Ritual, Space, and Authority in Seventeenth-Century English Cathedral Cities

Estabrook, Carl B.

doi:10.1162/002219502317345529

Cited by 14 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…Due to their massive scale, inside and around instances of RMA, there often is a lot of space for large groups of people to gather, providing ample opportunities for social interaction and social sharing. Medieval cathedrals, for example, are known to have served as civic gathering places or even marketplaces (Estabrook, 2002).…”

Section: Building Communities By Exploiting Awementioning

confidence: 99%

An Exploration of the Functions of Religious Monumental Architecture from a Darwinian Perspective

Joye

Verpooten

2013

Review of General Psychology

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In recent years, the cognitive science of religion has displayed a keen interest in religions' social function, bolstering research on religious prosociality and cooperativeness. The main objective of this article is to explore, from a Darwinian perspective, the biological and psychological mechanisms through which religious monumental architecture (RMA) might support that specific function. A frequently held view is that monumental architecture is a costly signal that served vertical social stratification in complex large-scale societies. In this paper we extend that view. We hypothesize that the function(s) of RMA cannot be fully appreciated from a costly signaling perspective alone, and invoke a complementary mechanism, namely sensory exploitation. We propose that, in addition to being a costly signal, RMA also often taps into an adaptive “sensitivity for bigness.” The central hypothesis of this paper is that when cases of RMA strongly stimulate that sensitivity, and when commoners become aware of the costly investments that are necessary to build RMA, then this may give rise to a particular emotional response, namely awe. We will try to demonstrate that, by exploiting awe, RMA promotes and regulates prosocial behavior among religious followers and creates in them an openness to adopt supernatural beliefs.

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Section: Building Communities By Exploiting Awementioning

confidence: 99%

An Exploration of the Functions of Religious Monumental Architecture from a Darwinian Perspective

Joye

Verpooten

2013

Review of General Psychology

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“…Knowing that use is possible, and the power of successful use of a place as a symbol is far reaching, we can expect to find competition between different groups about the interpretation of a place (Hayden, 2002;Danzer, 2009;Estabrook, 2002). This competition will automatically raise the question of who has the right to interpret that place: a right that in many cases will be obtained by the local elites, or maybe the right, which makes one into a local elite to begin with.…”

Section: Gateway Into Local Meaningsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Space, Place, & Symbol: Utilizing central places to understand intergroup conflict dynamics

Greiff¹

2015

NCETP

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This article will present a new way to capture highly dynamic intergroup differentiation processes. Drawing from experiences collected during several field research visits to Bosnia aimed at assessing Post-Dayton intergroup relations, and inspired by Positioning Theory, it will suggest that one key to understanding how groups interpret the behavior of other groups lies in the meaning these groups ascribe to the place of their interaction. Rules of a place limit the range of actions social agents can chose from, and establish an understanding of 'normal' behavior. This simultaneously positions all other possible acts as outside the local moral order, thus making the right to interpret a central place a favorable position and the interpretation of such a place into a strong positioning act that influences the terms of future interactions. Deciphering the dominant political meanings of central places in which intergroup interactions occur therefore becomes a promising way of understanding intergroup positioning processes. However approximating the meanings local groups ascribe to central places is in need of a thorough interpretational framework. This article will suggest one possible spatial approach to understanding intergroup interactions based on analyzing symbols that are used in the interpretational acts themselves.

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“…To vyvolalo odmítavé reakce městské správy, zejména s ohledem na uzavírání katedrálního chóru, který do té doby sloužil jako pohřebiště významných kleriků i měšťanů. Na základě sporů pak katedrální klérus vytvořil bariéry mezi městským a katedrálním rituálem, především tím, že měšťany postavil do pozice pouhých diváků, pokud se rituály odehrávaly uvnitř katedrály (Estabrook 2002). Všem výše uvedeným příkladům byla společná snaha jednotlivých subjektů či skupin získat kontrolu nad veřejným prostorem a nad vybranými prvky (náboženských) rituálů, jakožto součást prosazení vlastní moci.…”

Section: Interpretaceunclassified

Rituál smrti a sociální praxe ve věku konfesí: Historicko-antropologická perspektiva

Malý

2011

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Historical research on death and dying has been inspired by sociological and anthropological approaches for a long time. However, the theme of the social use of death in the early modern period rarely came up until the 1980s. This perspective emphasizes the problems of death and death rituals as a presentation and reconstruction of social order. The early modern period had many specific characteristics, one of which was the significance of confessions, as a result of the European Reformation. Consequently, burials and death rituals often became part of a sphere in which confessional identity was expressed. In confessionally-mixed regions -mainly in towns -the (confessionally-defined) communities tried to attack the rituals of other confessions in order to ensure their own purity. Thus, basic anthropological principles can be observed in early modern society: membership in a community played the most important role and one's incorporation in it through traditional rituals and a proper burial were seen as guaranteeing one's perpetual membership in the society of Christians; separation and exclusion, on the contrary, led to the prevention of symbolic contact between the dead and the living, without which there was no salvation.

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Ritual, Space, and Authority in Seventeenth-Century English Cathedral Cities

Cited by 14 publications

References 6 publications

An Exploration of the Functions of Religious Monumental Architecture from a Darwinian Perspective

An Exploration of the Functions of Religious Monumental Architecture from a Darwinian Perspective

Space, Place, & Symbol: Utilizing central places to understand intergroup conflict dynamics

Rituál smrti a sociální praxe ve věku konfesí: Historicko-antropologická perspektiva

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