A few Native American communities have made strict rules about tourists attending their performances. While some dances and ceremonies are orchestrated as public events for all, others are secret and closed. This is especially true among the Pueblo peoples of the Southwest, who have guarded their ceremonial traditions with particular zeal and conservatism through centuries of Spanish colonization, Catholic missionizing, and, until 1928, the tendency of Bureau of Indian Affairs to outlaw traditional ritual.154 Most of the rites that attend the annual coming of the kachinas, the masked and costumed figures that are seen as manifestations of spiritual beings in the Hopi tradition, are performed in private in kivas, underground ceremonial chambers entered through an opening in the roof. Yet dances and performances in the Pueblo plaza are open to all, and those marking the “going home” or close of the kachina season, when the spirits are sent off to their mountain homes, can draw large crowds of neighbors and tourists.155

Tourists are apt to bring home elements of exotic ritual performances, and the symbols of an increasingly international and interreligious ritual repertoire are becoming familiar to many. Much current ritual invention actively searches for multicultural forms of symbolic expression as a way to identify communities that see themselves straddling traditional ethnic, racial, or cultural boundaries. This situation is akin to the meeting of east and west seen in the 1975 Nambudiri Agnicayana mentioned earlier. It also shares some aspects of the ritual life of the Italian-American community centered on the Madonna of 115th Street, where ritual forms of religiocultural expression were used to negotiate the maintenance of an ethnic heritage.

On the one hand, ritual is vital to the construction of community, cultural identity, or ethnicity; it can preserve a tradition by mediating its essential features with new external demands. On the other hand, ritual is also invoked to reorganize communities around less traditional identities, in effect, to constitute new ones based not on cultural, ethnic, or racial solidarity but more on shared spiritual, political, or even class concerns. The media and tourist industry are just two of the more prominent forces helping to shape the context for ritual today, particularly the way in which ritual traditions are reproduced and invented in contemporary society.

Conclusion

The examples in this section demonstrate how the relationships between ritual and its context can generate a variety of changes in the structures, symbols, and interpretations of ritual activities. Despite many popular preconceptions and a number of anthropological models of ritual, ritual is not primarily a matter of unchanging tradition. On the contrary, some analysts now see ritual as a particularly effective means of mediating tradition and change, that is, as a medium for appropriating some changes while maintaining a sense of cultural continuity. It is necessary to remember, however, that if ritual plays such a role, it does not do it as some type of external mechanism that acts on a culture from the outside. Ritual can play such a role only from within the system, that is, as a component of the system that is defined and deployed in ways that interlock with how tradition and change are viewed. Hence, we should not be surprised to find that ritual itself is understood a bit differently from

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one culture or historical period to another, particularly in regard to what is considered ritual, how it is thought to differ from other activities, the origins and reasons for ritual, its relation to tradition and change, and the type of authority it is accorded.

More specifically, we have seen that ritual can change as the conditions of the community change. In addition, all sorts of formally designated or self-styled ritual experts have at times devised and shaped ritual activities. Ritualized activities can be taken as traditional within a very short time; they can also be very flexibily appropriated; they may be practiced more or less faithfully despite strong reservations about every aspect of them. New rites, even the awkward ambivalence of those embodied in the Olympic games, are integral to the construction of many forms of communal identity. At the same time, ritual alone cannot create a community when no other relationships exist among the participants. The same rituals performed over the course of a thousand years can simultaneously affirm long-standing communal values of continuity and authoritative tradition while also allowing people to experience these values with different expectations and needs. Finally, effective ritual need not be uncontested or invulnerable to political manipulation and trendy commercialization.

Many of the examples discussed in this section suggest the ideological power of ritual. Soviet bureaucrats launched their socialist rites in an explicit attempt to socialize people to communist values. In a different ethos, African-Americans celebrate Kwanzaa and Jewish feminists perform the women’s seder in order to counter the dominant value system and build communities based on another vision. If such examples were multiplied, one might conclude that the ritual medium is able to serve many ideological masters—from staid institutions to preachers announcing the apocalypse. Nonetheless, it is not really clear how effective ritual actually is in socializing, resocializing, or desocializing. No one can say how much people internalize, appropriate, and ignore what goes on in a ritual or even what parts of the ritual are likely to be the most or least affective. The socializing—or ideologizing—effects of ritual appear to depend on many factors, such as the degree of people’s involvement in the rites, the amount of ritual repetition, and the degree to which the values espoused in the deep structure of the ritual are reinforced in other areas of social life. While some people have defined ritual as the foremost social tool for inculcating social values, that remains a questionable claim. When brought to bear on the question of how ritual defines and negotiates competing ideologies and power relationships in general, the historical and ethnographic records suggest a very complex spectrum of possibilities.

As stated earlier, no ritual stands by itself. It is always embedded in a thick context of traditions, changes, tensions, and unquestioned assumptions and practices.

