AT1003 Lecture 4.1-Ritualsymbols

Symbols and Ritual ActionVictor Turner 1920 (Glasgow) 1983 (Charlottesville)PhD Manchester (Max Gluckman)Ndembu (NorthernRhodesia, Zambia) 3 years of fieldwork with family

Ritual is religion in actionRitual is the primary phenomenon of religion.What is the problem the ritual is intended to solve?What goes on at the ritual that solves the problem?What are the visible elements of the ritual for the anthropologist?What are the invisible elements of the Ritual?

What is religion?Explicit definitions chase away the implicit onesSpecific forms? Specific content? Certain functions?

Clifford Geertzs definitionA religion is a (1) system of symbols which acts to (2) establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men by (3) formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and (4) clothing these conceptions with such an aura of actuality that (5) the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic.

Durkheims problem of solidarityHow do social groups work? Why dont they fall apart?

Mechanical solidarity - primitive societies are simple. All the people are similar, and this shared similarity keeps them together

Organic solidarity - advanced societies have a developed division of labor. The baker depends on the butcher who depends on the cobbler. Just as advanced mammals have differentiated organs.

Society is a whole not reducible to the sum of its parts. It exists sui generis.

Durkheims take on ritualcollective action is more powerful, invigorates the individual beyond what he can achieve aloneRituals of biological fertility are really about social (re)generationpeople come away from a ritual feeling better, stronger"... they reforge their moral nature in it."this feeling is represented in the belief of totemic species reproducing themselves and well-being of the clan.

Religion includesattempts to explain, interpret, predict and control phenomena and eventsemotional responses to the awesomeness of the universe and to the impact of illness, death and ones own mortalitymechanisms for the release of psychological stress symbols of unity of a society and its distinction from other groupsmodels for explaining the world

ManifestationsBeliefs Practices, routinesMythsRituals

Turners definition of ritual"... prescribed formal behavior for occasions not given over to technological routine, having reference to beliefs in mystical beings or powers."

Kinds of ritualsCalendrical, crisis, rites of passage

Calendrical RitesRegular, annual celebrationsPassover, Christmas, Eid-ul-Fitr

Hawaiian calendrical cycle of arrival and departure of Lono and Ku

Crisis RitesHealingEmergenciesPersonal or social crisis

Ritual Symbolscondensation - "Many things and actions are represented in a single formation"unification of disparate significata - connected by virtue of analogous qualitiespolarization of meaning - ideological pole (social psychological stuff )and a sensory pole (physical stuff)

Rites of PassageArnold Van Gennep (1909) defined rites of passage as rituals which accompany passage from one place, state, social position and ageThree stagesSeparationMarginality, transition (liminality)Incorporation, aggregation (post-liminal)

Liminalityenduring category of people who are betwixt & betweentricksters, clowns, poets, shamans, court jesters, monks, cult membersCharacteristics of liminal beingsneophytebetwixt and betweensymbols modelled on biological processes (death, birth)structurally invisibleritually pollutingsexually ambiguousauthorial relationships vis a vis eldersegalitarian relationships among initiatescommunitas

CommunitasEquality, undifferentiated humanness, androgyny, and humility neophytes are symbolically represented as a kind of tabula rasa, of pure, undetermined possibilitythe converse of social structure, which emphasizes differentiation, hierarchy, and separation.

SacraKnowledge, things, actionsPowerful, sacred (set apart)Common characteristics of the sacra:their frequent disproportiontheir monstrousnesstheir mystery

Edith Turner on Experiencing RitualAnthropological data is generated from intersubjective perspectiveYou are a cultured person and you have experiencesTake all experiences seriouslyRitual and symbols go beyond languageDifficulty of analysis and representation in text

**It matters how you define itVictorians tended to define religion as what they did: worship of a creator god. That left phenomena such as magic, witchcraft, and much else in a shady realm of "superstition" or worse.

