Bell's Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice

Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice Catherine Bell Introduction [R]itual has simultaneously become an object, a method, and even something of a style of scholarship on the American academic scene (3). This book undertakes such an analysis in two ways: first, through a critical reading of how the notion of ritual has been used in the study of religion, society, and culture; second, through an attempt to carve out an approach to ritual activities that is less encumbered by assumptions about thinking and acting and more disclosing of the strategies by which ritualized activities do what they do (4). The book analyzes the work that has been done with ritual as a category to get to where the scholarship is and suggests other places to take the category of ritual (4). The starting point of the study is consideration of what causes certain acts to be called ritual, how the category affects knowledge about other cultures, and what the assumptions are that limit how we think of ritual (4). The book also seeks to understand how theoretical knowledge is formed and theoretical activity is differentiated from other forms of social activity (5). To do so, need to consider historical development of issues, engagement with our cultural categories, extend this to real examples (5). The book is organized into 3 parts: Part I: [T]he chapters in Part I take up the initial task of a critical theory of ritual by addressing the construction of the category itself and the role this construction has played in organizing a broad discourse on religion, society, and culture. Despite the differences among historians of religion, sociologists, and anthropologists, their theories of ritual all similarly function to resolve the complex problems posed by an initial bifurcation of thought and action. Indeed, theoretical discourse about ritual is organized as a coherent whole by virtue of a logic based on the opposition of thought and action. This argument suggests that, historically, the whole issue of ritual arose as a discrete phenomenon to the eyes of social observers in that period in which reason and the scientific pursuit of knowledge were defining a particular hegemony in Western intellectual life (6). Bell argues against Goody, who proposes to throw out the term ritual, which carries with it associations of universality. Bell proposes to retain but modify the term: I do intend to modify the term ritual to function as something other than a global construct or a key to culture. Yet my close reliance upon current and preceding scholarship ensures continuity with the commonsense notion of ritual while making explicit some of the assumptions and perspectives built into it (7). Namely, she questions the universality (7). Part II: I propose a focus on ritualization as a strategic way of acting and then turn to explore how and why this way of acting differentiates itself from other practices. When analyzed as ritualization, acting ritually emerges as a particular cultural strategy of differentiation linked to particular social effects and rooted in a distinctive interplay of a socialized body and the environment it structures. The confusions that accompany attempts to distinguish clearly between rite and non-ritethose perennial obstacles to neat definitions and classificationare revealed to be highly significant for understanding what ritualization does (7-8). Part III: is on theories of ritual as social control. The main argument suggests that ritualization is a strategy for the construction of a limited and limiting power relationship. This is not a relationship in which one social group has absolute control over another, but one that simultaneously involves both consent and resistance, misunderstanding and appropriation. In exploring how ritualized ways of acting negotiate authority, self, and society, I attempt to delineate something of the social dynamics by which all activity reproduces and manipulates its own contextual ground (8). Her argument relies on analysis of how language is used (8). This book is organized around a problem it first constructs and then solvesthe problem of how the notion of ritual orders a body of theoretical discourse (8).

Part I: The Practice of Ritual Theory Introduction to the section: Ritual theories are embedded in larger discourses, and how ritual is conceived reflects and supports the discourse that is its frame. This makes including ritual as objective data instead of analytic tool problematic, and it is hard to prevent a slippage from the latter to the former (13); after Kuhn and Foucault it is problematic to simply suggest ritual is a neutral category by recourse to claims that ritual is merely an analytic tool (14). Bell then goes on to outline a brief genealogy of ritual as an analytic term, starting in the 19th century when it emerges as a universal category to the more recent transformation of ritual into both an object of and a method of analysis (14). Ritual has been paired with belief as the component of religion by a range of theorists: Max Mller, Herbert Spencer, William James and others suggested that religion (centered around the sacred) is about ideas while ritual/behavior were secondary and expressive of belief (14). Durkheim and others analyzed religion as a combination of belief and rites, where the former is primary; Hubert and Mauss inverted this, suggesting rites are primary. Moving beyond religion after Mauss, ritual came to be associated not just with religion but with the more basic structures of symbolization and social communication, as well as the emerging category of culture (key to Geertz and Turner among others) (15). Ritual studies has emerged which studies ritual in its own right as both universal experience and analytic tool; in it, ritual has come to be a site where opposed social forces are brought back together again (16). She then lays out her argument for the section: I will show theoretical discourse on ritual to be highly structured by the differentiation and subsequent reintegration of two particular categories of human experience: thought and action. An exploration of the internal logic of this differentiation and reintegration of thought and action in ritual theory suggests that the recent role of ritual as a category in the study of culture has been inextricably linked to the construction of a specifically cultural methodology, a theoretical approach that defines and addresses cultural data. That is, the problems we face in analyzing ritual, as well as the impetus for engaging these particular problems, have less to do with interpreting the raw data and more to do with the manner in which we theoretically constitute ritual as the object of a cultural method of interpretation (16-17). Chapter 1 Summary: Bells major argument for this chapter is that a pattern emerges in ritual theory whereby thought and action are dichotomized and then subsequently reintegrated. This happens for a number of homologous pairs besides thought and action, like synchrony and diachrony, communitas and formalized social order (Turner), or ritual observer and actor (Geertz). The basic thought/action dichotomy is a model for this bifurcation and reintegration in this series of homologous pairs, which is driven because a logic of behavioral versus conceptual categories is set up which carries throughout work on ritual. One pattern in theory of ritual: Ritual theory generally distinguishes action from conceptual parts of religion like belief, symbol, and myth. The latter may promote the former, but they are distinct. Sometimes ritual is described as action which is done without thought, an extreme bifurcation (19). A second pattern: This second pattern describes ritual as type of functional or structural mechanism to reintegrate the thought-action dichotomy, which may appear in the guise of a distinction between belief and behavior or any number of other homologous pairs (20). Bell shows that these two patterns are evident in several theories of ritual, including Durkheims. There is a related pattern whereby ritual is portrayed as synchronic, continuous, traditional or ontological in opposition to the diachronic, changing, historical, or social but ritual is also portrayed as the nexus of these forces (20). A third pattern is seen in Turners work, ritual is related to communal unity as opposed to friction and competition, but then it is also the site of mediation between communitas and the formalized social order (21). Bell uses these three patterns to show how prevalent the bifurcation and then reunification at the site of ritual is: Each of these examples employs the two structural patterns described previously: ritual is first differentiated as a discrete object of analysis by means of various dichotomies that are loosely analogous to thought and action; then ritual is subsequently elaborated as the very means by which these dichotomous categories, neither of which could exist without the other, are reintegrated (21).

In effect, the dichotomy that isolates ritual on the one hand and the dichotomy that is mediated by ritual on the other become loosely homologized with each other. Essentially, as I will demonstrate, the underlying dichotomy between thought and action continues to push for a loose systemization of several levels of homologized dichotomies, including the relations between the ritual observer and the ritual actor. It is this invisible process of homologization, driven by the implicit presence of an opposition between conceptual and behavioral categories, that begins to construct a persuasive and apparently logical body of discourse (21). Bell draws on Jameson to note parallel in linguistic theory of differentiation of two terms that come up in subsequent levels of analysis. The example of this is Saussures repeated pattern replication of the distinction between synchrony and diachrony that infuses levels of analysis with this artificial distinction (21-22). A similar thing happens in ritual, though unlike Saussure, in ritual, there is a reintegration not just serial differentiations (23). Ritual is DIALECTIC unlike Saussures linguistic theory which is based on dichotomy: [R]itual is a dialectical means for the provisional convergence of those opposed forces whose interaction is seen to constitute culture in some form (23). The example is given of those analyzing Durkheim and Durkheim himself, there is a tendency to see two sociocultural processes and then try to find a theory that reintegrates them (25). Theorists speculating on ritual have tended to manipulate the thought-action dichotomy in constructing theories of ritual (25): Hence, I am suggesting that descriptions of how rituals work have been constructed according to a logic rooted in the dynamics of theoretical speculation and the unconscious manipulation of the thought-action dichotomy is intrinsic to this construction (25). Bell turns to Geertz to illustrate the dichotomy/dialectic relationship in ritual theory. Geertz, who is focused on meaning, polarizes ethos and worldview, which is parallel to the analogous to the split between action and belief, respectively. He also presents them as synthesized at other times, making the ethos-worldview relationship into a dialectic (there is a related argument for models for and models of) (26). Thus, the dichotomous nature of conceptions of order (worldview) and dispositions for action (ethos) is fundamental to Geertzs approach, as is their resolution in such symbolic systems as ritual. The temporary resolution of a dichotomy is cast as the central dynamic of cultural life (27). A third pattern, too, emerges in Geertz, in addition to the dichotomy and synthesis pattern. He brings in the relationship between observer and participant of ritual: for Geertz, ritual offers a special vantage point for the theorist to observe these processes (27). There is a dichotomy between what the outside observer has to analyze ritual, which is conceptual categories, and what the participant has, which is his own conceptual framework and dispositional imperatives. In this argument, Geertz is setting up a third structural pattern and a third permutation of the thought-action dichotomy. That is, ritual participants act, whereas those observing them think. In ritual activity, conceptions and dispositions are fused for the participants, which yields meaning. Meaning for the outside theorist comes differently: insofar as he or she can perceive in ritual the true basis of its meaningfulness for the ritual actorsthat is, its fusion of conceptual and dispositional categoriesthen the theorists can go beyond mere thoughts about activity to grasp the meaningfulness of the ritual. By recognizing the ritual mechanism of meaningfulness for participants, the theorist in turn can grasp its meaningfulness as a cultural phenomenon. Ritual activity can then become meaningful to the theorist. Thus, a cultural focus on ritual activity renders the rite a veritable window on the most important process of cultural life (28). Thus, theoretical explanation of meaning is itself a fusion of thought and action, the former the theorists and the latter the participants. Herein likes the implicit structural homology: the fusion of thought and action described within ritual is homologized to a fusion of the theoretical project and its object, ritual activity. Both generate meaningthe first for the ritual actor and the second for the theorist (28). Chapter 2 Summary: In this chapter, Bell argues that a circular logic arises when theorists base their theories of ritual on depictions of a social order that is derived from assumptions brought in by the theorist. The basic assumption is the differentiation of thought and action, and layers of homologous pairs are built on that. The theory of ritual that results is built on these introduced assumptions. Using examples of Geertz, Marxian/Hegelian concept of contradiction, Turner and Gluckman, and performance and other analogy-based theories like ritual as text, Bell suggests that what is presumed at the beginning (the discontinuity or the analogy to performance, for example) comes to dictate the conclusion about ritual that the theorist comes to at the end. Bell opens with examples from Milton Singer and Geertz which she uses to argue that the theorist imposes his thought pattern on ritual (30-31)

