Bell C., Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice

tivity, specifically the context formed by the culturat spectrum of ways of acting and what they imply, severat features emerge as very common to rituatization: strategies of differentiation through formatization and periodicity, the centratitv of the body, the orchestration of schemes by which the body defines an envi­ ronment and is defined in turn by it, ritual mastery, and the ne­ gotiation of power to define and appropriate the hegemonic order.

When returned to the context of human activity in general, socalled ritual acts must be seen first in terms of what they share with atl activity, then in terms of how they set themsetves off from other practices. Rituatization is fundamentatty a way of doing things to trigger the perception that these practices are distinct and the as­ sociations that they engender are special. A great deal of strategy is employed simply in the degree to which some activities are ri­ tualized and therein differentiated from other acts. While format­ ization and periodization appear to be common techniques for ritualization, they are not intrinsic to 'ritual' per se; some ritualized practices distinguish themselves by their deliberate informality, at­ though usuatly in contrast to a known tradition or style of rituat­ ization. Hence, rituat acts must be understood w ithin a semantic framework whereby the significance of an action is dependent upon its place and retationship within a context of all other ways of acting: what it echoes, what it inverts, what it altudes to, what it denies.

Aside from the strategic and privileged distinctions established by ritualization, another primary way it acts is through a focus on the body, specificatty the interaction of the body within a highly structured environment. ! have suggested that the body of the so­ cialized participant structures an environment but sees only the body's response to a supposedly preexisting set of structures. The physical movements of the socialized body within this demarcated space and time generate an endlessly circular run of oppositions that come to be loosety homologized to each other, deferring their significance to other oppositions so that the meaning of any one set of symbols or references depends upon the significance of others. By virtue of movement and stittness, sound and silence, through which the body produces and reabsorbs these oppositionat schemes, an orchestration is effected in which some schemes come to dom­

inate and interpret others. The ability to produce schemes that hierarchize and integrate in complex ways is part and parcel of the practical knowledge acquired in and exercised through ritualization. The ultimate purpose qf ritualizador^is neither the immediate goals avowed by the community or the officiant nor the more abstract functions of social solidarity and conflict resolution: it is nothing other than the production of ritualized agents, persons who have an instinctive knowledge of these schemes embedded in their bodies,

. LI. their sense of reality, and in their understanding of how to act in wavs that both maintain and qualify the complex microrelations of power. Such practical knowledge is not an inflexible set of agj sumptions, beliefs, or body postures; rather, it is the ability to deploy, play, and manipulate basic schemes in ways that appro­ priate and condition experience effectively. It is a mastery that experiences itself as relatively empowered, not as conditioned or molded,

With these same schemes the activities of ritualization generate historical traditions, geographical systems, and levels of profes­ sionals. Just as a rite cannot be understood apart from a full spec­ trum of cultural forms of human action in general, so it must also be seen in the context of other ritualized acts as well. The construc­ tion of traditions and subtraditions, the accrual of professional and alternative expertise— all are effected by the play of schemes in­ voked through ritualization.

When placed within this framework, the work accomplished through ritualization is very inadequately grasped by the notion of social control. Ritualization is not a matter of transmitting shared beliefs, instilling a dominant ideology as an internal subjectivity, or even providing participants with the concepts, to think w ith. The particular construction and interplay of power relations effected by ritualization defines, empowers, and constrains. Ritualized prac­ tices, of necessity, require the external consent of participants while simultaneously tolerating a fair degree of internal resistance. As such they do not function as an instrument of heavy-handed sociat control. Ritual symbols and meanings are too indeterminate and their schemes too flexible to lend themselves to any simple process of instilling fixed ideas. Indeed, in terms of its scope, dependence, and legitimation, the type of authority formulated by ritualiza.tion, tends to make ritual activities effective in grounding and displaying

u a l or subgroups. Rituatization as any form of sociat controt, how­ ever indirectly defined, witt be effective onty when this controt can afford to be rather toose. Rituatization witt not work as socia] contro] if it is perceived as not amenabte to some degree of individua] appropriation, tf practices negate att forms of individuat choice, or a// forms of resistance, they woutd take a form other than rituatization. Basic to what makes Foucautt's "rites of penat disciptine" a matter of rituatization rather than the use of a met­ aphor is the form of consent and resistance stitt afforded the sub­ jugated participant even if it be no more than a recognition of the timits ptaced on the activities of the subjugator. For exampte, the court-ordered ftogging of an accused thief woutd ptay up its own rituat nature (rituatize its activities) in a disptay of power that simuttaneousty recognized its own timits— in the number of strokes, their intensity, the persona) uninvotvement of the officer doing the ftogging, and so on. Rituatization cannot turn a group of individual into a community if they have no other retationships or interests in common, nor can it turn the exercise of pure physicat computsion into participatory communatity. Rituatization can, however, take arbitrary or necessary common interests and ground them in an understanding of the hegemonic order; it can empower agents in timited and highty negotiated ways.

