Ritual as a cultural lens

As humanity searches for meaning and purpose in its actions, it creates a series of perceptual frameworks upon which to make sense of the world around it. It is perhaps these frameworks that Clifford Geertz referred to as “webs of significance”. These perceptual frameworks are typically formed through the situational contexts that they come from In other words, the creation of these frameworks is intricately tied to all the elements present that contribute to the perceptual experiences at the time that the frameworks were created. This explains the many cultural differences in the frameworks, which are sometimes used to describe similar – if not identical – objects and situations, given that the experiences of these phenomena is culturally subjective. Once the frameworks are created, it becomes not only useful, but also efficient, to be able to pass on these perceptual frameworks to others that may not have been a part of the experiences at the time that they were being created. This is where the concept of ritual becomes an important vehicle for the purpose of cultural sustainability and proliferation. It is through ritual then, that we present the meanings that we ascribe to the world around us in the context of our cultural frameworks and worldviews. In this paper I will explore the definition of ritual, how it works, and why ritual is important in a socio-cultural context.

WHAT IS RITUAL?

In Cultural Anthropology, Schultz & Lavenda (2005:163) write that, “societies aim to shape action as well as thought to orient faculties in the approved direction” (Schultz & Lavenda 2005: 163). One of the ways to do this is to engage the social group(s) in a performative set of actions through which they can engage with the very beliefs and modes of comport that are deemed as desirable by society. Ritual is a performative medium through which we make the tangible real.

Paraphrasing the 4 elements of ritual from the book, ritual is:

1. Socially constructed into a symbolic process;
2. Typically in the realm of the sacred, rather than the profane;
3. Corresponding to a contextual framework as defined by socio-cultural
   guidelines; and
4. Associated with social values that are typically a part of myth
   (Schultz & Lavenda 2005: 163).

This framework provides us with a checklist of sorts for determining what can be
constituted as ritual. However, we must be careful to make a differentiation between what is ritual action, and what is ritualized action. I recall many an engaging discussion about this difference, and would like to make my position clear. It is quite possible to take a mundane set of actions that we repeat on a daily basis, and make them into something that approaches our definition of ritual.

As we have seen in Horace Miner’s “Body Rituals of the Nacirema”, our daily hygiene could be construed as ritual action if it is exoticized through the use of the language of ritual. The difference in the analysis of ritual versus ritualized is the underlying symbolic significance behind the actions performed, and in the care that is taken in performing them. Knowing this difference is important when performing a cultural analysis outside of the purview of one’s own culture. Mistaking ritualized for ritual in terms of actions, could lead to erroneous assumptions about the belief systems and perceptual frameworks present in a culture. Therefore, action must have that symbolic significance in order to be labeled as ritual. Once we attach the action to symbolic significance, we can see its place in the cultural framework, and what it communicates about that cultural group.

Ritual is thus tied to the concepts of frames and framing in that there are cues about what is going on in a ritual situation that are embedded in the materials present as well as the performances being given. These performances are typically a re-enactment of some cosmological event – in terms of a creation myth – or have some significance in terms of events leading up to the formation of a particular cultural group or groups. In this sense, rituals also have a pedagogical function that helps to maintain the sustainability of a culture.

Given that rituals can be interpreted as performed representations of the values of a culture and/or social group, we can go back to Geertz, not only in the concept of webs of significance, but also through his well known concept of the elements of culture as a series of texts that can be read. This concept provides us with an inroad to analysis about the culture in question.

Ritual has been said to be “structured, standardized action that is highly symbolic”. It is the structure and standardized nature of the actions that make it useful to maintain the frameworks – or webs of significance – upon which we build the cultural norms, beliefs, and mores that are the building blocks for societies.

HOW RITUAL WORKS

Ritual can make the intangible, tangible. By engaging participants in a performative process, it allows them to participate in the embodiment of cultural values, often playing out the scenarios of how these values came to be in the first place. By allowing participants to essentially live the experiences, it forges stronger cognitive relationships to the ways in which society and culture not only defines the world around it, but also how one is to relate to it.