She lays out the main argument up front: Most simply, we might say, ritual is to the symbols it dramatizes as action is to thought; on a second level, ritual integrates thought and action; and on a third level, a focus on ritual performances integrates our thought and their action. The opposition of the theorist and the ritual object becomes homologized with two other oppositions, namely, the opposition that differentiates ritual (beliefs versus activities) and the opposition of two fundamental sociocultural forces that is resolved by ritual (conceptual versus dispositional forces). This homology is achieved by a hidden appeal to a type of common denominator, the opposition of thought and action. In the end, a model of ritual that integrates opposing sociocultural forces becomes homologized to a mode of theoretical discourse that reintegrates the dichotomy underlying the identification of a thinking theorist and an acting object. This type of expedient logic carries another inevitable corollary, however. That is, theories of ritual which attempt to integrate thought and action in any guise simultaneously function to maintain their differentiation (32). Bell goes on to show the circular logic that results from theories that start by differentiating thought and action and build layers of homologies (32) Geertz is a primary example: Geertz distinguishes between cultural and social system, where the former is symbolic and the latter is action-based (33). After he sets up these separate categories, he suggests that ritual that fails is ritual in which culture and social system are discontinuous. Bell argues his reasoning is circular: Ultimately, the discontinuity affirmed in the conclusion is a direct replication of the differentiation established in the beginning (34). He fails to do better than the functionalists he critiques for not being able to explain change (33-34). A second set of examples of circularity from homologized patterns within ritual theory is drawn from the group of theorists who describe ritual as an arena where social conflicts are worked out (Max Gluckman and Victor Turner). These arguments lead to circularity, too, because the conclusions seem to result from what the theorist has imposed on the system: As with Geertzs approach, these theories see ritual as designed to address fundamental conflicts and contradictions in the society, and there is similarly little evidence that the conflicts so addressed are not simply imposed through the categories of the observer (35-6). Another example of the same circularity of explaining the fundamentals of culture such that the theoretical tool solves puzzles that the theorist tries to explain is the Marxian and Hegelian idea of contradiction. That ritual solves fundamental social contradiction is a constructed myth, as is the idea that theres something fundamental (36-7) The last example is of Performance theory and other related analogical theories like text: Bell claims that performance theory is guilty of presenting activity as dramatizing prior conceptual entities in order to affirm them. A system for how society works is presumed and then ritual is seen to play out in that way, i.e. Grimes suggest that the human body is primary to ritual but explains this because the body can enact social roles and cultural meanings. Performance theory fails to break out of the dichotomy pattern. It also relies on the theorist-observer to be a participant (because a performance needs an audience) (39). Bell critiques Turners late work for remaining dialectical and Stanley Tambiahs theory of ritual as communication for falling into the dialectic pattern, too (41-42). In her overall critique of performance theory, Bell criticizes how it rests on a slippery extended metaphor, which leads to naturalization of observer, the slippage from performance as metaphor to idea that that is the actual nature of the activity, there is no way to distinguish between different types of performance (42). Some theorists have tried to build on and improve performance theory, but they are still vulnerable to critiques, such as the fact that sometimes ritual isnt a performance but is intended to cause change in the outside world (43). Geertz looks at ritual by other metaphors, including game, drama, or text (43). For example, in Deep Play, ritual is depicted like a text which can be decoded but also acknowledges the difficulties of using text as a metaphor, which is echoed by Tambiah (44). Some of the problems with text as a metaphor for ritual: assumption that text is autonomous and unified and thatit has a hidden meaning which is fully accessible to a close reading (45). As the foregoing thought-action argument illustrated, the assumed existence of such a something, the latent meaning of the act, once again devalues the action

itself, making it a second-stage representation of prior values (45). Though there are some merits to performance theory, it is problematic because it easily slips from tool to feature of reality (46). Chapter 3 Summary: After a thorough summary of what she has covered so farthe homologized oppositions between thought and action, the thinking subject and non-thinking subject, theorist and actor, as well as the way that ritual serves a function of reintegrating these oppositionsBell emphasizes how the discourse of ritual has been overdetermined by the initial dichotomy and rejects the thought-action dichotomy as a basis for understanding ritual. She suggests that the subordination of actors to thinkers is more damaging than the bifurcation itself. The activity of separating categories is used to imply an inequality between two things (black and white, male and female), and such an activity is harmful, but she also suggests that to understand differentiation as an activity is to understand the basis of theorymaking. There are two parts to generating a theoretical discourse: identify a distinct level or mode of analysis and then identify an object of analysis, which is not independent of the mode. The two are co-constructed, each implying the naturalness of the other. After a series of examples, Bell discusses a debate in anthropology over whether theres been a move away from grand social theory about culture and society to a discipline that is more narrowly focused on specific contexts and experiences in the field. As Quentin Skinner points out, against such arguments, those who wish to move away from object and discourse construction are actually generated architechtonic theoretical frameworks (52) that only appear anti-theoretical and committed to cultural self-reflection by the West. Bell provides examples of how postmodern conceptions of anthropology are engaged in self-critique, and briefly theorizes on why this discourse of cultural knowledge has come about (changes in the humanities, the natives freed from colonial assumptions and being educated abroad). She suggests that within this discourse of cultural knowledge, there may be attempts to deal with the traditional relationship between subject and theorist which needs to be reevaluated within this new context. Yet, domination has not disappeared, and is in fact maintained in the thought-action dichotomy. In the final analysis the results of such a differentiation between thought and action cannot be presumed to provide an adequate position vis--vis human activity as such. Naturally, as many others have argued before, the differentiation tends to distort not only the nature of so-called physical activities, but the nature of mental ones as well. Yet the more subtle and far-reaching distortion is not the obvious bifurcation of a single, complex reality into dichotomous aspects that can exist in theory only. Rather, it is the far more powerful act of subordination disguised in such differentiation , the subordination of act to thought, or actors to thinkers (48-49). To generate theoretical discourse on culture, or almost any theoretical discourse for that matter, it is necessary to do two things: first, to specify a distinct level or mode of analysis, in this case a cultural level; and second, to identify an object or phenomenon that exists as a meaningful totality only on such a level of analysis. This object will act as the natural object of the specified mode of analysis, although the object so identified is not independent of this analysis; it is constituted and depicted as such in terms of the specified mode of analysis. That is, the object and the method are actually intrinsic to each other, one demonstrating the naturalness and validity of the other. As we have seen with ritual, particularly in the extended example drawn from Geertz, the structure of the constituted object is a veritable model of the method of analysis and vice versa (49). Example from Mauss of the method/subject reliance in work on gifts (49-50), Geertz on culture and meaning (50), and Ricoeur on text and social action (50-51). In this very abbreviated summary, Ricoeur can be seen to lay out the steps for creating an object amenable to a certain type of scrutiny; insofar as the object so constructed and scrutinized is een to yield a higher, fuller, truer meaning (indeed, its only real meaningfulness), it simultaneously constructs and legitimates that method of scrutiny (51). Skinner finds that despite themselves the major anti-theorists of the last few decades have generated comprehensive and architectonic theoretical frameworks. Different from the laws-and-instances mode of theorizing, as Geertz put it, the more recent style of object-and-discourse construction can appear to its participants as antitheoretical and committed to cultural self-reflection. Indeed, the cultural knowledge constituted in this type of discourse tends to see itself as both salvaging other cultures from Westernization and serving as the basis for the Wests own cultural critique (52). Cultural knowledge constituted through the study of ritual and performance appears to experiment with a new sense of community between theorists and actors, characterized by modest, mutual dependence and shared problems of meaning, epistemology, and critical self-reflection. Yet the domination of the theoretical subject is

