Bell C., Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice

H o Notes

Louis Marks (New York: Internationa) Publishers, 1957), pp. 174— 76 and 186-87; atso see Williams, pp. 108-14. Kenelm Burridge, Heat'gn, New Eart/?.- A Stxdy o f M///ewar/an Actw/ty (New York: Schocken Books, 1969), pp. 4-8 . Burridge's notion of the re­ demptive process can be interpreted as a more dynamic rendering of

the notion of cosmology used in history of religions.

71. Williams, p. 108. Stewart Clegg stresses that "hegemony" is not so much a state of mind (and particularly not a matter of a false con­ sciousness) as it is a set of practices (Frafnewor&s o f Power [London: Sage Publications, 1989], pp. 4 and 15).

72..David D. Laitin, Hegewony and CM/tMre; Po/Mcs and Re/:g;oMS Change Awong t^e YorK&% (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), p. 19.

73.Laitin, pp. 19, 107, 183.

74.Burridge, p. 6.

7$. Burridge, pp. 6 -7 .

76.Bourdieu, Ont/ine o f a Theory o f Practice, p. [64.

77.Dowling, p. 83.

78.Louis Althusser and Etienne Balibar, Reading Capita/, trans. Ben Brewster (London: Verso, 1979), p. 314.

79.David Cannadine and Simon Price, eds., RitMa/s o f Roya/ty; Power and CeremoMM/ in Traditiowa/ Societies (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni­ versity Press, 1987), p. 17.

80.Leach, The Po/itica/ System o f Hig%?/and BMrwa, p. 4.

81.Geertz, Negara, p. 12.3.

82.Jameson, 7V?e Po/itica/ UnconscioMS, p. 2.0.

83.Jameson, T^e Po/itica/ Unconscious, p. 191.

pp. 2.$ff. See Jameson, T%?e Prison-HoMse o f Language, pp. 106—10, 135—37, and T%e Po/itica/ Unconscious, pp. 12., 23-25.

85.Based on Jameson, T^e Prison-HoMse o f Lawgxage, p. 135.

86.Bourdieu, Onf/tne o f a Theory o f Practice, pp. 72.-95.

87.Althusser and Balibar, pp. 14-2.5.

88.Althusser and Balibar, p. 15. My term is based on Althusser's "dis- course-object unity."

89.Althusser and Balibar, p. 28.

90.Althusser and Balibar, pp. i9ff.

91.Althusserand Balibar, pp. 2.1—2.2..

Notes

<75. Bourdieu appropriately critiques Althusser for going on to distinguish four types of practices (economic, political, ideological, and theo­ retical) without specifying the relations among them (OHt/me o f a Theory o f Practice, p. 83). !n addition, however, Althusser could be judged to succumb to what Foucault has called the "will to knowl­ edge/power" when he accords theoretical practice a special legitimacy and truth vis-a-vis the other forms of practice (Althusser and Baiibar,

p.316).

96.M ax Gluckman, "Les Rites de passage," in Essays on t^e RttMa/ o f Socta/ Re/at/ows (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1962.),

p.2.0.

97.Murray Edelman, Po/;t;cs as 3yw&o/;c /4cf;o?z (Chicago: Markham Publishing Company, 1971).

98.John H. M. Beattie, Ot^er C^/tMres (New York: Free Press, 1964),

pp.2.02.—6 (also cited by Hill, p. 8).

99.Staal, "The Sound of Religion: IV—V ," pp. 185 and 196; Staa! is also sympathetic to Huxtey's use of the term. Mary Catherine Bateson,

"Ritualization: A Study in Texture and Texture Change," in Re/igtOMS Moyewewts Contemporary ^wer;ca, eds. Irving !. Zaretsky and Mark P. Leone (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974), pp. 150-65. Atthough Bateson's study is overcompticated and idio­ syncratic, it remains a serious attempt to root ritua! action in a theory of practice.

roo. Eric Hobsbawn, "Introduction: Inventing Traditions," in T^e /n- ycwt/OM o f Tra<^t;oM, ed. Eric Hobsbawn and Terence Ranger (Cam­ bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), p. 4.

101.Lane, p. 14.

102.Lane, pp. 2.5-26.

103.Various studies have remarked on this contrasting function: Dougtas,

NatMra/ Symbo/s, p. 11; Tambiah "The Magical Power of Words," p. 198; and Levi-Strauss, who suggested that the problems raised by ritual did not concern its "content" but how rites differ from similar activities in daily life (T/?e Maw, p. 671). Also see Bourdieu's discussion of how gift-giving contrasts with swapping and lending (OKt/<we o f a Theory o f Practice, p. 5).