The rite of passage is one way in which the values are lived as an individual transitions out of one role and into another. The phases of the rite of passage ritual as identified by Turner and Van Gennep – segregation, liminality, and reintegration (Schultz & Lavenda 2005:167) – are well illustrated in “The Meaning of Whitemen” (Bashkow 2006), when the author describes the phases of transformation for young girls into women. In this process, the girl is secluded from work and toil for a period of time that is equal to the amount of time that it takes her family to gather enough resources for a feast that will celebrate her crossing of the threshold into womanhood (2006: 111).

During her period of liminality, the girl learns of what it means to grow heavy with the burdens of social expectations, and in doing so, when she emerges as a woman into the community, she will enter society in debt to it, and a part of it, feeling obliged to participate, not only as a way of repaying her debt, but also as a way of sustaining the culture and its practices through the rite of passage. As the author states, the softness of the woman’s skin when she re- integrates into society, is a reminder of the debts that she has to those that have provided for her during her liminal period, affording her the luxury of skin that is not hardened as a result of work (Bashkow 2006: 112). But, with the new role, in addition to new responsibilities, there is typically an ascension of place in the social hierarchy.

It is in the period of liminality that we negotiate the transition to the new identity that we will be emerging into, through a guided mourning of the death of the old one. I would argue that part of the reason why ritual works is because it challenges people’s desire to remain in their comfort zones by offering up the promise of power that ascension into a new role brings. Perhaps what makes individuals respect the process is the fear of the unknown, and the comfort that a prescribed process can bring in the face of the discomfort of transitioning out of one role into another. Liechty notes that, “Anthropologists have long noted that cultural danger almost always offers cultural power. The recognition of danger is almost by definition the recognition of power” (2005: 6). Ritual in terms of the kinds of rituals that change a person’s role in more traditional societies will typically have a sense of danger attached to them as individuals transition from one role to another. To enter into the journey that is ritual, and come out the other side is a kind of power, a power that is brought about from a connection to one’s culture through past and present.

WHY IS RITUAL IMPORTANT?

Ritual is important in a socio-cultural context because it provides culture groups with a sense of cohesiveness, and fosters cultural sustainability.

In Bashkow’s. “The Meaning of Whitemen”, he points to the ritual of dispensing of monies from coffee profits (2006: 69). In this ritual, Kingsford dons a special costume (a Boy Scouts Shirt), giving an explanation for the amounts being dispersed, and then dispersing the monies in a public and open fashion (2006: 69). The monies are dispersed in a public fashion so as to prevent bad feelings caused due to perceived inequalities amongst the women. By paying the women, there is also an acknowledgement of the importance of their work in bringing money in to not only the household, but to the local economy as well. The special set of circumstances that is constructed around this financial dispersal – as pointed out by Kingsford’s ceremony in dress, and the fact that furniture was set, which is something that is rarely done in Orokaiva houses (Bashkow 2006: 69) – provides a way of engaging the very individuals that made the harvest possible, in an acknowledgement of not only their contribution to the local economy, but also of the fact that to be a contributing member of society is something that can be aspired to.

The notion of orthopraxy – as an observance of the correct way of performing a ritual action (Shultz & Lavenda 2005: 168) – also creates a cohesiveness in the socio-cultural group, by engaging everyone in a pursuit of acceptable consistency of action. From a cultural sustainability perspective, orthopraxy also adds to the construction of cohesive identity for the socio-cultural group, thus setting it apart from others.

Through the creation of what Victor Turner referred to as “communitas” (Schultz & Lavenda 2005: 167) rituals create a cohesiveness in society by engaging individuals in a social group in an activity that unites them in a common goal, into something that is bigger than the individual, thus engaging them in an environment in which they are more like equals, rather than on a hierarchy. It is most common to enter into this communitas in the period of liminality in a rite of passage, in which the ambiguity of people’s roles puts them in a context of being “betwixt and between” (2005: 167) roles.