neither abrogated nor transcended. This domination is maintained and disguised by virtue of the implicit structuring of the thought-action dichotomy in its various forms (54). I have tried to suggest that ritual is an eminently suitable device for organizing a theoretical conversation that wishes to uncover cultural meanings through the interpretation of texts that reek of meaning. The construction of ritual as a decipherable text allows the theorist to interpret simply by deconstructing ritual back into its prefused components. The theoretical construction of ritual becomes a reflection of the theorists method and the motor of a discourse in which the concerns of theorists take center stage (54). Part II: The Sense of Ritual By building on specific aspects of practice theory, however, I will lay out an approach to ritual activities that stresses the primacy of the social act itself, how its strategies are lodged in the very doing of the act, and how ritualization is a strategic way of acting in specific social situations. The framework of ritualization casts a new light on the purpose of ritual activity, its social efficacy, and its embodiment in complex traditions and systems (67). Chapter 4 Summary: Bell first sets up the problem with ritual theories that have been created thus far. Most attempts to define ritual do so by setting up a universal, and therefore incomplete, definition of ritual. Such definitions define what can be called ritual and what cannot and lead to categories of ritual. While taxonomy of ritual has been important for organizing the study of ritual, it has led to several problems: a dizzying number of types arise that leads theorist to talk in circles, categories undermine indigenous distinctions and blurs the particulars into unnuanced generals. Theories of ritual have tended to fall into one of two categories: rituals are a distinctive form of activity or rituals are congruous with other human actions. Within the distinctiveness group, there is a tendency to distinguish the ritual/magical (symbolic and noninstrumental) from the technical/utilitarian (practical and instrumental). The distinction between symbolic and instrumental has a tendency to collapse into emotional versus logical, which itself often leads to ritual described as cathartic and dealing with anxiety. She also notes that the symbolic vs practical distinction is not a native, but an imposed one. The other group, the one that sees ritual as an aspect of all activity is a newer set of theories. In this group are theories that see ritual as a type of routinization or communication. This group runs the risk of analyzing all parts of human life as ritual. She then introduces her approach, based on the idea of ritualization, which involves analyzing how certain social actions differentiate themselves from others. To explore the dynamics of social actions, Bell turns to the concept of practice, one that has been used since Marx to transcend dichotomies that wrongly divide human experience (75). She explains Marxs two usages, one that is descriptive and one that is prescriptive. The former deals with human nature and activity, responding to problems from Hegel and Feuerbach (I will not detail them, but see page 75 if you are interested). The latter deals with how to use theory. Bell then outlines how later people follow or diverge from Marx in the use of practice, followed by a list of problems with how practice has been used (sometimes encourages slippage between levels of the argument, privileges terms afforded by positing fundamental oppositions which leads terms to become derivative, mediating role of practice can lead to synthesis of categories to be unstable and therefore not effective at mediation). Bell then gives the examples of Jameson, Bourdieu, and Ortner on practice, pointing out their limitations. She closes the section by suggesting that a theory of ritual practice should not construct a model of ritual practice but instead describe the strategies of the ritualized act by deconstructing some of the intricacies of its cultural logic (80-81). Bell then outlines the features of practice, which include that it is situational, strategic, embedded in a misrecognition of what it is in fact doing (81), and able to reproduce or reconfigure a vision of the order of power in the world, or what I will call redemptive hegemony (81). Situational refers to the fact that context is key, and an activity is not the same if taken out of or abstracted from the context. Strategic refers to the fact that there is a logic to practice, not an intellectualist logic, but still a play of situationally effective schemes, tactics, and strategies (82). Misrecognition is misrecognition of what a practice is doing: for example, Bourdieu describes gift giving as a practice which is really reciprocal exchange but what is experienced is a singular act of generosity. The last characteristic is the most complex, and has to do with the motivational dynamics of agency, the will to act, which is also integral to the context of action (83).Bell describes redemptive hegemony as a synthesis of Burridges redemptive process and Gramscis hegemony. She writes: In sum, a redemptive hegemony is not an explicit ideology or a single and bounded doxa that defines a cultures sense of reality. It is a strategic and practical orientation for acting, a framework possible only insofar as it is embedded in the act itself. As such, of course, the redemptive hegemony of practice does not reflect reality more or less effectively; it creates it more or less effectively. To analyze practice in terms of its vision of redemptive hegemony is, therefore, to formulate the unexpressed assumptions that constitute the actors strategic understanding of the place, purpose, and trajectory of the act (85). Bell then compares

redemptive hegemony to similar concepts like Althussors problematique (see 86-88), which highlights the extent to which there is a certain blindness to practice, it does not see itself do what it actually does (87). In the last section, Bell returns directly to ritualization. After describing Gluckmand and Huxleys uses of the term, Bell describes her own, which emphasizes how practices that count as ritualization distinguish themselves from other practices and what such a distinction accomplishes. Two key concepts are relationality and differentiation. Ritualization derives its significance from its relation to other practices as well as from strategies that differentiate a ritualized practice from its conventional counterparts (90). The sacred and profane are also key categories: ritualization creates sacred by differentiating it from profane. There are common features to ritualization like fixity and repetition but there are no necessary, intrinsic features of ritualization. Instead, ritualization differs in different contexts, acting as a practical way of dealing with some specific circumstances (92). She concludes, Hence, ritualization can be characterized in general only to a rather limited extent since the idiom of its differentiation of acting will be, for the most part, culturally specific (93). Summary of the problem: With these objections [described in the summary above] an impasse appears to loom. On the one hand there is evidence that ritual acts are not a clear and closed category of social behavior. On the other hand many problems attend the attempt to see ritual as a dimension of all or many forms of social behavior (74). Approach: Rather than impose categories of what is or is not ritual, it may be more useful to look at how human activities establish and manipulate their own differentiation and purposesin the very doing of the act within the context of other ways of acting. With this approach in mind, I will use the term ritualization to draw attention to the way in which certain social actions strategically distinguish themselves in relation to other actions. In a very preliminary sense, ritualization is a way of acting that is designed and orchestrated to distinguish and privilege what is being done in comparison to other, usually more quotidian, activities. As such, ritualization is a matter of various culturally specific strategies for setting some activities off from others, for creating and privileging a qualitative distinction between the sacred and the profane, and for ascribing such distinctions to realities thought to transcend the powers of human actors (74). Moving past other uses of practice that have failed: Confronting the ritual act itself, and therein eschewing ritual as some object to be analyzed or some subjectivity to be fathomed, would involve asking how ritual activities, in their doing, generate distinctions between what is or is not acceptable ritual. From this perspective one could not seek to construct a theory or model of ritual practice. Rather one could attempt to describe the strategies of the ritualized act by deconstructing some of the intricacies of its cultural logic. This is the perspective that will be developed in the rest of Part II. This exploration of the distinctive strategies and cultural logic that lie behind ritual activities may also begin to illuminate the distinctive strategies of theoretical practices (80-81). Redemptive hegemony: As a practical construal or consciousness of the system of power relations and as a framework for action, redemptive hegemony suggests that human practice is characterized by relations of dominance and subjugation. These relations, however, are preset in practice by means of the practical values, obligations, and persistent envisioningas both an assumption and an extension of the systemof a state of prestige within this ordering of power. This vision exists as a practical consciousness of the world (common sense) and a sense of ones options for social action. It is also a vision of empowerment tat is rooted in the actors perceptions and experiences of the organization of power. Although awkward, the term redemptive hegemony denotes the way in which reality is experienced as a natural weave of constraint and possibility, the fabric of day-today dispositions and decisions experienced as a field for strategic action. Rather than an embracing ideological vision of the whole, it conveys a biased, nuanced rendering of the ordering of power so as to facilitate the envisioning of personal empowerment through activity in the perceived system (84). In sum, a redemptive hegemony is not an explicit ideology or a single and bounded doxa that defines a cultures sense of reality. It is a strategic and practical orientation for acting, a framework possible only insofar as it is embedded in the act itself. As such, of course, the redemptive hegemony of practice does not reflect reality more or less effectively; it creates it more or less effectively. To analyze practice in terms of its vision of redemptive hegemony is, therefore, to formulate the unexpressed assumptions that constitute the actors strategic understanding of the place, purpose, and trajectory of the act (85). Sacred and profane: Whereas Durkheim defined religion and ritual as that which is addressed to the sacred, the approach presented here is an inverse of his, showing how a particular way of acting draws the types of flexible distinctions that yield notions and categories like ritual or religion. The relative clarity and flexibility of the boundaries, of course, are also a highly strategic matter in a particular cultural community and are best understood in terms of the concrete situation (91).