Uttimatety, the notion of rituat is constructed in the image of the concerns of a particutar cutturat era. Certainty, anatyzing the sociat and cutturat import of ritua] activities is a form of practice known onty to secutar societies that make a distinction between the pursuit of objective knowtedge and the practice of retigion. The study of rituat is surety a cutturat corottary to the antirituahsm that Dougtas finds common in secutar societies. !t might be more: A strategic dichotomizing of thought and action may wet) be basic to the prag­ matic negotiations of 'se)f' and 'society' in such secutar cuttures. The format study of rituat itsetf, therefore, may be more than a simpte re/Zec;;oM of secutarism; it might be yet another arena for negotiating the retations between the practice of knowtedge and the practice of retigion.

Any new theory, even a new framework, overstates its case. Usuat)y it is best understood as a corrective to the prob)ems inherent in a preceding set of emphases. 'Rituatization' attempts to correct

t)x- indications of universality, naturalness, and an intrinsic struc­ ture that have accrued to the term 'ritual'. Some of these accretions

.tt t* a consequence of the way in which 'ritual' corrected notions )<k<- liturgy and magic. While this framework's emphasis on ritual

.ts a differentiated strategy of social action may effectively reintepret our data for a while, it is also likely that its extremes, particularly tts limits on generalization, will need to be addressed in turn.

i). Durkheim, p. 298.

1.). Sec Robert G. Hamerton-Kelty, ed., V;o/gn? OWgFm.- Wa/?er BMr^er?, Rtwe G:rard, Z. ow R:?Ma/ K;7/wg awd CM/?Mra/

/(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987).

of Catifomia Press, 1983), p. 2.7.

17.In an anatysis of Freud's approach to ritua), Votney Gay argues that i-reud saw rituat not as pathotogicatty "repressive," as Freud's wellknown comparison of ritua] with obsessive disorders might impty, but as nonpathotogicatty "suppressive." Suppression, according to Cay, is freety chosen by the ego from "among atternative actions which can hetp it avoid or reduce interpersona! conflict yet a!so offer drive satisfaction" (Freud on R;fMd/ [Missou!a, Mont.: Schotars Press,

'979]- P- 185).

i8. Hcestcrman, pp. 3—5, 28—2.9, 90—91, 101—7. Atso see Brian K.

Smith's review of this argument in the context of Heesterman's eartier work, "[deals and Realities in tndian Retigion," Re/;g;oM^ SfMdtes Rewew 14, no. 1 (1988): 10, and p. 3 in particutar.

19.B. K. Smith, Re/Zecf/oMs ow Rg^cw^/^wce, Rzf^a/ cwd Re/;g;ow, pp. 42.-43. Smith makes a useful comparison here with Jonathan Z. Smith's notion of ritua) as the performance of things as they ought

to be in tension with things as they are (p. 45 note 53). 2.0. Valeri, pp. 67-70.

n . Mack, "Introduction: Religion and Ritual," pp. 1—72.

2.2.See his "Preface" in BourdiHon and Fortes. It is probably the influence of theological categories which leads Fortes, among others, to see "sacrifice" as the most central ritual institution for at) but a minority of humankind, despite "the great diversity and flexibility, material, situational, and symbolical of sacrifice in different cuttures" (pp. v and xiii).

2.3.This generalization is most clearly seen in the work of T. Turner,

particularly "Transformation, Hierarchy and Transcendence,"

pp. 59-61.

2.4.Lukes, "Political Ritual and Social Integration," pp. 301—2.

2.5.These contrasting approaches to ritua) are a!so noted, in a different context, by Deiattre, p. 2.83.

16.Geertz, Negara, pp. 12.3—2.4, 130 -31.

17. Btoch, PoMca/ LawgMage awd Orafory, pp. 3—4.

2.8. Bourdieu, OMf/ine o/a Theory o/ 7^rac/;ce, pp. 94—95.

19.Such a rote for rituat does tittte to exphcate particutar acts but much to constitute a discourse structured around the resotution of dicho­ tomies or the embodiment of fundamentat contradictions. Uttimatety, theories of rituat as sociat controt tend to define rituat and controt and society in terms that do not merety comptement each other but magneticaHy draw each other into a tight knot of deferred significations.