Ritual is a way that people can act in the world, and all those factors that influence how any person and group acts will influence the performance and understanding of ritual. A community’s attitudes and styles of ritualizing are inseparable from their worldview, and it is not hard today to find a great variety of communities, worldviews, and styles of ritualizing living in close proximity to each other.

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Repudiating, Returning, Romancing

The emergence of the concept of “ritual” as an universal phenomenon that is substantively manifest in human nature, biology, or culture appears to be the result of a successive layering of scholarly and popular attitudes. These attitudes range from an early modern “repudiation” of ritual at home while finding it prevalent in so-called primitive societies, a subsequent “return” to ritual that recognized it as an important social and cross-cultural phenomenon, followed by a tendency to “romanticize” ritual by both practitioners and theorists as a key mechanism for personal and cultural transformation. The following analysis suggests that these attitudes toward ritual are intrinsic to concerted intellectual efforts to deal with the “other” in the various religious and cultural guises in which this “other” has been perceived.

People talk about the decline and repudiation of ritual in two ways: either in terms of a general stage in an embracing process of social evolution or in terms of particular historical-political situations, such as the 16th-century Protestant Reformation. While the latter situation is usually characterized by specific social circumstances, the first is depicted in terms of more abstract forces of rationalism, secularism, or modernization by which traditional religious communities are dramatically remade by science, pluralism, and individualism. The popular contention that ritual and religion decline in proportion to modernization has been something of a sociological truism since the mid-19th century. The British philosopher Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) was probably among the first to formulate an evolutionary opposition between industrialization of modern culture and the rituals of tribal or feudal cultures, but Max Weber followed up a generation later by contrasting ritual and magic with the rationalism and “disenchantment” of modern life. For the historian Peter Burke, the 19th-century tendency to oppose ritual and reason was itself the product of an earlier opposition, rooted in the ethos of the Reformation, in which ritual came to be seen as artifice and mystification in contrast to the virtues of sincerity, simplicity, and directness. In this ethos, Burke argues, ritual was associated “with the shadow rather than the substance, the letter rather than the spirit, the outer husk rather than the inner kernel.”1 Emerging fields of study focused on ritual as an ideal representation of what was different from reason, what reason needed to explain and, ultimately, enlighten and transform.2 According to Mary Douglas, among others, these attitudes led comparative studies of religion to elevate ethical Protestant-like religions in contrast to the magical ritualism of primitive, Catholic-like religions.3

In the second half of the 20th century, the trend in scholarship began to swing the other way. Burke notes that people began to assume that “that all societies are equally ritualised; they merely practice different rituals. If most people in industrial societies no longer go to church regularly or practice elaborate rituals of initiation, this does not mean that ritual has declined. Instead, new types of ritual—political, sporting, musical, medical, academic, and so on—have taken the place of the traditional ones.”4 From this perspective, ritual is deemed good and healthy, humanly important, universal, and constantly concerned with what Weber, and Geertz after him, called “the Problem of Meaning.”5 Yet this more recent attitude, embodied in the work of both Victor Turner and Clifford Geertz, continues to rely on the opposition between ritual and modernization assumed by Spencer and Weber. This time,

however, the opposition casts ritual as a natural mitigator of the harsh and unwanted aspects of modern life. It is possible that 16thand 19th-century formulations of a modern, secular repudiation of ritual may have contributed to cultural attitudes associated with a decline in ritual participation. There is certainly evidence that the more recent and positive view of ritual promoted by Turner and Geertz has been influential in people’s return to ritual. In any case, it is pertinent to ask if the widespread repudiations and returns identified by the theorists have really existed.

There are many sociohistorical situations in which people reject ritual, either their own ritual traditions or those imposed on them by others. In addition to the rejection by 16th-century Protestant reformers of what they saw as papist idolatry and vain superstition, there are many other historical examples, including the rejection of ritual (li) by the ancient Taoists, the criticisms of outer ritual form in favor of inner intention by Greek and Roman philosophers, as well as Saint Paul; and a series of movements in Hinduism from the ancient Upanishadic teachers to the early-19th- century Hindu reformer, Ram Mohun Roy. In most cases such criticisms were not attacks on all forms of ritual, just on certain features of pomp, mystery, rigidity, or claims for material efficacy. In the complex milieu of the Reformation, Burke points out, many different understandings of ritual were formulated and challenged. The result was not so much a general repudiation of ritual as a widespread and pluralist debate over different styles and understandings of ritual. As a consequence, he concludes, western Europeans may have become “unusually self-conscious and articulate on the subject.”6