Others have defined religion narrowly by content: "religion is belief in supernatural beings." That leaves out much for instance, the moral and ethical values which guides the conduct of religious people Buddhism, Confucianism.

Still others have defined religion functionally: i.e., by what it does for people or for society. But reducing religion to its functions misses much of the power of experience of being human and believing in a religion.

In order to understand the power of these beliefs and practices we tend to call religion, we have to work with a definition broad enough to allow us to see its full expression in human experience, but we dont want our definition to end up encompassing everything, so that everything social is religion or religious. *Geertz, Religion as a cultural system (p90)A religion is a (1) system of symbols This means that it is a sub-set of culturewhich acts to (2) establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men by Sexist codger meant to say people here. Religion provides people with a general orientation to each other, the world, to past and future(3) formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and Religion contains a cosmology(4) clothing these conceptions with such an aura of actuality that Religions seem implicitly true. Some bits may be a bit hokey or hard to take literally, but they are in touch with reality(5) the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic.Provides people with an of course this is true attitude to what they believe and what they are doing*Primitive societies, found most famously in Australia, are analogous to simple creatures like bacteria, where each member of the group is identical.

Advanced organisms like mammals have hearts, kidneys, etc.

Sui generis means in of itself*Durkheim thought that The religious life of the Australian aborigine passes through successive phases of complete lull and of superexcitation, and social life oscillates in the same rhythm. Many days and weeks of quiet tedium are punctuated by fervent ritual activity. This makes it clear to the primitive Australian the bonds that unite him with his fellows - membership in a clan or other social group.

collective worship creates a feeling of effervescence, invigorates the individual and produces energy and power in peoplereligious ritual is ultimately about social reproduction, often symbolized in the biological reproduction of the totemic speciesRituals of biological fertility are really about social (re)generation

Among civilized peoples [Durkheim talking], the relative continuity of daily life and ritual activity of the two blurs their relations. My mother always feels invigorated after church. Makes her feel better.

Some other examples - the political rally, football match, especially winning world cup or something similar.

*1. Religion encompasses human attempts to explain, interpret, predict and control phenomena and events;2. Religion encompasses human emotional responses to the awesomeness of the universe and to the impact of illness, death and ones own mortality;3. Religion encompasses mechanisms for the release of psychological stress and internal conflict;4. Religion serves to both symbolize and express the sense of unity of a society and its separateness and distinction from other groups;5. Religion provides models for explaining the world models that Guthrie argues are largely anthropomorphic that is derived or based on humanity, human beings, our social and biological condition.Humans find themselves in an uncertain and ambiguous world and use themselves as a source of models with which to interpret it. Doing so, the see reflections of themselves everywhere. (compare with Durkheim)

*Beliefs are ideas in peoples heads. You get a sense of them by talking to them and by observing practices and deducing the logic of them. Practices include everyday sorts of things. They may be ritualistic behaviours, like prayers, but they are not necessarily full-blown public rituals. I prefer to think of such things as routines.

Rituals are most dramatic when they are connected to a life crisis (weddings) or a personal crisis (healing). They can also be more prosaic, I.e., going to church on Sunday. Rituals are group activities. Individual rituals dont make sense anthropologically speaking, unless it is an example of a single person performing what is usually done in a group.

I talked about Myths on Friday.

Now I am going to talk about Rituals*"The symbol is the smallest unit of ritual which still retains the specific properties of ritual behavior' it is the ultimate unit of specific structure in a ritual context."

DEF: "a 'symbol' is a thing regarded by general consent as naturally typifing or representing or recalling something by possession of analogous qualities or by association in fact or thought."Max Gluckman: Rituals are the key to any religion: Rituals are beliefs in actionKinds of Rituals: Calendrical Rites, Crisis Rites, Rites of PassageSome Characteristics:Not all rituals are religious Not all religious acts are ritualNot all rituals are religiousthin of graduation, Halloween, New Years Eve.Not all religious acts are ritual Prayer- the Lords Prayer, yes; but individual prayers, perhaps notGiving religious gifts - not ritual Feeding the homeless as a religious act not a ritual

DEF: ritual "... prescribed formal behavior for occasions not given over to technological routine, having reference to beliefs in mystical beings or powers.Rituals are scripted in the sense that people know what to expect and these expectations are often explicit, especially if departures from the script are too dramatic or severeRitual is the performance of more or less invariant sequences of acts and utterances.