Chapter 5 Summary: The body is the focus of this chapter. Producing a ritualized body, one that has a sense of ritual and works to shape the sociocultural environment so that it has control, is the implicit ends of ritualization. Ritualization does so through the interaction of the body with a structured and structuring environment (98). A circular process takes place where ritualization, through interaction with the environment, produces a ritualized body and that body shapes the environment. The person involved misrecognizes this process: the person perceives that the values and experiences come from a place of power beyond the person and her ritual activity. In this process of ritualization, the production of a ritualized agent via the interaction of a body within a structured and structuring environment (100), the context is key though not completely determinative of the ritualized agent. However, even if one claims to repeat a ritual exactly as it has been done for thousands of years, no ritual is autonomous from its context. Bell outlines three basic dynamics of ritualization strategies: binary oppositions, hierarchization, and the generation of a loosely integrated whole in which each element defers to another in an endlessly circular chain of reference (101). Durkheim (sacred vs. profane), J.Z. Smith (ritual as assertion of difference), and others have highlighted the role of opposition in ritual; Bell points out, however, that the oppositions arent symmetric but create hierarchies based on asymmetries in the opposed terms (for example, right and left side of the body are not equal, as shown by Hertz). Sets of oppositions get linked together, generating whole systems of ritual symbols and actions (right/left linked to good/evil and inside/outside).Bell uses Derridas concept of difference to explain how oppositions do not find resolution by organization into hierarchies, but instead form a network of oppositions that nuance each other and deferred meanings. Such a network eludes resolution: This process yields the sense of a loosely knit and loosely coherent totality, the full potential of which is never fully grasped and thus never fully subject to challenge or denial. One is never confronted with the meaning to accept or reject; one is always led into a redundant, circular, and rhetorical universe of values and terms whose signification keeps flowing into other values and terms (106). The ritualized environment can translate social problems into the terms of the ritual, not resolving them but diffusing them in this network. This is the internal strategy of ritualization. The ritualized body produced in ritualization brings what it has come to possess during ritual into social life. Bell introduces the term ritual mastery, based on Bourdieus practical mastery (schemes for ordering the world used by social agents that come to be embodied during practice), to refer to practical mastery in the context of ritualization. Bell writes, I use the term ritual mastery to designate a practical mastery of the schemes of ritualization as an embodied knowing, as the sense of ritual seen in its exercise (107). With the term, Bell emphasizes that ritual is not a static, existing object but something embodied in specific contexts through work. Ritual mastery involves a circularity, where a ritualized person uses ritualization schemes to affect non-ritualized parts of life and to make them more coherent with the ritualized. Along with circularity, ritualization also relies on constant deferral of meaning and purpose. Part of this circularity is misrecognition, seeing and not seeing. Bell explains what ritualization sees: ritualization sees itself as the correct way of acting to respond to a particular context or situation. It does not see the extent to which it redefines or generates the circumstances to which it is responding (109). Bell further explains: And yet what ritualization does is actually quite simple: it temporarily structures a space-time environment through a series of physical movements (using schemes described earlier), thereby producing an arena which, by its molding of the actors, both validates and extends the schemes they are internalizing. Indeed, in seeing itself as responding to an environment, ritualization interprets its own schemes as impressed upon the actors from a more authoritative source, usually from well beyond the immediate human community itself (109-110). Related to seeing and not seeing is use of language and communicative function of ritual as well as the comparison of ritual to text, which are both controversial and differ widely between a range of theorists. Bell concludes the chapter with a discussion of redemptive hegemony and misrecognition. The practice of ritualization has an object-unity characteristic that ritual mastery makes evident. The agents produced in ritualization experience and relate to the world through certain strategies. A sense of fit between the environment and the socialized body ensues. Furthermore, ritualization makes this coherence seem as if it is for the person or group, empowering them. The implicit dynamic and end of ritualizationthat which it does not see itself doingcan be said to be the production of a ritualized body. A ritualized body is a body invested with a sense of ritual. This sense of ritual exists as an implicit variety of schemes whose deployment works to produce sociocultural situations that the ritualized body can dominate in some way. This is a practical mastery, to use Bourdieus term, of strategic schemes for ritualization, and it appears as a social instinct for creating and manipulating contrasts. This sense is not a matter of self-conscious knowledge of any explicit rules of ritual but as an implicit cultivated disposition. Ritualization produces this ritualized body through the interaction of the body with a structured and structuring environment. It

is in the dialectical relationship between the body and a space structured according to mythico-ritual oppositions, writes Bourdieu, that one finds the form par excellence of the structural apprenticeship which leads to the embodying of the structures of the world, that is, the appropriating by the world of a body thus enabled to appropriate the world. Hence, through a series of physical movements ritual practices spatially and temporally construct an environment organized according to schemes of privileged oppositions. The construction of this environment and the activities within it simultaneously work to impress these schemes upon the bodies of participants. This is a circular process that tends to be misrecognized, if it is perceived at all, as values and experiences impressed upon the person and community from sources of power and order beyond it. Through the orchestration in time of loose but strategically organized oppositions, in which a few oppositions quietly come to dominate others, the social body internalizes the principles of the environment being delineated. Inscribed within the social body, these principles enable the ritualized person to generate in turn strategic schemes that can appropriate or dominate other sociocultural situations (98-99). [R]itualization cannot be understood apart from the immediate situation, which is being reproduced in a misrecognized and transformed way through the production of ritualized agents (100). [R]itualization not only involves the setting up of oppositions, but through the privileging built into such an exercise it generates hierarchical schemes to produce a loose sense of totality and systematicity. In this way, ritual dynamics afford an experience of order as well as the fit between this taxonomic order and the real world of experience (104). What we might call the external strategy of ritualization, the very drawing of a privileged distinction between its activities and others, parallels what can be called its internal strategy, the generation of schemes of opposition, hierarchization, and deferral by which the body has impressed upon it the schemes that effect the distinctive privileging and differentiation of ritualizing acts themselves. This manner of producing a ritualized agent, as I will argue next, can be seen to be the basic and distinctive strategy of so-called ritual behavior (106-7). Ritualization sees its end, the rectification of a problematic. It does not see what it does in the process of realizing this end, its transformation of the problematic itself. And yet what ritualization does is actually quite simple: it temporarily structures a space-time environment through a series of physical movements (using schemes described earlier), thereby producing an arena which, by its molding of the actors, both validates and extends the schemes they are internalizing. Indeed, in seeing itself as responding to an environment, ritualization interprets its own schemes as impressed upon the actors from a more authoritative source, usually from well beyond the immediate human community itself. Hence, through an orchestration in time of loosely and effectively homologized oppositions in which some gradually come to dominate others, the social body reproduces itself in the image of the symbolically schematized environment that has been simultaneously established (109-110). Ritual does what it does through the privileged differentiations and deferred resolutions by which the ritualized body structures an environment, an environment that in turn impresses its highly nuanced structure on the bodies of those involved in the rite. Strategies, signification, and the experience of meaningfulness are found in the endless circularity of the references mobilized, during the course of which some differentiations come to dominate others. Ritual mastery is the abilitynot equally shared, desired, or recognizedto (1) take and remake schemes from the shared culture that can strategically nuance, privilege, or transform, (2) deploy them in the formation of a privileged ritual experience, which in turn (3) impresses them in a new form upon agents able to deploy them in a variety of circumstances beyond the circumference of the rite itself (116). Chapter 6 Summary: This chapter explores ritual traditions and systems in historical, territorial/calendrical, and organizational/expert-based dimensions. Bell first summarizes the way theorists have dealt with the relationship between tradition, continuity, and change, pointing out that several scholars suggest a flexibility or oral culture and rigidity of written culture; also, ritual can be fixed activities and also have aspects that adapt. Bell suggests, as others have too, that these conclusions miss the fact that ritual can construct tradition (example: Blochs concept of formalization of speech to form an oratory code). Constructed tradition is key to community identity formation; such construction from ritual is a powerful strategy based on authoritative precedents and perceptions of consensus on historically rooted values. Bell emphasizes that tradition is not static but is constantly produced and reproduced, pruned for a clear profile, and softened to absorb revitalizing elements (123). Ritual is not just blind reenactment of ritual precedent but is subject to constant reinterpretation and renegotiation. Groups across spatial territories are also linked through systems of ritual practice, built from a complex orchestration of standard binary oppositions [including vertical, horizontal, and central/local oppositions] that

