Deep Conventionality, or, Tracing the Meanings of Conventional Rituals

Abstract

Can conventional rituals be meaningful? When and how can conventionality be part of processes of meaning-making rather than a mere obstacle that the cultural analyst must overcome? The article traces the meanings of minor rituals that populate the world of modern industrial societies and seem to have universal appeal. The article applies a Blochian regressive method to ethnological history in order to re-create the gradual process in which conventions appear, are disseminated, popularized, turned into group icons, and ritualized, and only then—and only sometimes—acquire discursive meanings that are often contested. This sequential model reveals the power of conventionality—the lack of contemplation about social conventions—in the processes of popularizing, ritualizing, and iconizing conventional acts. In the terms of Alexander’s meaning-centered performance theory, this conventionality exemplifies a “perfect” or “effortless” fusion of performers and audience. The article thus argues that the meanings of conventional rituals—and perhaps also of conventional performances of more “sacred” rituals—often lie not in symbolic significance or semiotic thickness, but in deep conventionality: meaningfulness encoded in the convention itself.

‘Our (Civil) Way of Life’: The Folkloric Civil Sphere

“…Elsewhere I explain this model in detail (Shoham, forthcoming), arguing that when meaning appears in the fourth stage of the chronological process of increasing conventionalization (if it does), it is often contested and ambiguous and still takes conventionality into account. In the context of the civil sphere, I argue that the process of increasing conventionalization in the evolution of folkloric customs reveals elements of mechanical solidarity, where everyone is doing the same thing mainly because everyone else does it; but at the same time, a universalism that makes this ‘everyone’ tangible.…”