Rites of Passage

Lead in

1 Look at the pictures. Describe what you can see. Do you think the pictures may be somehow connected?

2 What do you know about rites of passage? Read an extract from the Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology and give a definition to the "rite of passage".

The term rite of passage was first used in anthropology to encapsulate rituals that symbolize the transition of an individual or a group from one status to another, or to denote the passage of calendrical time, but soon it was embraced in other disciplines. The concept was developed by the Durkheimian anthropologist Arnold Van Gennep in Les Rites de passage (1909), in which he explored the nature of ceremonies that mark personal or collective changes of identity (childbirth, puberty, marriage, motherhood, and death), as well as collective celebrations of seasonal change (Easter, harvest). Because rites of passage belong to sacred time (not the profane of everyday life), their performance is formalized. The initiate(s) are placed in a symbolically subordinate position vis-à-vis those who have been initiated (elders, married, mothers) and have to go through elaborate “trials” (isolation, humiliation, fasting) before they are accepted back into the community.

Reading and Vocabulary

1 Read the first part of the entry from Encyclopedia Britannica about the rites of passage and answer the questions after the text.

Rite of passage

WRITTEN BY:

Bobby C. Alexander, Edward Norbeck

Rite of passage, ceremonial event, existing in all historically known societies, that marks the passage from one social or religious status to another.

Many of the most important and common rites of passage are connected with the biological crises, or milestones, of life—birth, maturity, reproduction, and death—that bring changes in social status and, therefore, in the social relations of the people concerned. Other rites of passage celebrate changes that are wholly cultural, such as initiation into societies composed of people with special interests—for example, fraternities. Rites of passage are universal, and presumptive evidence from archaeology (in the form of burial finds) strongly suggests that they go back to very early times. One aspect of rites of passage that is often overlooked by interpreters (perhaps because it appears obvious) is the role of the rites in providing entertainment. Passage rites and other religious events have in the past been the primary socially approved means of participating in pleasurable activities, and religion has been a primary vehicle for art, music, song, dance, and other forms of aesthetic experience.

The worldwide distribution of these rites long ago attracted the attention of scholars, but the first substantial interpretation of them as a class of phenomena was presented in 1909 by the French anthropologist and folklorist Arnold van Gennep, who coined the phrase rites of passage. Van Gennep saw such rites as means by which individuals are eased, without social disruption, through the difficulties of transition from one social role to another. On the basis of an extensive survey of preliterate and literate societies, van Gennep held that rites of passage consist of three distinguishable, consecutive elements: separation, transition, and reincorporation—or, respectively, preliminal, liminal, and postliminal stages (before, at, and past the limen [Latin: “threshold”]). The person (or persons) on whom the rites centre is first symbolically severed from his old status, then undergoes adjustment to the new status during the period of transition, and is finally reincorporated into society in his new social status. Although the most commonly observed rites relate to crises in the life cycle, van Gennep saw the significance of the ceremonies as being social or cultural, celebrating important events that are primarily sociocultural or human-made rather than biological.

No scheme of classification of passage rites has met with general acceptance, although many names have been given to distinguishable types of rites and to elements of rites. The name purification ceremonies, for example, refers to an element of ritual that is very common in rites of passage and also in other kinds of religious events. In most instances, the manifest goal of purification is to prepare the individual for communication with the supernatural, but purification in rites of passage may also be seen to have the symbolic significance of erasing an old status in preparation for a new one.

Other names that have been given to passage rites often overlap. Life-cycle ceremonies and crisis rites are usually synonymous terms referring to rites connected with the biological crises of life, but some modern scholars have included among crisis rites the ritual observances aimed at curing serious illnesses. Ceremonies of social transformation and of religious transformation overlap and, similarly, overlap crisis rites. Religious transformations, such as baptism and rites of ordination, always involve social transformations; social transformations such as at coming-of-age and induction into office may also bring new religious statuses, and life-cycle ceremonies similarly may or may not involve changes in religious statuses. It is nevertheless sometimes useful to distinguish the various rites by these names.

Life-cycle ceremonies are found in all societies, although their relative importance varies. The ritual counterparts of the biological crises of the life cycle include numerous kinds of rites celebrating childbirth, ranging from “baby showers” and rites of pregnancy to rites observed at the actual time of childbirth and, as exemplified by the Christian sacrament of baptism and the fading rite of churching of women, to a ceremony of thanksgiving for mothers soon after childbirth. These rites involve the parents as well as the child and in some societies include the couvade, which in its so-called classic form centres ritual attention at childbirth upon the father rather than the mother. At this time the father follows elaborate rules of ritual procedure that may include taking to bed, simulating labour pains, and symbolically enacting the successful birth of a child.o

In all societies some ritual observances surround childbirth, marriage, and death, though the degree of elaboration of the rites varies greatly even among societies of comparable levels of cultural development. Rites at coming-of-age are the most variable in time in the life span and may be present or absent. In some societies such rites are observed for only one sex, are elaborate for one sex and simple for the other, or are not observed for either sex. Characteristically, rites at coming-of-age are not generally observed in modern industrial and postindustrial societies. For example, the Jewish bar mitzvah and bat mitzvah and Protestant confirmation are, in their current forms, more or less vestiges of formerly important religious rites. Similarly, in East Asia, performances of rites at coming-of-age have waned in recent times. The elaborate rites observed a century ago in Japan, for example, when young men and young women reached social maturity are only rarely observed today and are virtually unknown to the general population.

Death is given social attention in all societies, and the observances are generally religious in intent and import. In societies that fear dead bodies, the deceased may be abandoned, but they are nevertheless the focus of ritual attention. Most commonly, rites at death are elaborate, and they include clearly all of the stages of separation, transition, and reincorporation first noted by van Gennep.