104.In addition to Goody's position on this, noted earlier, Douglas also states that it is impossible to have a cross-culturat, pan-human pattern of symbols (NatMra/ Sym&o/s, p. 11).

105.Compare Rappaport's reappraisal of "sacredness" and how it arises out of ritual invariance (pp. 208-14).

106.When Lane, for example, picks up the argument as to whether Soviet state ritual is sacred or profane, retigious or secular (famitiar from

152. Notes

other discussions of Communist, Confucian, and American civic rites), which is a matter of asking which category is most appropri­ ate^ imposed, she faits to focus on how, why, and to what extent the rites themsetves create and maniputate such distinctions (pp. 36,

39, 43)-

107.Rappaport argues that "no single feature of ritua! is pecutiar to it" (P- i 7S).

108.On formatity, see Wuthnow, p. 108; Leach, "Rituatization in Man in Rotation to Conceptuat and Sociat Devetopment," p. 408; Moore and Myerhoff, pp. 7—8. On redundancy, see Tambiah, "The Magica] Power of W ords," p. 192.; and Rappaport, pp. 175 -79 .

109.Vateri, pp. 342.-43. For Bourdieu, however, rituatization invotves the supposed "necessity" of an assigned but "arbitrary" time (OMt/iwe o f a Theory o f Practice, p. 163).

110.There have been various attempts to characterize the distinctiveness of specific ritua] traditions. For exampte, on Chinese rituat, see James L. Watson, "The Structure of Chinese Funerary Rites," in Deat%? RitMa/ /w Late /mperia/awJ Ear/y Modern C^ma, ed. James L. Watson and Evetyn S. Rawski (Berkctey: University of Catifornia Press, 1988), pp. 3—19; on African rituat, see Evan M. Zuesse, RitMa/ Cosmos.- T/?e .SgMcti^c^fiOH o f Li/e m Afncaw Re/igiows (Athens: Ohio Uni­

versity Press, 1979).

Chapter 5

m . For a review of recent titerature on the body, see Lawrence E. Suttivan, "Body Works: Knowtedge of the Body in the Study of Retigion," History o f Re/<g;ows 30, no. 1 (] $90): 86-99.

n2.. Darwin's comment, from his TAe Expressiow o f t^e Emotions m Maw aw^ Awima/s (1873), is cited in Benthatt and Pothemus, pp. 15—16. Emile Durkheim and Marcet Mauss, Primitive C/assi/:catiow, trans. Rodney Needham (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967), originatty pubtished in 1902.; Mauss, "Techniques of the Body"; and Robert Hertz, "The Pre-eminence of the Right Hand: A Study in Retigious Potarity," in Rig^t aw6? Left.- Essays ow DMa/ Symbo/ic C/ass!/:cat!OM, ed. Rodney Needham (Chicago: University of Chicago

Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Anti-OedipMs.- Capita/ism and Schizo­ phrenia, trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R. Lane (Min­ neapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983), originaHy published in 1972..

12.1.Lakoff, pp. xiv-xv, 12, 56, 112 -13 , and 154.

122.Johnson, pp. xiv—xv.

123.Lakoff, pp. xiv—xv, 12, 56, 154, 179, 267, etc.

124.See Gabriel Josipovici, Writing the Body (Princeton: Princeton Uni­ versity Press, 1982); Ann Rosalind Jones, "Writing the Body: Toward an Understanding of /'Ecrittvre feminine," Feminist Studies 7, no. 2 (1981): 247—63 (reprinted in Elaine Showalter, The New Feminist Criticism [New York: Pantheon, 1985], pp. 361—78); and Jane Gattop, Thinking ThroMgh the Body (New York: Cotumbia University Press, 1988). Feminist psychoanalytic studies by Jutia Kristeva and Juliet Mitchett, for example, devetop the Freudian notion that the body forms the material basis for the constitution of the setf by exptoring the emergence of the gendered body physicatty, psychotogicatty, and tinguisticatly.

125.Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, The Madwoman in the Attic (New Haven: Yate University Press, 1979). !n "The Laugh of the Medusa" (Signs 1, no.4 [1976]: 875-93), Helene Cixous urges women to "write through the body." Etaine Marks and Isabette de Courtivron, eds., New French Feminisms (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1980). Atison M. Jaggar and Susan R. Bordo, eds., Gender/Body/Know/edge.- Feminist Reconstructions o f Being and Knowing (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1988).

