Ritual as Action, Performance, and Practice

Abstract

Throughout the 1970s and the 1980s, scholarly theories of ritual began incorporating the language of ‘action’, ‘performance’, and ‘practice’, partly as a corrective to perceived limitations to existing theory, which was dominated by structuralism and communicative models. Ritual, once conceived as staid and habitual—in the best case, expressive, communicative, and symbolic of already existing ideas, beliefs, and values—was approached freshly in terms of agency and efficacy. In early theory, ritual was said to function as a kind of social glue, binding individuals in groups and confirming social statuses and hierarchies. Performance and action-centred theories variously analyse the socially disruptive and transformative potentials of ritual, questions of aesthetics and embodiment, and the formal, invariant properties of ritual. ‘Action’ is a particularly difficult concept, as it is conceived and used in ritual theory in several different, sometimes antithetical ways.

The Interactional Zoo: Lessons for Sociology from Erving Goffman’s Engagement with Animal Ethology

“…When Goffman introduces the idea of ritualization in Relations in Public (Goffman 1971:62), he mentions that a “very useful volume is A Discussion of Ritualization of Behavior in Animals and Man ,” a trailblazing collection of essays published in 1966 that resulted from a conference organized by the ethologist Julian Huxley and that catalyzed the creation of the new field of human ethology (Stephenson 2019). One must read the proceedings to appreciate the extent to which Goffman is attempting to emulate Huxley and Lorenz in mapping out a 1:1 correspondence between ritualized animal display and human interpersonal rituals 15 (and to appreciate that ethologists were, in Love’s [2021:84] wording, practicing “animal sociology”).…”

Virtuaalinen vuorovaikutus ruumiillisuuden näkökulmasta – Sosiaalinen kohtaaminen ja yhteistoiminta virtuaalisessa tavoitteellisessa toiminnassa ja jumalanpalveluksessa

“…Jumalanpalveluksen alkuperäinen rituaalinen luonne harvoin toteutuu siinä mielessä, että siihen osallistuvat muodostaisivat tiiviin yhteisön, jonka koossa pysymistä ja identiteettiä jumalanpalvelus määrittäisi (Émile Durkheimin käsityksestä rituaalista yhteisöä koossa pitävänä liimana, ks. Stephenson, 2018). Tiiviin ja juuri tietyn, myös arkiseen elämään ulottuvan yhteisön sijaan, seurakuntien jumalanpalveluksiin osallistuvat muodostavat tyypillisesti joko arkisesta elämästä melko irrallisen tai satunnaisen yhteisön.…”

Popular Songs, Melodies from the Dead: Moving beyond Historicism with the Buddhist Ethics and Aesthetics of Pin Peat and Cambodian Hip Hop

“…In addition to taking music and rituals to be modes of action and doing (see also Asad 1993;Stephenson 2018;Sykes 2018), this paper specifies that a primary aspect of what Cambodian musical aesthetics and Buddhist rituals do is to enact relations between people, deities, and the dead within the cycle of death and rebirth (sangsār). This builds on Michael Houseman's pairing of ritual with relationality (Houseman 2006) by focusing on ritual actions and technologies rather than ritual events, which expands the actions and contexts considered to be rituals.…”