30.Bourdieu, OM?/<we o/ a Theory o/ Prac?:ce, p. 2.07 note 74.

33.Gtuckman considers the "spectactes" of modern secutar society to be potentiat anatogies to the rote of rituat in tribat societies in his essay "On Drama, and Games and Athtetic Contests" (in Secti/ar R;?Ma/, ed. Satty F. Moore and Barbara G. Myerhoff [Amsterdam: Van Gorcum, 1977], pp. 1 1 7 —43). Atso see his discussion of the cteavages, and ceremoniats, among retationships in a modern Cam ­ bridge cottege where rituatization faited to materiatize even when it was needed. Aside from the segregation of groups and conflicts, Gtuckman does not attude to other reasons for the absence of ritua] in modern secutar societies, atthough he does note an ethos of an-

tirituatism which engenders setf-consciousness about recourse to any­ thing tike "tribat-type rituats" (Essays on R;(Ka/ o/ Socta/ Re/a(:oMs, pp. 43 -45, 48).

34.Lane and Edetman, noted above, are good examptes.

35.Douglas, NaiMra/ Syw^o/s, pp. 41—58.

36.Dougtas, Ma^ra/.Syw^o/x, p. 41-43 . See Basil Bernstein, C/ass Codes and CoHfro/, Vo/, j. TAeore^ca/ ^Md:es Towards a Socio/ogy o/^

LawgMage (London: Routtedge and Kegan Paut, 1971); or his usefut summary, "Sociat Ctass, Language and Sociatization" in CMrreMf Trends L/wgMM^'cs, vot. 11, part 3, ed. A. S. Abramson (The Hague: Mouton, 1974). PP154 5 -6 1; also reprinted in Power and /deo/ogy EdMcaROM, ed. Jerome Karabet and A. H. Hatsey (New York:

Oxford University Press, 1977), pp. 473-86.

37.Dougtas, Nafxra/ Syw&o/s, pp. 33-37. On secutar tribat societies, atso see Morris, pp. 1 1 7 —30; and Moore and Myerhoff, pp. 19-10 .

Nofes

(S. See Dougtas, NgfMm/ Syw&o/s, pp. 33, 103, 178 -79; on group and

45.Dougtas, Ngfurg/ $y?n6o/s, p. 112.

46.Douglas, M3(Krg/ Syw&o/s, pp. 136-52.

47.Victor Turner, Fores? o/.S'yTM&o/s, p. 90.

48.Vateri, p. 340. Emphasis added.

49.Va)eri, pp. 270, 340.

$o. Valeri, p. 344.

Chapter 8

^t. This is the position of Rodney Needham, in particutar, who argues that betief is an individual mental state and is best left to psychology. Sociat analysis may address how society induces and shapes such mental states, but it docs not have the ability to determine what a person's mental state is and whether it constitutes a state of "belief" as such. Even if beliefs refer to cultural views, statements made about what is believed, by both informants and ethnographers, can rarely be demonstrated to be true in the sense that they are betieved by all or most people in the society. Furthermore, Needham cautions, peopte do not necessarily believe what they have been taught to say and many will privatety question what their society holds to be a belief. For these reasons and others, Needham is not atone is recommending that the word "belief" be dropped in anthropotogical studies. See

52. Martin Southwold critiques assumptions that belief is an individuat mental state or subject to judgments of truth or falsity. He makes a case for the social nature of belief— as a matter of activities, such as

2.2.8

assenting, affirming, or making forma) obeisances, and socia) re)a- tionships— rather than some disembodied state of mind. See Martin Southwotd, "Retigious Betief," M<?n, n.s. 14, no. 4 (1978): 62.8—44, especiatty pp. 615, 62.8, 631, 637-38, and 643 note 5. White agreeing with Needham that betiefs are rarety absotute in their hotd on in­ dividual or groups, Abner Cohen finds that they are much more powerfu) for what they do sociatty (Two-D<?wMsio?M/ Maw.- Aw Essay ow Aw^ropo/ogy Power and Xyw&o/:sw Comp/ex Soctety [Berketcy: University of Catifornia Press, 1976], p. 83).

53. For a basic anatysis of these and other approaches, see Mary B. B)ack, "Betief Systems," in Hawd&oo& ^ocM/awd CM^Mra/ Aw^ropo/ogy, ed. John J. Honigmann (Chicago: Rand McNatty, 1973), pp. 50977; and Kenneth Thompson, Be//e/s awd ideology (London: Tavis­ tock Pubtications, 1986), pp. n -2 .6 , for a discussion of this approach.