126.For exampte, see Peter Brown, The Body and Society.- Men, Women, and Sextia/ Renunciation in Ear/y Christianity (New York: Cotumbia University Press, 1988); Bryan S. Turner, The Body and Society (New York: Basit Blackwell, 1984); Michaet Feher, with R. Naddaff and N. Tazi, eds., Fragments /or a History o f the Human Body, 3 vots. (New York: Zone, 1989).

127.Burridge, pp. 141 and 166.

128.Michet Foucautt, Discip/ine and PMnish.- The Birth o f the Prison,

154 Nofes

trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Vintage Books, 1979), originally published in 1975.

12.9. Miche) Foucault, "Body/Power" in Power/Know/edge.* Se/ectec/ /w-

An /ntroc/Mction, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Vintage Books, 1980), pp. 140-44.

130.Based on Hubert L. Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow, Mic^e/ FoMcaM/t* Beyowfi StrMCtMra/<sw anc/ HermeneMtics, m d ed. (Chicago: Univer­

sity of Chicago Press, 1983), pp. 1 1 1 - 1 6 , 178 -83. See Foucault's Discip/iwe anc/ PMnis^, History o f SexMa/ity, and "Body/Power."

131. Comaroff, pp. s—6, 12.4.

13Z. Bourdieu, OMt/ine o f a Theory o f Practice, p. 2.18 note 44; Douglas, NatMra/ Sym&o/s, pp. 95—99.

133.Bourdieu,OMt/ine o f a Theory o f Practice, p. 87.

134.Bourdieu,OMt/ine o f a T&eory o f Practice, pp. 87—95, 118—2.0, 12.4.

135.Bourdieu,OMt/ine o f a Theory o f Practice, p. 89.

136.Arnold van Gennep, T%?e Rites o f Parage, trans. M.B. Vixcdom and G. L. Caffee (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, i960), originally published in 1909.

137.Mircea Eliade, Cosmos an<^ History (New York: Harper and Row, 1959), and T%?e SacreJan<^ t/?e Pro/awe (New York: Harcourt, 1959).

138.Victor W. Turner, "Ritual as Communication and Potency: An Ndembu Case Study," in Symbo/s aw^ Society.- Essays on Be/ief Sys­ tems in Action, ed. Carole E. Hill (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1975), p. 69.

139.Jonathan Z. Smith, imagining Re/igion; Prom Baby/on to /onestoww (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982.), p. 63; and Smith, To Ta&e P/ace, pp. 74-96.

140.Bourdieu, OMt/ine o f a Theory o f Practice, pp. 116 —17.

141. Bourdieu, OMt/ine o f a Theory o f Practice, p. 94.

142..Rappaport, p. zoo.

143.John Blacking, "Towards an Anthropology of the Body," in ^4n- t%?ropo/ogy o f t^e Boc/y, ed. John Blacking (London: Academic Press, 1977), P- 4i citing Roger Poole, "Objective Sign and Subjective Mean­ ing," in Benthall and Polhemus, p. 95.

144.Culler, T^e PMrsMit o f Signs, p. 13.

145.Rappaport, p. 2.07.

146.For a fuller analysis of this example, see Catherine Bell, "Ritual,

Change and Changing Rituals," Worship 63, no. i (1989): 3 1 -4 1 .

147.J. Z. Smith, To Ta&e P/ace, p. 109. Compare Terence S. Turner, "Dual Opposition, Hierarchy and Value," in Di//erences, t/a/eMrs,

%?:erarc/7M; Tex^es o/^er^ a LoMM DMWowf, ed. Jean-Claude Galey (Paris: Ecote des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociates, 1984).

148.G. Bateson, pp. 173 -97.

149.Levi-Strauss, T^e Na%ecf Maw, pp. 669—79. In the same vein, Said

observes that culture itself is primarily a system of discriminations,

p.11).

150.T. Turner, "Dual Opposition, Hierarchy and Value," pp. 336 and 364.

151. Gloria Goodwin Raheja recently challenged the Dumont thesis that caste is based on a hierarchy of purity—pollution contrasts. She finds that the distinctions of gift-giver and gift-receiver, created in ritualized exchange (daw), construct another ordering of relationships according to a pattern of central domination and peripheral subordination. See Gloria Goodwin Raheja, T/?e PoMow :w G;f: (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988).

152.. Bourdieu, OMf/:ne o f a Theory o f Prac?:'ce, p. 163.

153.Hertz, p. 13; T. Turner, p. 368; Bourdieu, OMf/:we o f a Theory o f Pracfice, pp. 114—2.7.

154.Leach, CK/fHW awd CowwMW/'ca^oM, pp. 12.-16, 43 -45, y$ff; Tam ­ biah, "The Magical Power of Words," pp. 194-97.