Typological systems as different as those of Bellah and Douglas, presented earlier, suggest that different types of social order and cultural worldview can be correlated with different styles of ritual. Yet rarely does a society have only one style or one worldview. Usually there are several different cosmological orders more or less integrated with each other but capable of tense differentiation and mutual opposition. Different parts of a society—social classes, economic strata, or ethnic groups— may hold different perspectives on ritual, or the same subgroup may have different attitudes on different occasions. Hence, any repudiation of ritual, like all ritual practice, must be seen as a very contextual thing. For example, when the most radical of the Protestant reformers, the 17th-century Quakers, went so far as to reject even conventional greetings as artificial “bundles of fopperies, fond ceremonies, foolish windings, turnings and crouchings with their bodies,” it was in the context of a particular group distinguishing itself from others by taking ideas of inner versus outer spirituality to a new logical extreme.7

From this perspective, the evidence for a general, long-term historical process of repudiating ritual begun in 16th-century Europe becomes rather slim. It seems more likely that the century saw the emergence of alternative understandings of ritual that had close links to issues concerning the constitution of personhood, national community, and religious authority. While these clashes would not forbid the future emergence of a general consensus about ritual, the cultural pluralism amplifying the debate can make it difficult to imagine. Certainly there has been no single, smooth process of ritual atrophy in European and American culture since then.

However, there has been a process in which the emerging disciplines studying reli-

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gion and culture associated ritual with the primitive, tribal, and nonrational. And despite the variety of other modes of ritual surrounding them in their own societies, such theorists could convince many of a loss of ritual in modern life.

If a general repudiation of ritual in modern industrial society has been somewhat exaggerated, therefore, it is possible that the evidence for a return to ritual has also been overstated. For example, a great deal of attention has been given to the “return” of secular Jews to more demanding forms of orthodoxy. In this context, of course, the word “return” should be examined. In most cases, the people involved had never left orthodoxy; they were born and raised in secular Jewish families and communities. The fact that they are called “those who return” (baalei teshuvah in Hebrew) reflects the perspective of the orthodox segment of the Jewish tradition (as well as Zionist interpretations), the view from within the fold, as it were, for whom a secular Jew is a sinner and all Jews who “return” must repent for transgressing correct observance of Jewish law.8

The notion of return is also problematic because it rarely means simply picking up the tradition as it has been practiced in the past. Indeed, it is argued that some forms of Jewish orthodoxy to which people are said to return constitute a modern phenomenon, not a traditional one.9 What is seized upon as tradition is usually a rather new synthesis of custom and accommodation. Many of the secular Jews who have adopted orthodoxy, for example, have no automatic place in the traditional social fabric. Institutional innovations have been necessary, including special yeshivas, synagogue programs, and the quite untraditional Manhattan outreach program for returning singles that has enrolled some 1,200 men and women. In addition, those who convert tend to embrace some aspects of tradition more than others and bring with them new needs to which the tradition must respond. This type of “return” to tradition, therefore, is clearly a force that opens the tradition to many changes.

Nonetheless, Jews are embracing orthodoxy in significant numbers; although some research suggests that they do not appear to offset Jews who drift away from orthodox communities.10

A variety of reasons have been proposed to explain this type of return to ritual.

In most general terms, it is usually analyzed as a form of resistance to secularization, modernization, and, in the case of Judaism in particular, to assimilation.11 Yet the decision to embrace orthodoxy is itself possible only in a secular society where there are various options for religious affiliation and where the whole issue is considered a matter of individual choice. Hence, if the choice of a return to orthodoxy is a form of resistance to secularism, it also reinforces some of the more central values of secularism, namely, individual choice and a plurality of options. In addition, the most statistically dominant reason for returning to orthodoxy, marriage to an orthodox spouse (by either a secular Jew or a non-Jew), suggests some ambivalence since it indicates that significant numbers of orthodox Jews are marrying outside their communities.12 The effect of a visit to Israel is another reason commonly given for orthodox conversion, and it is testimony to the emotional impact of experiencing Judaism as a living ethnic culture. Comparably, in America and Europe today, the decision to join a highly ritualized community is often based on an interest in ethnicity as a framework for community, identity, and a sense of tradition and belonging. The sociologist Herbert Danzger finds that the formal belief system is usually less impor-

tant to the newly orthodox than what Peter Berger called the “plausibility system,” that is, the network of people who share the beliefs and make them appear to be a credible understanding of the true nature of things. The family is the most important component of this plausibility system, but the local community or peer group plays a decisive role as well. Identifying with this community by means of dress, residence, and lifestyle—particularly the style of interaction between men and women— can secure one a place in a high-profile, clearly demarcated community.13

The decision of women to embrace orthodox Judaism merits particular attention since it is a choice that would seem to fly in the face of the larger movements for women’s social and personal emancipation in this century. In exploring the appeal of orthodoxy to young, middle-class, educated women, Lynn Davidman finds the “characteristic dilemmas of modern life, such as feelings of isolation, rootlessness, and confusion about gender.” As a possible solution to these dilemmas, different women looked to different types of orthodox community—some that took complete control over their lives, others that encouraged them to continue living independently.

