Group Presentation Dates:

• September 21 and 28

• October 3, 5, 10, 19, 24, 26, 31

• November 14, 28

Ritual

• Prescribed formal behavior for occasions not given over to technological routine, having reference to beliefs in mystical beings and powers.

• Stereotyped sequence of activities involving gestures, words, and objects, performed in a sequestered place, and designed to influence preternatural entities or forces on behalf of the actors' goals and interests.

1) Ritual is part of an ongoing social drama: it has a major function in contributing to a society's conflictual equilibrium.

2) Ritual involves the handling of symbols that constitute the smallest units of ritual activity: symbols in themselves are carriers of meaning. 3) The meanings of symbols are multiple. They give unity to the morality of the social order and the emotional needs of the individual.

• Life-crisis rituals or Rites of Passage

• Rituals of affliction

• Healing rituals

• Rituals of incorporation

• Cyclical or calendrical rituals

Van Gennep

Rites de Passage

• Rites which accompany every change of place, state, social position and age.

• They transform the status of members of any social group, moving them from one position in the social structure to another, and distinguishing them as socially defined beings.

Three stages:

• Separation

• Liminality

• Reaggregation

Separation

• A pre-liminal stage exemplified by ceremonies such as purification rites, the removal of hair, or scarification, tattoos, and cutting.

• Function = to separate individuals from their previous social role.

Liminality

• The individual undergoing the rite is symbolically situated “outside society.”

Reaggregation

• The individual is reintegrated into society in a new status or altered state.

Liminality

• A threshold, a state betwixt and between, the ambiguous state of being between states of being.

Liminal (interstructural) symbolism:

• Gives an outward and visible form to an inward and conceptual process.

Neophytes

• Those undergoing ritual transition.

Communitas

• A generalized social bond. Society in communitas is an unstructured group of relatively undifferentiated individuals, a communion of equal individuals who submit together to the general authority of the ritual elders.

Sacra

• The heart of the liminal matter.

Components of liminality

• 1) Communication of sacra.

Components of liminality

• 1) Communication of sacra.

• 2) Ludic deconstruction and recombination of familiar cultural configurations.

Components of liminality

• 1) Communication of sacra.

• 2) Ludic deconstruction and recombination of familiar cultural configurations.

• 3) Simplification of the relations of the social structure.

Liminality

1) A moment of ritual transformation.2) A moment when the normal rules and the

social hierarchy of society are negated.3) A moment when communitas is created.4) A period of special and dangerous

power, which can be constrained and channeled to protect and maintain the current social order, or harnessed for social change.

Installation Rite

• Ndembu in Northwest Zambia.

• Involved the installation of the Kanongesha, a senior Ndembu chief.

Liminal aspects of the ritual:

• Building of a small shelter a mile from the chief’s village.

• Chief was systematically made fun of and insulted by ritual functionaries.

Symbol

• The smallest unit of specific structure in ritual.

Condensation

• Symbols are multi-vocal: they can mean many things at once.

• Ritual symbolism allows a unification of apparently different meanings.

• Ritual symbolism also allows for the polarization of meanings.

Dominant Symbols

• Recurrent symbols characterized by pronounced multivocality, expressing the shared values on which social life depends.

Oretic Pole

• The sensory pole, the aspect of the symbol that stimulates our senses, and emotions, and is connected to our physiology.

Normative Pole

• The ideological pole of meaning, which makes reference to the principles of social organization of a group, to its norms and values.