The Question of Ritual

Archive for the Psychology of Religion, 1997

Theorizing Rituals: Vol I: Issues, Topics, Approaches, Concepts, edited by Jens Kreinath, Jan Snoek and Michael Stausberg, xiii–xxv. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2006

It is unclear when rituals first originated. Some assume that ritual, like dance, music, symbolism, and language, arose in the course of the evolution of primates into man, 1 or even prior to it. 2 Thus rituals may also have facilitated, or even stimulated, processes of adaptation. Be that as it may, biologists and behavioral scientists argue that there are rituals among animals, and this has important implications for our understanding of rituals. 3 Unlike animal rituals, however, sometime in the course of the evolution of (human) ritual, and in specific cultural settings, rituals have partly become the business of experts (priests). These ritual specialists, it can safely be assumed, often not only developed a ritual competence in the sense of performative skills but also began to study the rituals of their own tradition. Hence, one may assume that within this process of specialization, social differentiation, and professionalization, 4 indigenous forms of the study of rituals evolved. In contrast to the modern, mainly Western academic study of rituals, these indigenous forms of ritual studies can be referred to as 'ritualistics'. 5 * A first draft of this introduction was written by Michael Stausberg. It was then jointly revised and elaborated upon by the editors of this volume. We wish to thank Ingvild S. Gilhus (Bergen) and Donald Wiebe (Toronto) for helpful comments on a previous draft. 1 See also Bellah 2003. (Here, as throughout the volume, works listed in the annotated bibliography are referred to by author and year only. Those items not listed in the bibliography will be provided with full references in the notes.) 2 Staal 1989, 111 states: "Ritual, after all, is much older than language." See also Burkert 1972. 3 See Baudy in this volume. 4 See Gladigow 2004. 5 See Stausberg 2003. Although a small group of us began using the term at American Academy of Religion meetings, today it has wide currency in a large number of disciplines" (p. 1). See also Grimes 1982 and his bibliography, Research in Ritual Studies (Grimes 1985). In terms of the establishment of a new field of research, see also his article on ritual studies in the Encyclopedia of Religion from 1987. 8 See, e.g., Grimes 1990; Bell 1997. 9 Over the last five years, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Council) funded two large-scale research programs on rituals: Kulturen des Performativen (Sonderforschungsbereich 447 [http://www.sfb-performativ.de] since 1999) and Ritualdynamik (Sonderforschungsbereich 619 [http://www.ritualdynamik.uni-hd.de] since 2002). Some contributors to the current volume are members of the former (Christoph Wulf) or the latter (Dietrich Harth, Axel Michaels, William S. Sax, and Jan A.M. Snoek). 10 The editors themselves were members of a junior research group, Ritualistik

Rever: Revista de Estudos da Religião 5:100–107, 2005

This essay looks at recent theory of ritual. It argues that an overemphasis on texts in the study of religion has led to a misleading analysis of ritual as a symbolic site of meaning. On the other hand, attempts to study ritual on its own terms, primarily by attending to formal elements, suggest that the study of ritual is separable from the study of religion. At the same time, this work promises to give ritual studies a more central role in the study of religion.

Numen, 2008

Birds do it. Bees do it. Rituals are common in nature. In our own lineage rituals runs rampant. Why this is so, and how best to examine human rituals, remains some of the most intriguing and contested questions facing scholarly inquiry.

2001

International Journal of Philosophy and Theology, 2018

As a postscript to this special issue, the author reflects on the difference between religion and ritual by drawing a comparison with culture and nature. In the same way that culture and nature are entangled yet distinct, so too religion and ritual are best understood as a paradoxical configuration of spiritual deliberation and unconscious desire. It is argued that religion and ritual exceed and depend on each other in equal measure as the organism explores new modes of living.

Ritual, 1987

This article first appeared in the First Edition (1987) of the Encyclopedia of Religion, ed. Mircea Eliade,, v. 12, pp. 405-422, and is reproduced here as it was reprinted without changes (aside from a bibliographic update) in the Second Edition (2005), ed. Lindsay Jones, v. 11, pp. 7833-7848. It first presents a definition of ritual as it appears in religious contexts, and then surveys the various theoretical approaches that have dominated academic study, developing out of this an analysis that seeks to do justice to the multivalent and multileveled nature of religious ritual itself.

2008

Can a theory be extrapolated based solely on a single ethnographic study? Can the examination of a single form of ritual suffice to create a blanket research method which is applicable to all forms of ritual? Is meaning merely a construct which participants lull themselves into believing that ritual possesses? And does intentionality have an effect on the consideration of meaning within ritual? I will attempt to elucidate several aspects of the responses to these questions within the context of James Laidlaw and Caroline Humphrey’s work, The Archetypal Actions of Ritual. I will also comment upon and demonstrate the difficulties inherent in the creation of the authors’ model of ritual theory.

In E Østrem, MB Bruun, NH Petersen & J Fleischer (eds), Genre and Ritual: The Cultural Heritage of Medieval Rituals. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, pp. 49-64., 2005

Ethnos, 2019

That rituals are ambiguous phenomena has been long established in anthropology. However, while this ambiguity is often assumed to be resolved in one way or another through the course of a ritual and taken as contributing to the efficacy of rituals, we propose in this introduction that much can be gained by studying ritual ambiguity apart from its relevance for efficacy. We argue that while rituals often depend on and helps create a sense of ambiguity, this ambiguity is far from always resolved. Rituals can instead highlight and intensify ambiguity, making it an enduring feature. While rituals often are seen as potential problem solvers, by participants and many anthropologists alike, we argue that much can be gained by look at rituals as highly problematic phenomena.