Ritual
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Ritual
A Ritual is a sequence of activities involving gestures, words, and objects, performed in an isolated location, according to set sequence. Rituals are designed to focus Intent, direct Will, and motivate action towards the accomplishment of a political, productive, spiritual, or creative end, like voting a specific party.
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Notes
A note on typology. Sorted by function, rituals fall into three essential types. Identity rituals affirm group membership; they are the mechanism through which a group periodically recharges its solidarity frames, the shared knowledge and moral feelings that bind members together. Governance rituals regulate conduct and constitute authority; they legitimate power, mark status, and install the rule-set inside the person. Exchange rituals mediate reciprocity; they circulate goods, obligations, and loyalties among members and between members and the sacred.[1] Each type answers a distinct question: identity rituals ask who are we?, governance rituals ask who is in charge?, and exchange rituals ask what do we owe each other? Most actual rituals blend all three modes — the Eucharist is simultaneously an exchange with the divine, an identity marker, and a governance instrument (who may administer it is a governance question that has split churches) — and all three may be analysed with Collins's (2004) ingredients-and-outcomes model.
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Footnotes
- ↑ The typology builds on the Durkheim–Goffman–Collins lineage of ritual theory: Emile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (New York: Free Press, 1995 [1912]); Erving Goffman, Interaction Ritual (New York: Anchor, 1967); Randall Collins, Interaction Ritual Chains (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004). The exchange type draws on Marcel Mauss, The Gift (New York: Norton, 1990 [1925]).