Rituals of Royalty: Power and Ceremonial in Traditional Societies. David Cannadine and Simon Price, eds. Past and Present Publi- cations. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987. 363 pp. $29.95 (cloth).

RICHARI) HENDLRSON University of Arizona

Original papers by five historians and three anthropologists explore the relationship be- tween ritual and power in diverse pre-modern societies around the world. Viewing politics as contextualized “power in society,” they ex- amine how, in particular times and places, royal ceremonials developed in relation to the dynamics ofsocial control. The work is consis- tently high quality.

Some explore the relation between royal rit- uals and equivalent nonroyal rituals within a particular action system. Simon Price identi- fies the posthumous Apotheosis of Roman em- perors as the key to understanding their power inside the capital city. An emperor’s funeral was modeled on that of the nobility, but when his funerary pyre was ignited an eagle would soar up with the flames from its summit, in- dicating ascent of the emperor’s soul to the realm of the gods. Price thinks this tradition reflected the ambivalence of a system possess- ing strongly Republican roots but whose dom- inant trends furthered centralization. Maurice Bloch argues that the capacity of the royal bath ritual in Madagascar to legitimate au- thority resides in its relation to comparable nonroyal practices, which enables subjects to celebrate their political subordination as if i t were their own social reproduction.

Others focus on the significance of ritual in delineating strict social divisions within soci- ety. Averil Cameron’s study of the Byzantine Book ofceremonies suggests that Constantine VII’s 10th-century effort to “revive” a system of very precise court rituals coincided with a transformation of the state into full bureau- cracy which required strict social definition and control of the official class. David Mc- Mullen depicts a T a n g Chinese Confucian ritual program which regulated a hierarchical system of social strata through an extraordi- narily comprehensive body of precise rules for harmonious conduct (largely excluding the common people, who were controlled more through penal sanctions than through ritual), and which strongly resisted intrusion ofrituals from more universalistic religious traditions.

Several papers examine the relations of royal ritual to consensual and expansionist politics. Amelie Kuhrt describes the New Year Festival of Babylon, showing how the great

god Marduk’s mythical conquest of the forces of chaos provided the obligational model for Babylonian kings, and how the festival em- phasizing these duties (which required nega- tive confession by the king) pointed also to the prospect of the sovereign’s righteous de- thronement by Marduk (including the deity’s instigation of foreign invasion and conquest). Janet Nelson connects rites of anointing and coronation in the Carolingian kingdoms to systematic efforts by the Franks to expand and unify their empire through a “chosen people” politics of Christian consensual kingship, which fostered a balance among king, clergy, and aristocracy, and stimulated acculturation to Frankish ways by incorporated outsiders. Richard Burghart depicts an expanding king- dom in Nepal whose royal ritual focused on the giving and receiving ofgifts. Michelle Gil- bert’s analysis of the selection, installation, and removal of an Akuapem king centers on the Black Stool as a symbol of the intersection of matrilineal and patrilineal ancestry which bestows upon a king his unique personality. Rituals addressing this Stool emphasize not only the king’s capacity to resolve contradic- tions but also a balance of authority distrib- uted among the various officials of state and his dependence on them for his continuing power. T h e Akuapem say, “ I t is the river which makes the fish proud.”

In his introduction, historian David Can- nadine emphasizes research methods which move between particular and general, and which combine interpretation of symbols as such with close attention to questions of who controls their production, distribution, and consumption. While he cautions against drawing theoretical generalizations from these essays, to this reviewer their contents suggest a recurring relationship between what types of rituals are most elaborated in a given system and the extent of that system’s emphasis on expanding consensual sources of power within the societal community.

Social Structures: A Network Approach. Barry Wellman and S. D . Berkowitt, eds. Struc- tural Analysis in the Social Sciences, 2. Nrw York: Cambridge University Prcss, 1988. 525 pp. $65.00 (cloth), $22.95 (paper).

JEFFREY C.JOHNSON East Carolina University

This volume helps to dispel a misconception of social network analysis, or what editors Wellman and Berkowitz term ctmctural analy- c i J , as a grab bag of methodological tricks or