelin, L. 2007. The Archaeology of Religious Ritual. Annual Review of Anthropology 36:55–71.
Seijo, F. 2005. The Politics of Fire: Spanish Forest Policy and Ritual Resistance in Galicia, Spain. Environmental Politics 14 (3): 380-402
Silverstein, M. 2003. Talking Politics :The Substance of Style from Abe to "W". Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press (distributed by University of Chicago). —. 2004. "Cultural" Concepts and the Language-Culture Nexus. Current Anthropology 45:621-652.
Tolbert, E. 1990a. Women Cry with Words: Symbolization of Affect in the Karelian Lament. Yearbook for Traditional Music 22:80-105. —. 1990b. "Magico-Religious Power and Gender in the Karelian Lament," in Music, Gender, and Culture, vol. 1, Intercultural Music Studies. Edited by M. Herndon and S. Zigler, pp. 41–56. Wilhelmshaven, DE.: International Council for Traditional Music, Florian Noetzel Verlag.
Turner, V. W. 1969. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. Harmondsworth: Penguin. —. 1967. The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.
Wilce, J. M. 2006. Magical Laments and Anthropological Reflections: The Production and Circulation of Anthropological Text as Ritual Activity. Current Anthropology 47:891-914.
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