Eid ul FitrThe end of Ramadan is marked by a big celebration called 'Eid-ul-Fitr', the Festival of the Breaking of the Fast.Muslims are not only celebrating the end of fasting, but thanking Allah for the help and strength that he gave them throughout the previous month to help them practise self-control.The festival begins when the first sight of the new moon is seen in the sky.There are special services out of doors and in Mosques, processions through the streets, and of course, a special celebratory meal - eaten during daytime, the first daytime meal Muslims will have had in a month.Eid is also a time of forgiveness, and making amends.During Eid-ul-Fitr Muslims dress in their finest clothes, give gifts to children and spend time with their friends and family.At Eid it is obligatory to give a set amount of money to charity to be used to help poor people buy new clothes and food so they too can celebrate.

Many, rites are calendrical. That is, they are tied to the calendar. - harvest feasts, Queens Christmas addressThe ancient Hawaiians had a similar calendrical cycle marked by the arrival and departure of two gods each year. The first was Lono, who arrived with the rising of the Pleides in November and stayed for three months of ritual celebration mostly characterized by the lifting of tabus. The second was the arrival of the War God, Ku, to re-take the island from Lono, along with the Paramount Chief, and the rebuilding of Kus temple. In 1996, the arrival of Lono quite accidentally corresponded to the arrival of Captain Cook in the islands. Arriving on land, he was worshipped as the god Lono, come in the flesh. Cook went along with it, stayed for 3 months (quite accidentally corresponding to the usual stay of Lono), then left almost on the date. Unfortunately, his ship broke a main mast, and he had to return to the islands. This time he was not welcome; Ku and the Paramount Chief had re-taken the land, and the return of Lono at the wrong time threatened their hegemony. There were some incidents, resulting in the death of Cook. Years later, when British sailors returned to Hawaii, the Hawaiians would ask mournfully when Lono would return. Cooks body had been treated like a deified chief, baked in an earth oven, and the bones wrapped and enshrined in a Ku temple.

*Crisis Rites1.Curing Turner saw a lot of that while he was in the field2.cosmological re-balance or restoration.3. Funerals, especially in European cultureThe ritual problem of crisis rites is quite clear: To heal the sick; To keep the world in balance; To cope with grief

**Three Properties of Ritual Symbols28condensation - "Many things and actions are represented in a single formationMany meanings into a single form, thus a flag of a country condenses a lot of referents - the land, the people, the government, an ideology, multiple historiesunification of disparate significata - connected by virtue of analogous qualities - piglets are like children among Orokaiva people because they make similar sounds, they are raised by adults, they are lacking transcendental qualities of spiritsThe symbol of prey is a whole range of animals - pigs, birds, children

Milk tree stands for clan, womens breasts, motherhood, Ndembu society and traditions

polarization of meaning - ideological pole (social psychological stuff )and a sensory pole (physical stuff)

ideological pole - norms and values - matriclan, Ndembu peoplesensory pole - feelings - motherhood, nuturing babies, solidarity, comfortpredominance of emotion or orectic qualitylinkage with unconscious

*Same with marriage. A marriage is more than two people living together. Culture wants a ritual that turns a man and a woman into a husband and wife.Civilians dont become soldiers automatically. They have to be turned into soldiers.The dead must be transformed into ancestors: funerals as rites of passage