54.Southwotd, p. 633. Among the Singhatese, for exampte, Southwotd found that no judgments of truth or fatsity were made about such tenets as the Buddha's attainment of nirvana or the karmic deter­ mination of existence. However, there was a readiness to question the effectiveness of various rituats, the need for the services of Bud­ dhist monks, and the existence of tesser deities. He conctudes that basic retigious betiefs are not concerned with issues that we associate with factua) truth, and they probabty never coutd be and stitt act

as retigious truths. Leach atso notes the ambiguity and "essentia) vagueness of a)) ritua) statements" (Po/Mca/ Sysfews MgMawd Burma, p. 2.86).

55.Southwotd, pp. 62.9—34. Tambiah atso finds that rituat is meant to express not menta) orientations of individual, but attitudes of in­ stitutionalized discourse ("A Performative Approach to Ritua),"

pp. 12.4-15).

56.Southwotd, p. 634.

57.James W. Fernandez, "Symbotic Consensus in a Fang Reformative Cutt," America?? Aw^ropo/og!sf 67 (1965): 901-2.9. Goody atso notes that it is quite common for participants to need the detaits of rites exptained to them ("Against 'Ritua!'," p. 31).

58.Fernandez even finds that effective communication was resisted so as to continue ritual activity ("Symbotic Consensus," p. 92.2.).

59.Fernandez does the same thing that Geertz did in setting up his categories in his anatysis of the Javanese funerat: ritua) is defined as socia) action as opposed to cu)tura) betiefs. However, whereas Geertz argues that (successful ritua) a)so integrates action and betief, society and cutture, ethos and wortdview, Fernandez ends up opposing the

socia) to the cultural, activity to concept, significance to meaning, sign to symbo), socia] so!idarity to cutturat disjunction, etc. ("Symbotic Consensus," pp. 912.-2.1). Indeed, by characterizing the unity achieved through the patterned and regutarized activities of ritua] as unity on a socia] teve), not on a cultural tevet, Fernandez expticitty distances betief from what is fundamenta) to ritua) ("Symbotic Con­ sensus," pp. 902., 907, 9 H -14 ).

60.David Jordan, "The jiaw of Shigaang (Taiwan): An Essay in Folk Interpretation," As<cw Fo/^/ore Sadies 35, no. 2. (1976): 8 1-10 7; and Peter Stromberg, "Consensus and Variation in the interpretation

of Retigious Symbotism: A Swedish Exampte," Awencaw Ef%wo/ogtst 8 (1981): 544-59. Stromberg atso finds sources other than ritua] for promoting solidarity.

6t. David K. Jordan and Daniet L. Overmyer, T^e F/ywg As­ p e c t o f C^wese ^ectdrMM/sw ;'w Tawaw (Princeton: Princeton Uni­ versity Press, 1986), pp. 2.70, and 2.67-74 passim. This idea echoes Southwofd's anatysis.

61. Watson, "Standardizing the Gods," pp. 32.3-2.4.

63.Also see Kertzer (pp. 69-75) o" the "virtues of ambiguity."

64.Sec Abner Cohen, "Potitica) Symbotism," AnwMa/ Ref<ew o f Awtbropo/ogy 8 (1979): 87, 102..

65.V. Turner, T%e Forest o f Symbo/s, pp. 28-2.9. Also see Cohen's dis­ cussion of Turner's notion of symbotism in "Potitica] Symbotism," p. 100.

66.Clifford Geertz, /s/aw Obsert/e<^ (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968), p. 97, cited by Wuthnow, p. 46. Severa] earlier studies analyze the ease with which betiefs are changed to rationalize be­ havior and reduce "cognitive dissonance." See Leon Festinger, /t Theory o f Cognitive Dissonance (Evanston, HL: Row, Peterson, [957); and Bruno Bettelheim, TZ?e /w/brwed/ Heart (Gtencoe, Ht.: Free Press, i960).

67.Philip Converse, "The Nature of Betief Systems in Mass Pubtics," in /</eo/ogy ant/ D:scowteMt, ed. David Apter (New York: Free Press, 1964), pp. 2.06-61.

68.Converse rejects the notion of "ideotogy" as too muddy for use and adopts "betief systems" (pp. 2.07-9). On this point, atso see Btack, "Betief Systems," pp. 509-11.

69.Converse, pp. 12 9 -31.

70.Converse atso discusses the "economy" of simpte dichotomies !ikc tiberat-conservative and how they function in pubtic discourse, mak­ ing many of the same points about the expediency of such oppositions that Bourdieu has made (pp. 2.14 and 227 in particutar).