The Ambiguities of Rituals: Introduction

Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 2003

Handbook to Psychological Anthropology (Proofs), 2005

Religious ritual has not always fared well in social theory. It has been metaphorized, pathologized, in some cases even demonized , but rarely taken seriously on its own terms. Even anthropology, which certainly has been the most sympathetic of the academic disciplines, has in practice often helped to reproduce misleading cultural biases concerning ritual activity. It is not entirely surprising, as Asad (1993) points out, that the popular dichotomy in the Western intellectual tradition between authentic, "spontaneous" experience and the imposed quality of ritual sentiment has been taken up in social analysis. Nor is it any wonder, given the specific religious history of the modern West, that ritual modes of being-inthe-world have tended to be collapsed into accounts of disembodied symbolism and discursive meaning, the flesh become word. Overwhelmingly, ritual practice has been portrayed as a burden of other cultures or of other times. Psychology and anthropology both have deployed ritual as an icon for the primitive Barbaric or Arcadian realms through which they staked (and continue to stake) their overlapping and competing claims to expert knowledge of human affairs . It is impossible, in fact, to describe the current situation of psychocultural anthropology without returning to the analysis of ritual practice with which its two constitutive parent disciplines -psychology and anthropologyeach effectively began.

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.

Journal for the Cognitive Science of Religion, 2024

Ritual is one of the defining characteristics of our species, which both precedes and extends beyond religion, into domains like politics, sports, family, the workplace, and all manner of social organizations. In a rapidly changing world where organized religion appears to be losing its monopoly on ceremony, it is more important than ever to understand ritual's unwavering persistence, investigate its functions, and explore its applications. The contributors to this book panel offer insightful critiques and insights about how to do this. In engaging with their ideas on the nature, definitions, and effects of ritual, both bright and dark, I join then in exploring applications for an interdisciplinary study of ritual.

International Journal for The Psychology of Religion, 2012, 22, 89-92

2019

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

1996

Ritual is a representative topos of both disciplines. We do not understand it as a text but a way of life in which the realization of Beauty and Good is leading to the Truthful. In this transformative process one experiences "being struck by the abyss", experience of giving to the Unknown, allowing being taken by it. In this "being-in" is the evidence of the ritual; "being-out" of it is the presumption of possibility to articulate it. Talking "happens" always from the position of the one "standing out". Therefore, the ritual as a text appears to us as a "reading without the Other", con-versing without a collocutor. To converse without a collocutor is a mere sounding of the Unessential. The momentariness of ritual encounter as the deepest dimension of "showing itself" is also a dimension of its disappearing. Attempt in catching it means its death. Only in the death of the ritual, anthropology and science of religio...

2007