generate flexible sets of relationships both differentiating and integrating activities, gods, sacred places, and communities vis--vis each other (125). These oppositions differentiate and integrate communities, largely based on ritual activities being organized temporally either to differentiate or synchronize groups. Bell emphasizes that ritual systems do not just control social systems, but constitute those systems. The ritual specialists section is based, in large part, on Webers theory of rationalization, whereby different forms of religious authority (magician, priest, charismatic prophet) come with increasing rationality. Marxists built on this theory, tying rationalization to development of institutions with specialists, reducing the need for public ritual. Goody reanalyzes Weber in terms of writing, missing oral societies. Bell lists several common features to ritual specialists, including authority resting on importance of ritual for creating networks of people and the supernatural; stabilization and control of religious power; and ranking ritual activities in importance, which is a dynamic and ambivalent process. Bell then discusses orality and literacy, and the different strategies of ritualization each entails. Authority in oral societies is based on memory, seniority, and practical expertise while in written societies it is based on access to texts (136). Textual traditions have the challenge or reconciling the past with the present textual traditionchanges must somehow be sanctioned, which enhances authority of the interpreters. Textual traditions are also often connected with the assertion of universal values instead of the local. Bell then suggests that Webers model of inevitable rationalization. She concludes by reflecting on the framework of ritualization (see below, 140141). Ritual can be a strategic way to traditionalize, that is, to construct a type of tradition, but in doing so it can also challenge and renegotiate the very basis of tradition to the point of upending much of what had been seen as fixed previously or by other groups. [] As with the invented traditions described by Hobsbawn and Ranger, various attempts in American society in the last two decades to create new rituals deemed more appropriately symbolic and representative involve renegotiating a repertoire of acknowledged ways of acting ritually. Such innovations may be subtle or dramatic; they may radically reappropriate traditional elements or give a very different significance to standard activities; they may overturn meanings completely through invented practices. The continuity, innovation, and oppositional contrasts established in each case are strategies that arise from the sense of ritual played out under particular conditionsnot in a fixed ritual structure, a closed grammar, or an embalmed historical model (124).* It is important to emphasize a conclusion implicit in the many examples cited so far: ritual systems do not function to regulate or control the systems of social relations, they are the system, and an expedient rather than perfectly ordered one at that. In other words, the more or less practical organization of ritual activities neither acts upon nor reflects the social system; rather, these loosely coordinated activities are constantly differentiating and integrating, establishing and subverting the field of social relations. Hence, such expedient systems of ritualized relations are not primarily concerned with social integration alone, in the Durkheimian sense. Insofar as they establish hierarchical social relations, they are also concerned with distinguishing local identities, ordering social differences, and controlling the contention and negotiation involved in the appropriation of symbols (130). These examples suggest that textualization is not an inevitable linear process of social evolution, as Webers model of rationalization may seem to imply. The dynamic interaction of texts and rites, reading and chanting, the word fixed and the word preached are practices, not social developments of a fixed nature and significance. As practices, they continually play of each other to renegotiate tradition, authority, and the hegemonic order. As practices, they invite and expect the strategic counterplay (140). I have not proposed a new theory of ritual because I believe that a new theory of ritual, by definition, would do little to solve the real conundrums that the study of ritual has come up against. Instead, I have proposed a new framework within which to reconsider traditional questions about ritual. In this framework, ritual activities are restored to their rightful context, the multitude of ways of acting in a particular culture. When put in the context of purposive activity with all the characteristics of human practice (strategy, specificity, misrecognition, and redemptive hegemony), a focus on ritual yields to a focus on ritualization. Ritualization, the production of ritualized acts, can be described, in part, as that way of acting that sets itself off from other ways of acting by virtue of the way in which it does what it does. Even more circularity, it can be described as the strategic production of expedient schemes that structure an environment in such a way that the environment appears to be the source of the schemes and their values. Ritualizing schemes invoke a series of privileged oppositions that, when acted in space and time through a series of movements, gestures, and sounds, effectively structure and nuance an environment. In the organization of this environment some oppositions quietly dominate others but all also defer to others in a redundantly circular, and hence nearly infinite, chain of associations. The coherence, continuity, and general scope of these associations naturalize the values expressed in the subtle relationships established among oppositions. This environment, constructed and reconstructed by the actions of the social agents within it, provides an experience of the objective reality of the embodied subjective schemes that have created it. Ritualization as a strategic way of acting does not see

the social agents projection of this environment or his or her reembodiment of the sets of schemes constitutive of it. When these schemes are embodied in a cultural sense of reality and possibility, the agent is capable of interpreting and manipulating simply by reclassifying the very relationships understood as constitutive of reality. The goal of ritualization is a strategic way of acting ritualization of social agents. Ritualization endows these agents with some degree of ritual mastery. This mastery is an internalization of schemes with which they are capable of reinterpreting reality in such a way as to afford perceptions and experiences of a redemptive hegemonic order. Ritualization always aligns one within a series of relationship linked to the ultimate sources of power. Whether ritual empowers or disempowers one in some practical sense, it always suggests the ultimate coherence of a cosmos in which one takes a particular place. This cosmos is experienced as a chain of states or an order of existence that places one securely in a field of action and in alignment with the ultimate goals of all action. Ritualization is probably an effective way of acting only under certain cultural circumstances (140-141). Part III Part I addressed the basic question, What is ritual? Part II, How does ritual do what we say it does? This third part engages yet another fundamental query: When and why do the strategies of ritualization appear to be the appropriate or effective thing to do? (169). In brief, it is my general thesis here that ritualization, as a strategic mode of action effective within certain social orders, does not, in any useful understanding of the words, control individuals or society. Yet ritualization is very much concerned with power. Closely involved with the objectification and legitimation of an ordering of power as an assumption of the way things really are, ritualization is a strategic arena for the embodiment of power relations. Hence, the relationship of ritualization and social control may be better approached in terms of how ritual activities constitute a specific embodiment and exercise of power (170). Chapter 7 Summary: This chapter outlines the theories of ritual and social control coming out of Durkheim. There are four theses: the social solidarity thesis, the channeling of conflict thesis, the repression thesis, and definition of reality thesis (171). The solidarity thesis, characteristic of the work of Robertson Smith, Evans-Pritchard, Fortes, and Munn, suggests that ritual exercises control through its promotion of consensus and the psychological and cognitive ramifications of such consensus (171). Stephen Lukes critiques this position for not adequately dealing with political rituals. The second thesis is forwarded by Gluckman and Victor Turner, who argue that ritual is a way to deal with conflict and restore social equilibrium. She critiques this position for viewing individuals as entirely under group control. People in the Turner-Gluckman have also added a psychological focus. The third thesis deals with repression of human violence and aggression and is characteristic of Burkert, Girard, and Heesterman. The last thesis, the one that Bell thinks is best but still problematic, is the definition of reality thesis of Geertz, T. Turner, Douglas, and Lukes. Instead of ritual acting to control, it models society: [P]roponents of the definition of reality thesis seek to find in ritual a single central mechanism for the communication of culture, the internalization of values, and the individuals cognitive perception of a universe that generally fits these valies (176). Bell appreciates the more subtle understanding of social control (176) but critiques that it treats rite as a nearly magical mechanism of social alchemy by which the irksomeness of human experience is transformed into the desirable, the unmentionable, or the really real (176). While this theory does recognize that there are not such clear cut differences between primitive and modern societies, she emphasizes that context is essential, and not all groups rituals can be described by the same theories, which the theory does not deal with adequately. Bell closes the chapter by outlining the relationship between ritualized activities and modes of social organization. She is particularly focused on Douglas theory, which emphasizes that ritual works for social control effectively in some but not all societies (those that are closed groups, have restricted communication codes, emphasis on hierarchical social position, and a system based on social consensus). Bell critiques her for emphasizing the difference between social and physical bodies. Bell also raises V. Turners body-centered thesis and Valeris intellectualist thesis, which contrast Douglas functionalist thesis. The latter two are noteworthy for their recognition is more complex than simple Durkheimian affect. In the sections that follow I will work out an alternative interpretation of the social functions of ritual, namely, how the strategies of ordering and reproduction embodied through ritualization relate to the larger questions of the organization of power relations in a society. Hence, I will attempt to demonstrate that ritual does not control; rather, it constitutes a particular dynamic of social empowerment (181). Chapter 8

Summary: Bell first addresses the question, what is belief? She lays out a range of theoretical work on belief and its relation to ritual, discussing whether it is social or mental and the extent to which communities share beliefs and symbolic meanings associated with ritual (Fernandez suggests suggests communities do not share common meanings of symbols, thus ritual is not a means to communicate common meanings). Bell then discusses what symbols do: many analyses suggest that symbols serve a purpose of creating solidarity and community integration. Bell emphasizes how the literature points to ambiguity of symbolism, as well as the instability of religious beliefs. She also points to research that notes that systematic formulations of beliefs suggest no cohesion but stratification. She concludes, These studies give evidence for the ambiguity and instability of beliefs and symbols as well as the inability of ritual to control by virtue of any consensus based on shared beliefs. They also suggest that ritualized activities specifically do not promote belief or conviction. On the contrary, ritualized practices afford a great diversity of interpretation in exchange for little more than consent to the form of the activities. This minimal consent actually contrasts with the degree of conviction frequently required in more day-to-day activities (186). Yet, other literature shows that ritual has an important social function with regard to inculcating belief (186). Bell turns next to ideology. There are two definitions of ideology, one that is akin to a cultural worldview (critiqued for implying a one dominant ideology in a society, holism) and the other is ideas promoted by the dominant classes for self-interest (criticized by asking, why would people who do not benefit buy into this?). Rejecting the holism of these definitions of ideology, Merquior draws on Gramscis notion of consent and negotiation: subordinate classes negotiate and accept a negotiated version of dominant values. Bourdieu argues that the subordinate classes acceptance is based on misrecognition of values, where the subordinate class thinks the values are good for them. Ideologies are practices where people (active agents) struggle and negotiate as opposed to a set of ideas; according to Merquior, Thompson, and Bourdieu ideology is a strategy of power. The final section is on legitimation. Ritual is a powerful tool for legitimation, especially when power is understood as more than brute force or threats of violence. There are three main points out of Geertz, Cannadine, and Bloch with respect to rituals of legitimation: such rituals draw on traditional symbols in a way that distinguishes the current from what preceded; ritual constructs an argument; political rituals do not refer to but in fact are politics. In the following sections I will argue that the projection and embodiment of schemes in ritualization is more effectively viewed as a mastering of relationships of power relations within an arena that affords a negotiated appropriation of the dominant values embedded in the symbolic schemes. To analyze the relationship of ritualization to belief, therefore, I will focus on the tension and struggle involved in this negotiated appropriation, rather than on the production of doctrines neatly internalized as assumptions about reality (182). Complicity, struggle, negotiationthese terms all aim to rethink ideology as a lived and practical consciousness, as a partial and oppositional process actively constructed by all involved and taking place in the very organization of everyday life. Hence, ideology is not a coherent set of ideas, statements, or attitudes imposed on people who dutifully internalize them. Nor are societies themselves a matter of unitary social systems or totalities that act as one. Any ideology is always in dialogue with, and thus shaped and constrained by, the voices it is suppressing, manipulating, echoing. In other words, ideologies exist only in concrete historical forms in specific relations to other ideologies (191). Although each pursues independent analyses, Merquior, J.B. Thompson, and Bourdieu similarly conclude that ideology is best understood as a strategy of power, a process whereby certain social practices or institutions are depicted to be natural and right. While such a strategy implies the existence of a group or groups whose members stand to gain in some way by an acceptance of these practices, it also implies the existence of some form of opposition. Thus, ideologization may imply an unequal distribution of power, but it also indicates a greater distribution of power than would exist in relationships defined by sheer force. It is a strategy intimately connected with legitimation, discourse, and fairly high degrees of social complicity and maneuverability (192-3). In sum, it is a major reversal of traditional theory to hypothesize that ritual activity is not the instrument of more basic purposes, such as power, politics, or social control, which are usually seen as existing before or outside the activities of the rite. It puts interpretive analysis on a new footing to suggest that ritual practices are themselves the very production and negotiation of power relations. In the following chapter I will attempt to demonstrate this alternative position more fully by showing how ritualization as a strategic mode of practice produces nuanced relationships of power, relationships characterized by acceptance and resistance, negotiated appropriation, and redemptive reinterpretation of the hegemonic order (196). Chapter 9

