Lecture Outline on Ritual
I. Types of, Key Features of, and Issues Relating to, Ritual
A.
Types of Ritual: Formal
1. Religious
a. Key life stages
i. Christening,
marriage, funerals
b. Annual (liturgy of the religious
year)
i. Christmas,
Easter, Passover, etc.
c. Services are highly
structured (as is prayer)
d. Also:
Rites of expiation and confession (rituals by which the soul is cleansed)
2. Formal ritual: not
exclusively religious
a. civil and
political ritual
i.
coronation, inauguration
ii.
fourth of July
iii.
Robert Bellah:
iv.
Memorial Day observances (William Lloyd Warner)
B. Features of Ritual:
1. Defined: “ritual is
rule-governed activity of a symbolic character which draws the attention of its participants to objects of thought and feeling which they hold
to be of special significance” (Steven Lukes)
a. “of a
symbolic character”: symbols are the key element of culture
i.
culture is expressed AND constituted by symbols
ii.
symbols are the “vehicles of meaning”
a)
meaningfulness derives primarily from binary opposition and from their
relationship to other symbols
b)
a la Durkheim: sacred and profane
2. Rituals,
then, are the systematic enactment of symbolic meaning
C. Functions of ritual
1. (Mary Douglas):
Provides a focusing or framing mechanism
a. Sets off
the reality within the frame from the external reality
2. Controls memory:
linking the present with a relevant past
3. Situates people’s
lives in time and space, providing a meaningful and logical sequence to events
4. Mediates experience,
by providing us with the interpretive schemes for making sense of events in a
life
5. Standardizes
experience: making it easier to evaluate and understand
6. Durkheimian theme of social
integration
a. religious
ritual, by bringing people together to join in a structured recognition of
shared symbolic meanings
b. Creates
“collective effervescence”: reaffirms the significance of those shared meanings
c. thereby
creates social solidarity
II. Erving Goffman
on Informal, or implicitly structured ritual
A. Goffman: face to face interaction
= a variation on formal ritual
1. norm-governed
2. they constitute an
exchange of symbolic utterances
3. Every social
interaction involves what he calls “face-work”
a. We behave
towards others in ways that present a particular face – or image of ourselves
b. If the
interaction proceeds appropriately – if the parties work together in ways that
produce an effective social interaction
– there will be congruence with our feelings (we will feel “good” about the
interaction)
c. If no
congruence we may feel
i.
ashamed or embarrassed
ii.
Flustered
iii.
angry
d. both
parties work to show appropriate deference to the other (helping one another to
“maintain face”)
e. both also
work to keep up the appropriate flow of events (turn-taking, listening when
it’s your turn to listen)
B. Norms/Rules of interaction
1. Impinge on us
directly
a. as
obligation (how I am constrained to treat you)
2. and indirectly
a. as
expectation (how I am to be treated)
3. Interactions are
symbolic in character
a. mutual
confirmations of self (“I am the sort of person who treats others this way,
& who expects to be treated in this way”)
4. Two general classes
of rules
a.
symmetrical: obligations & expectations are reciprocal
b.
asymmetrical: obligations & expectations differ
i.
authority relations
5. Rules also differ as
to whether they are:
a.
Substantive (significant in their own right)
i.
law, morality, ethics
b.
Ceremonial (purely conventionalized)
i.
etiquette, manners
6. Ceremonial Symbols
vary:
a.
linguistically
b.
gesturally
c. spatially
d. in terms
of task-embeddedness