DEF: rites of passage - "rites which accompany every change of place, state, social position, and age." from Van Gennep3 phases: separation, margin, aggregationnot just life-crises, but also social ones like war, first-fruits, harvest"ritual to be more fittingly applied to forms of religious behavior associated with social transitions, while the term ceremony has a closer bearing on religious behavior associated with social states""Ritual is transformative, ceremony confirmatory.Rites of passage incite reflexive awareness, symbolic play (social categories are played with, inverted, suspended; social borders are liquidated, crossed, blurred; identity symbols are stripped away and affixed anew)

Four main types of passages:1) Status; 2)territorial 3) situational; 4) temporal

Arnold Van Gennep 1907: defined rites of passage as rites which accompany passage from one place, state, social position and ageritual thus represented a process ; challenged mainstream Victorian anthropology, whichemphasized evolutionary phases and the tracking down of the origins of customs. laid much of the groundwork for the modern interest in symbolic and ritual studies

-rites of passage divided into 3 phases:1)separation (pre-liminal)2)marginality, transition (liminality)3)incorporation, aggregation, (post-liminal)

Cultures never leave the life cycle transitions to chance. Most societies dont assume a boy will turn into a man automatically. Girls, maybe. Rather, culture takes an active role with initiation rites that turn boys into men.

*Victor Turner, 1960s, focussed on liminality, extending far beyond its original sense of an intermediate or marginal ritual phase -takes on new meaning as an autonomous and sometimes enduring category of people who are "betwixt and between." ex. tricksters, clowns, poets, shamans, court jesters, monks, cult members

Not only people but also social movements, (ex. millenarian cults)

What do these persons or principles have in common with neophytes in a liminal phase of ritual transition?

-symbols used for them are similar: , emphasizing innocence, rebirth, vulnerability, fertility, change,emotion, paradox, disorder, anomaly, opposition, etc,

characteristics of liminal beings:neophytebetwixt and betweensymbols modelled on biological processes (death, birth)structurally invisibleritually pollutingsexually ambiguousauthorial relationships vis a vis eldersegalitarian relationships among initiatescommunitas

*

universal and critical element of the liminal phase: communitas: Characteristics of communitas: Equality, undifferentiated humanness, androgyny, and humility neophytes are symbolically represented as a kind of tabula rasa, of pure, undetermined possibilitythe converse of social structure, which emphasizes differentiation, hierarchy, and separation.

Initiates are almost always separated from society; their previous habits of acting, thinking, and feeling are stripped away. Thus cut off from their usual ways of apprehending the world-their routines and their customary ways of communicating, they are placed in a highly suggestible state for learning. But how does this learning take place?

*the arcane knowledge obtained in the liminal period knowledge that is felt to change the inmost nature of theneophyte, impressing him, as a seal impresses wax, with his new stateit is not a mere acquisition of knowledge, but a change in being

sacra: may be communicated as:1) exhibitions: what is shown2) actions: what is done3)instructions: what is said

Common characteristics of the sacra:1) their frequent disproportion2) their monstrousness3) their mystery

creativity of the experience of weird shit

*Experiencing RitualBeing sympathetic versus going native : Sherman AlexeiWho you are: mother with small children, grandmotherYoung man, graduate studentAffects how people relate to you, the nature of the data you collectFunctionalism give primary place to material survival; religion is secondary.Reduces ritual and religion to social glue.Edie: radical empiricism = taking what you see and experience at face value and going on from there, using what the natives provide you with(E-P dismisses seeing the light of witchcraft late at night as something else, even though he has to grasp at straws.)Process: structural-functionalism doesnt explain why things change, innovation, new stuffMultivalence of symbolsWorld of spirits non-verbal, like Jews, Ndembu do name their god.The ritual is the local expression of a universal human problem, that of expressing what cannot be thought of, in vew of thoughts subjugation to essences.Symbols give us clues to the nature of realities we coannot perceive by means of the senses alone.

Ritual and symbols go beyond language.

Religion is power, that is what we are talking about this semester, pure power.

Symbols more than representations they are the power. Symbols that stand for themselves.Small groups: pick a ritual, any ritual, and identify the key symbols