| Edmund Leach. 1966. �A Discussion of Ritualization of Behavior in
Animals and Man.� Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, No. 772, v. 251, p. 403. 3 types of behavior: �(1) Behavior which is directed towards specific ends and which, judged by our standards of verification, produces observable results in a strictly mechanical way�we call this �rational-technical� behavior. (2) Behavior which forms part of a signaling system and which serves to �communicate information,� not because of any mechanical link between means and ends, but because of the existence of a culturally defined communication code�we can call this �communicative behavior. (3) Behavior which is potent in itself in terms of the cultural conventions of the actor but not potent in a rational-technical sense, as specified in (1), or alternatively behavior which is directed towards evoking the potency of occult powers even though it is not presumed to be potent in itself�we call this �magical� behavior.� Types 2 and 3 constitute �ritual� Roy Rappaport. 1992. �Ritual.� In Richard Bauman, ed. Folklore, Cultural Performances, and Popular Entertainments: A Communications-Centered Handbook. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp.249-60. �Ritual may be defined as the performance of more or less invariant sequences of formal acts and utterances not encoded by the performers.� (249) �performance itself is an aspect of that which is performed. The medium is part of the message� (249) �A ritual is an order of acts and utterances and as such is enlivened or realized only when those acts are performed and those utterances voiced.� (252) Performers �are not merely transmitting messages they find encoded in the canon. They are participating in�that is, becoming part of�the order to which their own bodies and breath give life.� (252) �In sum, ritual embodies social contract.� (254) �In its flow the generalized unquestionableness of the sacred is transformed into more specific qualities�truth, reliability, correctness, propriety, morality�thus sanctifying, which is to say certifying, the messages in terms of which and by which social life proceeds.� (257) John Skorupski. 1976. John Skorupski. 1976. Symbol and Theory: A Philosophical Study of Theories of Religion in Social Anthropology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. �Anthropologists influenced by the symbolist approach have, I think, been less puzzled than they should be by the notion that a belief or practice can have a symbolic meaning which those who share it do not know it to have.� (36) Interaction ceremonies include kneeling, hand-shaking, bowing, greetings, etc. (76) �Interaction ceremonies�are part of a more general form of social life which I shall call the �interaction code.� (77) �The point of interaction-code behavior is to establish or maintain (or destroy) an equilibrium, or mutual agreement, among people involved in an interaction as to their relative standing or roles, and their reciprocal commitments and obligations.� (77) �The general norm governing IC behavior is that people should use the code to establish the relationship which ought�in accordance with other norms�to hold between them, to maintain it, to re-establish it if it is thrown out of equilibrium and to terminate it properly.� (83-4) Key aspects of ceremony/ritual behavior are elaboration, formality, and stereotypy (85) �The prime significance of formality in interaction is that of working out, emphasizing, underlining the fact of code behavior.� (87) Operative action = illocutionary force �Operative acts are performed to set up new patterns of rules. Hence we can also say that they can establish people in new statuses or roles, and can set up new institutions.� (99) �Operative acts are produced, then, by being said to be produced.� (103) �to a large extent religious rites are social interactions with authoritative or powerful beings within the actor�s social field, and�their special characteristics are in large part due to the special characteristics these being are thought to have.� (165) �A traditional cosmology, then, extends the social field�and thus also the pattern of social relationships�beyond its human members. In doing so it extends the scope of interaction and operative ceremonies. Besides extending the social fabric, however, it offers�or so I have suggested�a conception of it characteristically different from our own notion of a society as a pattern of relationship between individuals constituted by differentially applicable rules.� (166) �The social order is a spiritual order immanent in men, and divinely created and underpinned.� (167) The traditional/religious worldview (1) �will rest on an agency-based cosmology which will extend the social order, so to speak, up the hierarchy,� and (2) �Its conception of the (rule-constituted) social order will be naturalized and, specifically, �sacramental���that is, productive of the spiritual state it aims at. |
| Some Comments on Ritual |