Summary: Bell begins with a discussion of the term power, which is understood as influence or as force, the former inherent, nonspecific, and inherent and the latter intentional, specific, and threatening (197). The distinction between symbolic and secular power is also made, the former relating to ritual and ideology and the latter to institutions. Bell traces discussions of power from Hobbes to Lukes (who writes of three dimensions of power); another lineage of discussions of power runs from Machiavelli to Foucault, the latter being the dominant voice Bell discusses in the chapter. Bell emphasizes Foucaults theories of power as local, working indirectly on actions, embedded in networks of relations, and exercised on those who are free and who can resist. Bell also clarifies Foucaults use of the term ritual with respect to power. Bell explains, Ritual is one of several words he uses to indicate formalized, routinized, and often supervised practices that mold the body (201). She also emphasizes the importance of the body as a site of local social practices meeting large-scale institutions. She also discusses power relations and how they act in the social body for Foucault. Bell concludes, The language of this analytics of powerenables us to begin to answer the question of this chapter: Under what general conditions is ritualization an effective social strategy? It is in ritualas practices that act upon the actions of others, as the mute interplay of complex strategies within a field structured by engagements of power, as the arena for prescribed sequences of repetitive movements of the body that simultaneously constitute the body, the person, and the macro- and micronetworks of powerthat we can see a fundamental strategy of power. In ritualization, power is not external to its workings; it exists only insofar as it is constituted with and through the lived body, which is both the body of society and the social body. Ritualization is a strategic play of power, of domination and resistance, within the arena of the social body (204). What are the effects and limits of ritual empowerment? Ritualization cannot be defined universally, but is about placing different limits and using different culturally specific strategies to differentiate activities that are ritualized from activities that are not. Ritualization entails the acting out of power relations, whose limits are defined by context. Bell explains two dimensions of ritualization. The first is the dynamics of the social body, its projection and embodiment of a structured environment that happens below the level of discourse and which goes on without agents recognizing their participation. The second is a level at which those who appear to be disempowered are actually empowered by ritualization through consent, resistance, and negotiated appropriation (207). Bell concludes by outlining four perspectives on how ritual strategies create situations of domination and resistance: ritual empowering people with various degrees of control of a rite, how their power is constrained, how those who participate are dominated, and how domination can also lead to empowerment. She ends by writing, The variety of evidence examined here has attempted to demonstrate that ritualization necessitates and engenders both consent and resistance. It does not assume or implement total social control; it is a flexible strategy, one that requires complicity to the point of public consent, but not much more than that. Ultimately, the resistance it addresses and produces is not merely a limit on the rites ability to control; it is also a feature of its efficacy. It is not totally inappropriate, or unexpected, that the end of this exploration of ritual should return to one of the original questions with which it began, however altered the relationship with it may be. In Part I of this book I demonstrated the coherent, closed, and circular discourse that results when ritual is cast as a mechanism for the integration of thought and action, or self and society. In this final part I find a coherent and circular closing in the suggestion that ritual practices themselves can generate the culturally effective schemes that yield the categories with which to differentiate self and society, thought and action. This is not to say that ritualization is the only form of practice that defines the self. Hardly. It is that form of practice where the definition is simultaneously embedded in the social body and its environment, negotiated, and rendered prestigious by the privileged status that ritualized activities claim (218). She concludes by reiterating her main arguments about ritual as a form of activity that relies on strategies to render certain ritual activities distinct, relies on the body which is shaped by and shapes the environment, and generates traditions, and defines, empowers, and constrains agents. The argument of this chapter is essentially a simple one: ritualization is first and foremost a strategy for the construction of certain types of power relationships effective within particular social organizations. I will attempt to develop a fuller description of the strategy of ritualization in order to return to the question with which Part III began, Why and when is ritualization an appropriate and effective way of acting? This question and its answer should be understood as an alternative to the view that ritual is a functional mechanism or expressive medium in the service of social solidarity and control. A focus on activity itself as the framework within which to understand ritual activity illuminates the complex nature of power relations (197). The evocation of ritualizing strategies by activities that do not wish to be considered religious ritual is a very common feature particularly in the secularism of American society (205). The deployment of ritualization, consciously or unconsciously, is the deployment of a particular construction of power relationships, a particular relationship of domination, consent, and resistance. As a strategy of power, ritualization has both positive and effective aspects as well as specific limits to what it can do and how far it can extend (206).

Victor Turner: The Ritual Process

Victor Turners The Ritual Process is divided into two sections. The first half deals with the structure and the role of symbolism in Ndembu rituals, and the second, forming the main theoretical argument of the book, meditates on the relationship between the concepts of liminality and communitas that arise from his analysis of rituals, and their codependence with the concept of structure. Briefly stated, communitas and structure are two opposed yet mutually necessary modes of social life: the concept of structure is defined as society as a structured, differentiated, and often hierarchical system of politico-legal-economic positions with many types of evaluation, separating men in terms of more or less. (96) Communitas, on the other hand, is defined as society as an unstructured or rudimentary structured and relatively undifferentiated comitatus, community, or even communion of equal individuals who submit together to the general authority of the ritual elders. (96) For Turner, societies must maintain a balance between communitas and structure in order to survive, generally taking the form of a cycle where structure is temporarily suspended during rituals that reignite a sense of communitas in various ways depending on the type of ritual. Ill fill in these definitions soon, but this is the general direction his philosophical musings take. Victor Turners understanding of ritual relies heavily on the theoretical framework developed by Arnold van Gennep in his 1909 book The Rites of Passage, so its helpful to lay this out up front. Van Gennep articulates a tripartite analytic framework describing the structure and progression of rituals: <!--[if !supportLists]-->1)<!--[endif]-->Separation from everyday activities, social relations, and/or cultural conditions, undertaken as a response to some crisis, either in an individuals life or in the life of a society, where the individual or group undergoing the ritual suspends their involvement in everyday social life. <!--[if !supportLists]-->2)<!--[endif]-->Liminality, the result of the exit from normal social life and the entrance into a threshold phase where everyday notions of identity, time, and space are suspended. During the liminal phase, ritual participants engage in mimetic activity reenacting the crisis motivating the ritual. In so doing, the structures of everyday social life are both given a mythical explanation and justification and also challenged, or to use van Genneps terms, in the liminal phase structure and anti-structure are simultaneously enacted. <!--[if !supportLists]-->3)<!--[endif]-->Reintegration or reincorporation of the individual or group back into normal social life, but more deeply than before. Having confronted both the justification for and the problems arising from social structures and practices, ritual practitioners reenter society with a clearer understanding of the norms and obligations incumbent upon them, and of their role in society. Crises are brought about by every change of place, state, social position and age, (van Gennep, quoted in Turner, 94) undergone either by an individual (eg. coming-of-age, marriage, assumption of a social or political station, death, etc.), a group within society (eg. a birth or death within the family), or the society as a whole (eg. war, the harvest, changes in leadership, etc.). For van Gennep, all rituals share this general structure, which effectively integrates individual life processes and social events into a unified framework that fosters social stability and cultural vitality. Chapters 1 and 2: Planes of Classification in a Ritual of Life and Death, and Paradoxes of Twinship in Ndembu Ritual These first two chapters are mostly dedicated to in-depth analyses of particular Ndembu rituals, so I decided to ignore the argumentative and descriptive structure of these chapters and focus on his main theoretical points. If you want more detail on Ndembu rituals, ask me: The Importance of Studying Religious Rituals in Social Science Turner criticizes just about every social scientist he can think of for either ignoring religious ritual entirely in their analysis or engaging in inadequate analysis of it. Social scientists studying Central Africa have altogether ignored the central importance of rituals in understanding tribal societies, while other anthropologists, even those who dedicated their lives to studying religion (some of the highlights of this list include Lvi-Strauss, Durkheim, Marcel Mauss, Freud, and Weber) and recognize its importance in social life, explain (and ultimately explain away) religious rituals by regarding them as the product of psychological or sociological causes of the most diverse and even conflicting types, denying to them any preterhuman origin. (4) Turner argues that this mode of explanation is implicitly theological, interpreting primitive religions as reflections of socioeconomic or psychological factors. Turner, on the other hand, recognizes that religious beliefs and practices are something more than grotesque reflection or expressions of economic, political, and social relationships; rather are they coming to be seen as decisive keys to the understanding of how people think and feel about those relationships, and about the natural and social environments in which they operate. (6) A societys