155.Brian K. Smith, Re/Zec?;ons on ResewMawce, R'fMa/ and Re/Zgww (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), pp. 46-49, 69ff.

54-

159.Jacques Derrida, Wr;?<wg awd Difference, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), especially "Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences," pp. 178 -93.

160.Christopher Norris, DeconsfrKc^ow; Theory and Prac(;ce (London:

Methuen, 1981), pp. 60-64, 7°; 74' etc.

161. Michel Foucault, Language, CoMMfer-Mewory, Pracftce, trans. Don­ ald F. Bouchard and Sherry Simon (Ithaca, N .Y.: Cornell University Press, 1977), p. 186. In the wake of such critiques it is not surprising to find neo-Marxists like Fredric Jameson and Terry Eagleton at­ tempting to synthesize dialectic and rhetoric. While impressed with the critical stance of the defenders of rhetoric, they are reluctant to forgo the ramifications of the dialectic as a means to ground theory and generate stable "knowledge" (Norris, pp. 74-80).

Nofe5

162..Bourdieu, OMt/fwe o f a Theory o f Practice, pp. 87—95, n S - 2 .0 ,12.3—

^4-

163.Bourdieu, OMt/iwe o f a Theory o f Practice, p. 91.

164.Dreyfus and Rabinow, p. 187.

165.Ortner, "Theory in Anthropotogy Since the Sixties," pp. 154—55.

166.Rappaport, p. 2.17.

167.See Bourdieu, for exampte, concerning an integrat "fuzziness" (OMt- /;ne o f a Theory o f Practice, pp. 108-9).

168.Lewis, pp. 30 -31.

169.Vateri, p. 343.

170.See Part H!, pp. 183—84.

171. Bourdieu impties that a subtte strategy of rituatization is the way it fosters a btindness to the reat interests peopte might have in con­ forming to the rituat (OMt/iwe o f a Theory o f Practice, p. 2.2.).

172.Bourdieu, OMt/iwe o f a Theory o f Practice, p. 115.

173.Bourdieu, OMt/iwe o f a Theory o f Practice, pp. 12.0, 207 note 75.

174.Levi-Strauss, 7*he Na^eJ Maw, pp. 670—72..

rituat, see Basit Bernstein, H. L. Etvin, and R. S. Peters, "Ritua] in Education," pp. 434, and R. D. Laing, "Rituatization and Abnorma) Behavior," pp. 333, both in Huxtey.

178.T. Turner compares this approach to that of Van Gennep in that both see rituat as an "iconic embodiment" of sociat situations, in contrast to Gtuckman's approach, which )ooks at how ritua) acts upon its socia) setting. See Terence S. Turner, "Transformation, Hi­ erarchy and Transcendence: A Reformulation of Van Gennep's Mode) of the Structure of Rites of Passage," in SecM/ar RitMa/, ed. Sa))y F. Moore and Barbara G. Myerhoff (Amsterdam: Van Gorcum,

1977), PP- 59- 6o.

179. Vateri, p. 344.

180. Tambiah, "The Magicat Power of Words," p. 2.00.

1 81. Rappaport, pp. 2.02.-4; Vateri, pp. 3 40-4 3; and the extreme position of Staat in "The Meaningtessness of Rituat."

182.. Bourdieu, OMt/iwe o f a Theory o f Practice, pp. 106, 120, 156.

183.Bourdieu, OMt/iwe o f a Theory o f Practice, pp. 108—9, 114-2.4, especiatty pp. 12.0 and 12.3. Btoch atso comments that retigion and

Nofes

ritua) are the tast places to find discursive communication or expla­ nation; see Maurice Bloch, "Symbols, Song, Dance and Features of Articulation: Is Religion an Extreme Form of Traditional Authority?"

Ewropeews de Soc;o/og;e 15 (1974): 68, 71.

184.The linguists Mark Johnson and George Lakoff, among others, present interesting evidence for processes of communication and understanding based on how "nonpropositionat schemata" generate meaning without the formutation of propositions. They find that such nonpropositional schemata include three types of structures: basiclevet categories, kinesthetic images, and metaphorical projections.