Yet all of these communities honored women’s roles as wives and mothers and held out to their female converts the promise of a religion that gives pride of place to a fulfilling domestic life. The primacy accorded women’s domestic roles is understood in terms of the importance of a series of rituals governing food preparation and consumption, marital relations, and the observance of the Sabbath and other holidays. Orthodox women say they find in these rituals a deep recognition of their womanhood and their role in the well-being of the family.14

Often what is called a return to ritual may be as simple as a heightened interest in symbolism. For example, two Protestant denominations, the United Methodist

Church and the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), recently “reclaimed,” in their words, the Catholic and pre-Reformation practice of receiving a smudge of ashes in the shape of a cross on their foreheads on Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent, the forty-day period of preparation for Easter. The use of ashes was originally a Jewish practice, reinterpreted by Christians but rejected by Protestant reformers who looked to biblical teachings over external marks of piety. Most of the reasons given for the return to ashes appeal to an emotional resonance with this symbolic reminder of mortality and sin—and a new appreciation of the evocative power of ritual. In the words of Reverend Deborah A. McKinley, spokesperson for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), people “are discovering the importance of ritual action and its ability to draw us beyond the cerebral.”15

Reverend McKinley’s comment reflects the attitude, popular since the early

1970s, that ritual is basically good for you. This is certainly the conviction of much recent scholarship, which has helped to promote and legitimate this perspective among the wider public. The post-Reformation opposition of external form and internal feeling, appears displaced by a somewhat different understanding. The same is true for the early modern opposition of rational-industrial to the mystical-tribal. Ritual is now more likely to be seen as a medium of emotional, intuitive expression that is able to express the spiritual states, alternative realities, and the incipient connectedness in which individuals and communities are embedded. While ritual once stood for the status quo and the authority of the dominant social institutions, for many it has become antistructural, revolutionary, and capable of deconstructing inhuman

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institutions and generating alternative structures. A long-standing concern with the falsity of ritual, conveyed in the negativity of such words as “ritualistic” and “ritualism,” has been replaced in many quarters with a desire for ritual as a healing experience. The older conviction that increasing modernization, rational utilitarianism, and individualism would inevitably do away with most forms of traditional ritual life has given way to a heroic championing of ritual as the way to remain human in an increasingly dehumanized world.

In 1982, Douglas argued that most scholars of religion in the postwar period were apt to overemphasize the positive and integrative aspects of religion, implicitly opposing it to modernity in the same way that theology has opposed salvation to worldliness or, in a different debate, scientific rationalism opposed the delusions of traditional religion to the progress of reason.16 Indeed, the positive and integrative aspects of ritual action are so taken for granted that no effort is made to substantiate them. Vincent Crapanzano’s conclusion that Moroccan male initiation rites cruelly traumatize a child in ways that benefit the conservatism of the social group is a rare example of a critical analysis.17 It is dramatically outweighed by the number of studies attempting to show how initiations are good and healthy social experiences, the lack of which in modern society has resulted in profound sociocultural impoverishment. The assumptions behind this type of statement are never laid out and tested against any empirical evidence.

Since Douglas’s criticism of these tendencies toward an indiscriminate affirmation of religion, the opposition of ritual and modernity has actually gone a step further and overly romanticized ritual. It is characterized by testimonies to its creative solutions to the anomie of modern society, which promise among other things, that initiation rites can solve adolescent delinquency and that communing with the earth can rectify our ecological relationships with the environment. A variety of of analyses have pushed ritual as a curative for the ills of modernity to the point where ritual appears to act independently of any sociocultural determinism. Indeed, it is set up to act almost salvifically. Aside from all the nonscholarly appeals to the roots of ritual in the “eternal wisdom of ancient peoples,” there are theorists who locate ritual in pre-linguistic grammars, in the biogenetic foundation of the “reptilian brain,” and in basic, cross-cultural gestures of the human body.18 All of these views cast ritual as independent of any sociocultural context. They never implicate ritual in the emergence of modernity. Instead, ritual remains a pure, inadequately tapped human resource for ameliorating the evils of modernity—specifically, the personal and communal wholeness fractured by ethnicity, religious ideology, and areligious passivity.

Tom Driver writes that “the human longing for ritual is deep,” although often frustrated; he extols ritual as essentially liberating and the means of salvation for the modern world. Unable to ignore completely some of the latent contradictions in the position, however, Driver notes that Mohandas Gandhi, the spiritual leader of the Indian independence movement, and Joseph Goebbels, the director of the Nazi’s “final solution” for the Jews, were both “consummate ritualist[s].”19 Yet Driver never analyzes why ritual in the hands of Gandhi was good and in the hands of Goebbels was horrific, or how ritual in general can be so liberating if it can support both men’s visions of human aspirations.