religion is its repository of values and ways of interpreting not only their individual and social lives, but also their universal relationship with nature. The Practice of Ethnography Turner also criticizes ethnographers who engage in field work solely to conduct quantitative studies on social practices. Turner begins studying the Ndembu tribe in this way, but consistently feels that I was always on the outside looking in, even when I became comfortable in my use of the vernacular. [] Eventually, I was forced to recognize that if I wanted to know what even a segment of Ndembu culture was really about, I would have to overcome my prejudice against ritual and start to investigate it. (7) In order to understand how Ndembu culture functions and what its meaning is, Turner realizes that he has to discover what a rituals movements and words mean to them, and so engages in a series of interviews with the local Chief Ikelenge, and both ritual specialists and ordinary practitioners to discover their interpretations of each aspect of a ritual. Turner looks for patterns and consistencies between different accounts, and eventually is able to articulate the standardized hermeneutics of Ndembu culture, the ways the Ndembu people understand their ritual and the meaning they attribute to it (9). Rituals as Responses to Social Crises A ritual is required either when a social norm is violated or when different social norms come into conflict with each other. For instance, female infertility is explained in Ndembu culture by the contradiction between two obligations incumbent upon married women: to stay with and please her husband, and to honor her maternal village, as the Ndembu practice matrilineal descent. Infertility is understood as the wifes obeying her husband to too great an extent and moving away from her maternal village, thereby angering the spirits of her maternal forebears who consider their daughter to have abandoned them, and who thus curse her with the physical malady of infertility. The Isoma ritual resolves this crisis between social obligations placed upon the wife by enacting a healing ceremony where the woman (a) proceeds away from an ikela (hole in the ground) representing death and witchcraft and towards an ikela representing health, restoring her fertility. The woman in this procession (b) walks from one ikela to the other through a ditch in the ground, representing the power of death and her ancestors shades, and ends with her rising out of the burrow, representing her liberation from the power of her forebears. Around the burrow on the left are female adepts (past Isoma veterans) and on the right male adepts (men whose wives are Isoma veterans), and the woman in her procession (c) walks between these groups, representing her balancing of the contradictory obligations placed upon her by her male husband and her female ancestors. Symbols The hermeneutics of rituals are expressed in symbols. Turner defines symbols expansively as the basic building-blocks, the molecules, of ritual, (14) since in Ndembu ritual almost every article used, every gesture employed, every song or prayer, every unit of space and time, by convention stands for something other than itself, and the Ndembu practitioners are well aware of this (15) A symbol for Turner has three separate but closely related properties: <!--[if !supportLists]-->1)<!--[endif]-->Condensation one concept represents many things at the same time. For instance, in the Ndembu Isoma ritual, the binary of red rooster/white hen represents oppositions such as death/life, blood/water, hot/cold, while a white rooster/red hen represents female/male, novices/adepts, ghosts/living, among others. These associations need not be logically related, and can even be contradictory. <!--[if !supportLists]-->2)<!--[endif]-->Unification of disparate referents built on the property of condensation, symbols are able to represent concepts drawn from different domains of social experience and ethical classification. (52) So again, the opposition white rooster/red hen can simultaneously represent concepts drawn from sexual, political, familial, and individual growth experiences. <!--[if !supportLists]-->3)<!--[endif]-->Polarization of meaning A symbols different referents unite concepts drawn from (a) physiological and (b) social and moral experience. For instance, the mudyi tree represents breast milk and matriliny, while the mukula tree represents blood from circumcision and masculine maturity. Symbols thus unite the organic with the sociomoral order, proclaiming their ultimate religious unity, over and above conflicts between and within these orders. (52) If the organization of symbols in terms of binary oppositions sounds a bit Lvi-Straussian, it should. A single symbol (ie. red hen) represents a host of concepts from different spheres of experience and forms of classification, organizing the totality of social experience into a unified (if sometimes paradoxical) schema, lending it coherence and intelligibility. Symbols are organized in terms of binary pairs that also organize thought. There are, though, a few key differences between Turner and Lvi-Strauss. First, Turner argues that symbols and binary oppositions only appear as the confrontation of sensorily perceptible objects, rather than that of axioms or concepts that underlie the meaning of objects (42). In other words, while for Lvi-Strauss binary oppositions are oppositions between concepts that transcend any given application in a ritual or myth but act as their organizing

principles almost as a set of unwritten rules unconsciously circumscribing a cultures thought-patterns, for Turner oppositions between concepts are revealed within ritual contexts by the ways different objects are interpreted and understood when placed in relation to each other. Symbols are physical objects or actions that represent different aspects of daily life and give them coherence as elements of a unified framework within the context of a myth. Second, Lvi-Strauss argues that symbols are solely cognitive classifications for experiences, whereas Turner believes that symbols have an emotional or evocative aspect as well. The emotions encountered in peoples lifeexperiences are evoked by and channeled into ritual symbols, such that not only can people experience joy in a ritual, but also so that negative emotions such as hate, fear, and grief, can be given a safe outlet that doesnt threaten actual social unrest. Therefore, the whole person, not just the Ndembu mind, is existentially involved in the life or death issues symbols represent (43). Ritual Space Once practitioners enter the liminal phase of ritual, ordinary conceptions of space are abandoned. Ritual space is organized by binary oppositions articulated along three axes: longitudinal (backwards/forwards), latitudinal (right/left), and altitudinal (up/down). As seen above in the Isoma ritual, each spatial axis represents a different element of the actions required to resolve the wifes crisis, and symbols have different meanings when placed along each different axis. For instance, the white hen/red rooster in the latitudinal axis represents women/men, in the altitudinal axis it represents ancestral spirits/living people. Symbols gain their multivocality through representing aspects of each spatial axis, and space is organized in rituals in terms of the symbols lying along each axis. Chapter 3: Liminality and Communitas As individuals enter into rituals, they become liminal entities, and thus gain special attributes while losing their normal identities. First, liminal entities lose their identity as defined by social structure: they have no status, property, insignia, secular clothing indicating rank or role, position in a kinship system in short, nothing that may distinguish them from their fellow neophytes or initiands. (95) Liminal entities have no social identity, but are rather united as equals within the ritual context as uniquely lowly beings who are utterly obedient to their ritual instructors or masters. This is especially noticeable in situations where liminal entities are undergoing a transition towards a higher social status. In Ndembu chieftain rituals, for instance, the future chieftain is, the night before his accession to his new office, portrayed as a slave and is submitted to the abuse and arbitrary power of the entire community, forced to undergo violent and humiliating abuse. This treatment, far from being a gratuitous display of hatred by the weak, in fact has a formative function. The future chieftain in his liminal state learns the true meaning of arbitrary authority and abuse of power, and in suffering this violence displays the self-mastery and control over vicious characteristics such as greed, pride, and anger, required to perform his duties as a good ruler. Thus, following van Genneps formula, the liminal entity is reintegrated into social life with a deeper understanding of his obligations as chieftain. Second, united as abased equals, liminal beings also gain a peculiar status recognized as both sacred and dangerous. As they leave social structure, liminal beings encounter each other for the first time as social equals, stripped of the social identities which previously divided them, giving recognition to an essential and generic human bond, without which there could be no society. (97) This bond between equals without status, what Turner terms communitas, is often associated with a sacred status attained by individuals who (1) fall in the interstices of social structure, (2) are on its margins, or (3) occupy its lower rungs. (125) Communitas is constructed by individuals who are marginal or weak figures in society, and whose special social bond hence falls outside of normal social relations. This gives rise to a societys recognition of communitas and the liminal beings out of whom communitas is constructed as simultaneously sacred and dangerous. Liminal beings possess what Turner calls the mystical powers of the weak, or magical powers and sacred potency attributed to those who lack social influence and political power (109). Turner notes a number of instances across cultures where marginal or weak figures such as strangers, foolish people, women, millenarians, and even hippies, while socially separated and even at times ostracized, possess peculiar spiritual capacities and powers. At the same time, however, as these groups fall outside of social characterizations and structures, the rest of society looks upon them with suspicion and fear, such that liminal states are surrounded with prescriptions, prohibitions, and conditions. (109) Referencing Mary Douglas, Turner argues that liminal entities and the communitas that arises around them challenge social boundaries and classifications, thus being labeled polluting or dangerous and become surrounded by restrictions and taboos strictly regulating where and when communitas can occur. Chapter 4: Communitas: Model and Process Here Turner describes in full the opposition between structure and communitas. Structure and communitas are two models of social organization, normatively describing opposed forms of social identity and practice of social interaction. Structure as a model describes society as a system of social positions, based on socioeconomic or