Lakoff focuses on the first two, basic-level categories and kines­ thetic images, as preconceptuat structures that directty organize bodity experience and indirectly organize conceptuat categories. Basictevel categories turn up in the middle of cultural taxonomic systems, specifying what is known as the levet of genus, such as cat, dog, tree, and chair, but not Cheshire cat or collie, which descend levels of specification, or "all growing things" or "all furniture," which ascend levets of generalization. He finds that this middle levet is basic in two important ways. First, it is the level where people appear most easily to perceive a singte hotistic gestalt, where distinct objects are most ctearty associated with distinct motor movements of the body, and where peopte most readity team, remember, and agree on different shapes and activities. Thus, this middte-levet of categories is both a psychotogicatty and sociatly basic level from which people proceed to generalize more encompassing levets of ctasses and differentiate more narrowly defined ctasses. tt is on this tevel that researchers find a dramatic consensus across cutturatty quite different classification systems. For exampte, in cotor classification systems, there is crosscuttural consensus at the level of basic colors (black, white, red, etc.), which the eye is equipped to differentiate most immediatety, but there is tittte consensus on the differentiation of nonbasic cotors. There is a similar cross-culturat consensus in estabtishing clearty bounded categories at the levet of birds, dogs, cats, trees, and flowers, with simitar "prototypical" examples for each, whereas there is littte con­

sensus in more refined or generalized tevcls of classification (Lakoff, pp. 2.4—30). In Lakoff's second point about middte-tevet categories, he notes that it is on this level of ctassification that peopte appear to experience the maximum sense of "fit" between their inherited fotk categories and the world as they experience if. In other words, it is at this tevet that peopte's categories are experienced as reat, verifiabte by experience, and sufficiently sociatty stabte to be the buitding blocks of shared knowledge systems (Lakoff, pp. 32.-37, 46, 2.00).

1983), originaHy pubtished in 194$, pp. 12.-15.

87.Btoch argues for the intrinsic necessity to rituat (and to rituat au­ thority) of the restricted tinguistic codes that attend the formatization of tanguage. However, one can find a number of rituat activities, particutarly in the United States today, that invotve quite casual tan­ guage and tinguistic ftexibihty, atthough formutas of some type are very prevatent. On the other hand, Btoch's argument is concerned with the rituat creation of "tradidonat authority," not necessarity att ritua) activities. See Maurice Btoch, "W hy Oratory," in Po/iY;cj/ Lgw-

gMage aw^ Oratory :% TraJitiowa/ Society (New York: Academic Press, 1975), pp. 1-28 .

188.Tambiah "amends" Austin and Searte on performatives by arguing for the importance of context— the cutturat convetitions for such utterances and social acceptance as tegitimate and retevant, both of which are indispensable to the making of a performative utterance (Tambiah, "A Performative Approach to Rituat," p. 12.7).

189.Said, T/?e WorM, t/?e Text, and t^e Critic, p. 184. The citation is from Jacques Derrida, DissewiwatioM, trans. Barbara Johnson (Chi­ cago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), p. 63.

190.Maurice Bloch, "The Rituat of the Royat Bath in Madagascar," in RitMa/s and Roya/ty.- Power and! CerewoMia/ in Tra^tioMa/ Societies, ed. David Cannadine and Simon Price (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni­ versity Press, 1987), pp. 2.71-97. On the greater usefutness of asking "how does ritua] w ork" over "what is rituat," see Dreyfus and Rabinow's discussion of Foucautt's approach to power (p. 2.17). t have repeatedty cast the issue as a question of the "efficacy" of ritua), since hterature on the "efficacy" of ritua] usuatty concerns how rites are seen to futfitt the expectations of those involved in them, rather than the expectations of theorists as to how they work. On efficacy in genera), see Ahern, who reviews various theories of ritua) efficacy (pp. 1—17). Meyer Fortes writes of the probtem of efficacy as centra] to the debate over the meaning and function of ritua) in his preface to M. F. C. Bourditton and Meyer Fortes, eds., Sacrifice (New York: Academic Press, 1980), p. xviii. Atso see Vateri on the efficacy of

rites (p. 74).

191. Btoch, Po/itica/ Language awd Oratory, p. 57.

192.. Btoch, "The Rituat of the Royat Bath in Madagascar," pp.

2-71- 97-

193.Formatization is atso intrinsic to S. F. Nadet's treatment of rituat action; see the discussion of Nadet in Jacquetta Hitt Burnett, "C er­ emony, Rites, and Economy in the Student System of an American

194. Dougtas, NatHra/ Sywbo/s, p. 2.1.

Chapter 6

195.J. C. Heesterman, TZ?e /wuer Convict o f Tradition (Chicago: Uni­ versity of Chicago Press, 1985), pp. 1—2, 10—15.

196.Hobsbawn and Ranger, pp. 2.-3ff, 2,47-51.

197.Jack Goody and tan Watt, "The Consequences of Literacy," in Lit-