However, I would also argue that there is a similar leveling of hierarchies in situations in which communitas is shared amongst participants, adding to feelings of cohesive engagement.

Ritual is also a good way to bridge possibly contentious negotiations of identities between groups. In his paper about the performed public sphere of the Maori, Rosenblatt describes the Maori welcoming ritual into a common meeting space (2005:122). In the negotiation of identity between the Maori and the colonizing government, the two opposing sides engage in this ritual, the result being that, “This new position implied a relationship of some sort to the government, which is exactly what would be ritually effected by welcoming its representatives onto a marae” (Rosenblatt 2005: 122). By enacting the ritual of the marae, the two cultures – in this case, the Maori and the Pakeha (white people and other non-Maori) – are able to bridge their differences and negotiate their identities as equals. At least, that is the intent in terms of the goal of the marae ritual. In addition, there is the ritual of removing the tapu – “a kind of dangerous sacredness, necessary to life but inimical to it, associated with the divine and the foreign” (Rosenblatt 2005: 121) – which provides a common ground upon which people can feel free to negotiate as equals – whether Maori or Pakeha (Rosenblatt 2005:121). By leveling the hierarchies between cultures, they gain a connection that allows people of different cultures to come together in a shared context, a sense of communitas.

There is also a sense of connection to space and place that ritual creates, which ties into sustainability of culture. Rosenblatt notes that, “The home people at a marae welcome perform their identity as a community, their mana (power, prestige, and authority), their connection to their land, and their wish to establish a peaceful relationship” (Rosenblatt 2005: 121). This show of contextual relevance is part of the negotiation of identities that takes place through a ritual that connects the Maori to a space and place through time.

In terms of the globalization issues that arise from cultures coming up against each other, a ritual can be a way of mitigating otherwise contentious meetings through the creation of neutral grounds in which differing cultural frameworks can be shared, understood, and even adapted.

Another example of how ritual connects cultural groups to space and place as outlined by Bashkow in the ritual with the baby and stick, in which the author states that “the ‘rooting’ of the baby, which gives it an embodied connection to garden land, is taken as the precondition for developing hard, strong, healthy body” (Bashkow 2005: 176). In this example, the ritual creates a direct linkage in the metaphor of the strength of the child as a representative of the Orokaiva people, and the strength of the Taro plant, which is an important part of the material culture of the Orokaiva people.

Though a connection with space and place vis-à-vis ritual, cultural sustainability is made possible as a result of stronger foundations that are both tangible and intangible.

RITUAL AS A TOOL FOR ANALYSIS

Ritual is a very useful tool for cultural analysis in anthropology, allowing us to read the actions as a text, giving way to what the cultural group deems important.

Janice Boddy writes about her work amongst the Hofriyat with female circumcision, discussing that in regards to their customs, “they underlie both ritualized and non ritualized behaviour, providing a number of overlapping contexts that inform social discourse” (Boddy 1982:689). Therefore ritual provides us with containers of meaning, from which we can extract elements of social import.
She continues, stating that, “to determine adequately the symbolic context of female circumcision in Hofriyat, one must trace further applications of the qualities that define it: purity, cleanliness, and smoothness” (Boddy 1982: 689). In the case of the Hofriyat, the ritual of female circumcision gives us insights into certain qualities that are the end product of a ritual, and in doing so, it offers us an entry point into cultural analysis in terms of why these qualities are important to the Hofriyat, and what it means to possess these qualities in the bigger picture that is the whole of Hofriyat culture.