political status (131). Individual identity within structure is based on an individuals status, role, or occupation within society, along with their standing relative to other individuals within society. In essence, structure describes society as it normally exists in light of socioeconomic and political realities, with divided segments or hierarchies that separate individuals from one another and give them regulated and mutually recognized identities. Structures model of regulated identity is complemented by regulated forms of relationships that exist between individuals. Certain acceptable forms of interaction are prescribed for relationships between peers and between superiors and inferiors that delimit and regulate social interaction and exchange. Communitas, on the other hand, describes relationships between concrete, historical, idiosyncratic individuals. (131) In communitas, individuals lack social identities and therefore confront each other as concrete, unique, and equal individuals. Without a regulated form of social identity, communitas also lacks a regulated form of human interaction. Turner makes use of the spontaneous form of interaction and community Martin Buber describes in his book I and Thou. Whereas structure is governed by norms and institutions, in communitas individuals are engaged in a direct, immediate, and total confrontation of human identities. (132) However, communitas is also fragile. As a spontaneous and immediate form of social organization, communitas eventually succumbs to the pragmatic requirements of social life, thereby becoming structure once again. Turner therefore differentiates three types of communitas: <!--[if !supportLists]-->1)<!--[endif]-->Existential or Spontaneous Communitas this is the communitas that arises among concrete individuals when social structure is abandoned, generally within liminal situations such as rituals. <!--[if !supportLists]-->2)<!--[endif]-->Normative Communitas communitas that has evolved into a type of social system due to the influence of time, the need to mobilize and organize resources, and the necessity for social control among the members of the group in pursuance of these goals, (132) but still retains the influence and purpose of achieving existential communitas. This often occurs when sectarian schisms separate originally unified movements, prompting individuals to exert top-down control over the different sub-movements, creating social structures. Two examples Turner gives of this history are the Franciscan Order and Caitanyas Vaisnava bhakti movement. <!--[if !supportLists]-->3)<!--[endif]-->Ideological Communitas utopian models for societies that permit permanent communitas. Utopias are visions of social structures that embody the optimal social conditions under which such experiences [of communitas] might be expected to flourish and multiply. (132) These utopian communities are very rarely implemented (one example he gives is that of groups organized around an apocalyptic revelation), and when they are they invariably fail due to the base necessities of replicating biological and social life within a community (as a professor once said to me, all utopias fail when deciding who has to take out the trash and who has to clean the bathroom). The ideal type of communitas is existential communitas, the state where liminal beings confront each other without such dividing factors as social position, private property, rank, age, often times sex or race, instead embodying universal principles of justice, solidarity, and equality before a deity. Individuals therefore exist in a state of perfect equality, giving rise to community based on Bubers essential We, or a community of several independent persons, who have a self and self-responsibility. (Buber, quoted in Turner, 137) There is an existential aspect to Bubers We: as social structures are abandoned, the interests and divided consciousness of individuals under structure also departs, allowing for individuals to experience the independent being of each other. Individuals no longer recognize each other in terms of themselves and their own identities (eg. I am your boss; you are thus my underling, etc.), but rather allow others uniqueness to present itself independently. For Turner, this We relationship between equal individuals who appreciate and respect each others uniqueness is the quintessential social experience arising out of liminal states. The necessities of practical existence, however, inevitably assert themselves, forcing even individuals within conditions of communitas to recreate a form of structure. From the perspective of existential communitas, this necessity appears as a degeneration, a sliding of ideal spontaneous community back into regulated and structured social life, but Turner suggests that communitas also exercises a restorative or regenerative function upon the individuals within these shifting forms of community. In communitas individuals experience ecstasy, standing outside of the totality of structural positions one normally occupies in a social system. (138) Turner argues that communitas and structure are best conceived as opposed but alternating phases in a functioning societys life. During periods where communitas predominates, individuals liberate themselves from the difficulties of living within social structures, thus experiencing power and joy with a magical quality, giving rise to symbolic thought, art, and religion. In other words, the generalized social bond existing between individuals during periods of communitas provides vitality to a culture and restores the sense of unity that makes possible social life. Both structure and communitas

require each other to exist: without communitas, structures regulated patterns of social interaction and inequality eventually deteriorate and give rise to tensions between groups, and without structure communitas cannot reproduce life. Turner therefore concludes that spontaneous communitas is nature in dialogue with structure, or that the two models of social existence are required in order to maintain social life (140). Chapter 5: Humility and Hierarchy: The Liminality of Status Elevation and Reversal To return to some of the themes elucidated in Chapters 1 and 2, Turner argues that the communitas created within rituals is a way of revitalizing social structures in light of a crisis they experience. For instance, in the Ndembu Isoma ritual, communitas is created in the process of healing the wifes infertility, allowing her to reestablish normal social relations with both her husband and her matrilineal village and ancestors. Contradictions within structure are thereby resolved through the ritual enactment of the tension. Ritual, however, can also serve as a platform to critique social structure, as well as providing an outlet for the resentments that build up as a result of inequalities. In no case is social structure actually threatened, but liminality can suspend social structure in certain ways that ameliorate the negative aspects of structure. Turner therefore differentiates two types of liminality and the rituals in which they are found: <!--[if !supportLists]-->1)<!--[endif]-->Liminality that characterizes rituals of status elevation a ritual subject becomes a liminal entity when irreversibly raising their position within social structure. <!--[if !supportLists]-->2)<!--[endif]-->Liminality that characterizes rituals of status reversal collective calendrical rituals that generally correspond to some point in the seasonal cycle are characterized by a reversal of social relations, where those who normally hold low status within social structure become for a time authorities over those who are normally superior, who in turn have to accept ritual degradation. An instance of a ritual of status elevation we have already seen is the Ndembu chieftain ritual, where the man who is about to become chieftain must submit to communal abuse. Individuals who are undergoing critical points of transition in their biographies, including birth, puberty, marriage, death, entry into certain organizations, and political status elevation, are subjected to ritual abasement. For individuals to raise their status, Turner argues that in ritual they must become some kind of human prima materia, divested of specific form and reduced to a condition that, although it is still social, is without or beneath all accepted forms of status. The implication is that for an individual to go higher on the status ladder, he must go lower than the status ladder. (170) As we saw earlier, the point is that individuals, when raising social position, gain a deeper understanding of the meaning of that position by confronting the possible abuses of that condition (eg. the Chieftain experiencing the abuse of power), thereby gaining a deeper understanding of that transitions ethical significance. Calendrical rites are often associated with points on the harvest cycle, when the society undergoes a crisis regarding whether it will be able to reproduce biological life and thus social structure as well. At the time when social structure is reproduced, the inequalities and tensions latent within that structure are most keenly felt, so a kind of ritual release is used to allow for social life to continue. Turner uses an argument of Anna Freuds to demonstrate how rituals of status reversal have this releasing function. The weak mimic those who cause them fear as a defense mechanism against the object of their fear, such that they are unconsciously identifying themselves with the very powers that deeply threaten them, and, by a species of jujitsu, enhancing their own powers by the very power that threatens to enfeeble them. (174) Children, for instance, mimic their parents, particularly the punitive aspects of their personality, as a way of domesticating the fear their authoritarian parents inspire. In rituals of status reversal, then, social underlings mimic their superiors as a way of domesticating the resentment they feel over their conditions of inequality, using a panoply of symbolic devices such as masks and animal representations of their superiors to mock them and/or deny their humanity, thereby debasing them. At the same time, the inferiors also engage in illicit behavior, temporarily mimicking their superiors in an exaggerated fashion to symbolically balance the normal hierarchies that divide societies. In so doing, inferiors gain the mystical powers of the weak described above to temporarily balance social hierarchies, while releasing their resentments. The essential aspects of social inequalities, however, are not challenged. Social rank is reversed, not eliminated, such that the idea of hierarchy is retained even within ritual, while the caricatured representation of the strong and the ritual enactment of illicit behavior reaffirms the reasonableness of everyday culturally predictable behavior between the various estates in society, thereby recreating the roles and social relations involved in structure (176). In rituals of status reversal, a type of communitas is created not only between different groups of inferiors, but throughout the society. By mocking the superiors, the inferiors bring the strong down to their level at the bottom of the social ladder, causing the superiors to merge with the masses, or even to be symbolically at least regarded as the servants of the masses. [] For here too there is not only reversal but leveling, since the incumbent of each status

with an excess of rights is bullied by one with a deficiency of rights. What is left is a kind of social average, or something like the neutral position in a gear box, from which it is possible to proceed in different direction and at different speeds in a new bout of movement. (202) Rituals of status reversal essentially wipe the social slate clean, allowing for normal social hierarchies to continue without the tensions that build up as a result of them.