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Ritual Performance (ritual + performance)
Selected AbstractsOn Spiritual Edgework: The Logic of Extreme Ritual PerformancesJOURNAL FOR THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF RELIGION, Issue 3 2007DAVID G. BROMLEY Religion as a social form is constructed to provide adherents with a sense of empowerment and control. Rituals that involve a risk of physical or psychological injury or even death therefore would appear anomalous and indeed are frequently the objects of social scientific and journalistic denigration. Firewalking and serpent handling exemplify such rituals. I argue that these two radical ritual practices, which I term spiritual edgework, provide a valuable sociological window on how radical ritual practices are socially constructed. The social construction process involves the identification of a mythically relevant edge that offers: both contingency and certainty; individual and collective preparation for the impending edgework during which tensions are elevated for later ritual resolution; a ritualized process for successfully navigating the edge; and postedgework accounts that neutralize potential disconfirming injuries or deaths. [source] Syncretic Persons: Sociality, Agency and Personhood in Recent Charismatic Ritual Practices among North Mekeo (PNG)THE AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF ANTHROPOLOGY, Issue 3 2001Mark Mosko This paper explores the syncretic accommodations made by North Mekeo (PNG) villagers arising from recent historical encounters with Catholic (Sacred Heart) missionaries over issues of ritual authenticity and effectiveness, personhood, and agency in a wider field of Christian evangelism and globalisation. Through a careful examination and comparison of pre-existing ritual notions and practices (e.g., sorcery techniques, mortuary ritual performance, gender rituals) and the recent trends of commodification and enthusiastic Catholic charismatic performance, what might appear to be incongruous religious beliefs and practices are shown to possess numerous remarkably compatible similarities at the level of explicit cultural categorisation and ritual enactment. In accord with long-standing anthropological arguments, recent North Mekeo syncretism thus consists of an integrated, albeit transformed rather than ,confused', mixing of indigenous and exogenous religious elements. Further, in this analysis of recent Melanesian religious change syncretism implies a novel conceptual convergence between syncretic processes and the dynamics of personhood, sociality and agency as construed in the framework of the ,new Melanesian ethnography'. [source] The revealing muteness of rituals: a psychoanalytical approach to a Spanish ceremonyTHE JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL ANTHROPOLOGICAL INSTITUTE, Issue 1 2004Antoinette Molinié This analysis of a heterodox Corpus Christi ceremony celebrated in Spain emphasizes one of its distinctive features: the ritual is carried out by two moieties, who provide contradictory exegeses of the same ritual performance. Yet, despite their incompatibility, the two theories have a feature in common: the denial of a Jewish presence within the groups that express them. This phenomenon is discussed in the historical context of Christian stereotypes of Jews, enabling recognition of the fact that the ceremonial of Camuñas may be regarded, on a first level of analysis, within the framework of performance theory, as a ritual of memory. Some conceptual tools defined by Sigmund Freud, especially the concepts of negation and disavowal, are then used to analyse the ritual. The denial of reality and the irreconcilable exegeses of the two moieties evoke the split attitude of a fetishist towards castration. Thus, three analytical approaches of increasing depth are proposed to one and the same ritual: structuralist, performative, and psychoanalytical. [source] Ritualized Transmission of Social Norms Through Wedding PhotographyCOMMUNICATION THEORY, Issue 1 2006Michele M. Strano This article explores the applicability of ritual theory to social norms research. Wedding photography is used as a test case to demonstrate how gender norms are perpetuated and resisted through ritualized communication practices. The author concludes that looking at social norms transmission through the lens of ritual performance brings to light three theoretical approaches that might be usefully applied to future social norms research. First, the transmission of social norms may be perpetuated and contested through the conventions associated with ritualized communication performances, rather than through the simple communication of information from one person to another. Second, since ritual performance allows or requires a degree of distancing from the ideal, individuals may resist or play with notions of injunctive norms, perhaps embracing opposing descriptive norms. Finally, since ritual communication is performative, evidence of compliance with social norms may occur symbolically rather than literally. [source] | ||||||||||