The usefulness of ritual as a tool for analysis does not only lie in established rituals though. It is also useful to see transitions in the rituals themselves as they are adapted to different influences through generations. In a paper titled “Carnal economies: The commodification of food and sex in Kathmandu” (Liechty 2005), he discusses such a transition, stating that, “Perhaps because of their association with ritual and physical danger, meat and alcohol have become the staples of male restaurant culture in Kathmandu” (Liechty 2005:24). This is a way in which we can see a transition through time in the social mores and observances as cultural elements that were once avoided due to their ritual importance in terms of determining one’s place in the social hierarchy, and one’s ability to deal with the ritual elements, are now boundaries that are being tested and questioned in a kind of cultural Renaissance, in which the old ways are being questioned, with explanations giving way to empirical proof, rather than faith-based explanations.

As final example of the usefulness of ritual as a tool for cultural analysis, I would like to add Jill Dubisch’s work on the health food movement (2005) in which she notes, “In addition, a person concerned with maintaining a high degree of purity in food may engage in similar behaviour in either case – reading labels carefully to check for impermissible ingredients and even purchasing food from special establishments to guarantee ritual purity” (2005: 313). In this example, the place contributes to the ritual of the food itself, and in a way, the fact that one is buying in a health-food store could be considered a ritual in itself, in that it embodies a certain amount of interaction with objects and specialists of seemingly higher import in the cultural group as it relates to knowledge of food.

Perhaps a very common theme that I would note about the analysis in ritual is that the material culture attached to ritual is often the most telling in terms of the kinds of things that people value in a culture. We can see this in terms of the Taro with the Orokaiva (Bashkow 2005), the shell necklaces amongst the Trobrianders (Weiner 1987), and even the counter-culture modes of dress amongst the death-metal fans in Bali (Baulch 2007). In all these instances, the material culture behind the ritual – and sometimes ritualized, as in the case of death-metal in Bali – is metaphorically indicative of the culture’s connection to a larger context, in which identities are negotiated within and without the culture. Finding similar expressions of social discourse across different cultures, allows anthropology – amongst other social sciences and humanities –
to find similarities in frameworks, thus allowing us to find ways in which to bridge ideas, cultures, and people. In a world that is increasingly being globalized, this bridging is very important, given that as diverse cultural boundaries are increasingly coming up against each other, the identities within them must be continually negotiated, especially at the margins.

THE UPSHOT

Ritual is a steward for culture, as well as its teacher. It is a steward for culture by acting as a container and vessel through which we access many of the social norms and values for a culture. It is also a powerful teacher, as it engages participants in lived experiences with the values and expectations of comport. Perhaps this is why it is also such a useful tool for analysis, given that it allows us as anthropologists to not only look at rituals in theory, but also in practice. As we globalize our economies, we can also track how different cultures adapt not only to other cultures through rituals, but also how younger generations shape and update the old rituals to contemporary contexts based on different influences for what is deemed acceptable, desirable, and necessary in order to keep a culture sustainable.

REFERENCES

Bashkow, Ira. 2006. The Meaning of Whitemen: Race and Modernity in the Orokaiva Moral World. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Baulch, Emma. 2007. Making scenes: reggae, punk, and death metal in 1990s Bali. Durham: Duke University Press.

Boddy, Janice. 1982. Womb as oasis: the symbolic context of pharaonic circumcision in rural Northern Sudan. American Ethnologist 9 (4):682-698.

Dubisch, Jill. 1981. You are what you eat: Religious aspects of the health food movement. In Investigating Culture: An Experiential Introduction to Anthropology, edited by C. Delaney. Malden, MA: Blackwell.

Liechty, M. 2005. Carnal economies: The commodification of food and sex in Kathmandu. Cultural Anthropology 20 (1):1-38.

Rosenblatt, Daniel. 2005. Thinking Outside the Billiard Ball: Cognatic Nationalism and Performing a Maori Public Sphere. Ethnohistory 52 (1):111-136.

Schultz, Emily, and Robert Lavenda. 2005. Cultural Anthropology: A Perspective on the Human Condition. Sixth ed. New York: Oxford University Press.

Weiner, Annette. 1987. The Trobrianders of Papua New Guinea. Orlando, FL: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.