The Power of Discourse in Ritual Performance

The Power of Discourse in Ritual Performance PDF Author: Ulrich Demmer
Publisher: LIT Verlag Münster
ISBN: 9783825883003
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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Book Description
This volume focuses on the ways discourse is used in ritual performances as an important medium of power, enabling speakers/actors to construct, redefine and transform interpersonal relationships, cultural concepts and worldviews. The various case studies gathered here, from South Asia, South East Asia, Africa and South America, show that recent developments in linguistic anthropology, ritual theory and performance studies provide new conceptual tools to take a fresh look at these issues. Foregrounding pragmatic approaches to language and discourse, they explore the social dynamics of rhetorical discourse, text and context, normativity and creativity, the poetics of dialogue and speech, as well as the manifold interactions of speakers, addressees and audience. The volume thus embraces both the micro-level of speech activities as well as the macro-level of social and political relationships and brings out the subtle workings of control, authority, and power in situations marked as ritual. The contributions, all based on extensive fieldwork, include many concrete samples of speech and discourse which give an authentic impression of the different voices and make for vivid reading.

The Power of Discourse in Ritual Performance

The Power of Discourse in Ritual Performance PDF Author: Ulrich Demmer
Publisher: LIT Verlag Münster
ISBN: 9783825883003
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 220

Get Book Here

Book Description
This volume focuses on the ways discourse is used in ritual performances as an important medium of power, enabling speakers/actors to construct, redefine and transform interpersonal relationships, cultural concepts and worldviews. The various case studies gathered here, from South Asia, South East Asia, Africa and South America, show that recent developments in linguistic anthropology, ritual theory and performance studies provide new conceptual tools to take a fresh look at these issues. Foregrounding pragmatic approaches to language and discourse, they explore the social dynamics of rhetorical discourse, text and context, normativity and creativity, the poetics of dialogue and speech, as well as the manifold interactions of speakers, addressees and audience. The volume thus embraces both the micro-level of speech activities as well as the macro-level of social and political relationships and brings out the subtle workings of control, authority, and power in situations marked as ritual. The contributions, all based on extensive fieldwork, include many concrete samples of speech and discourse which give an authentic impression of the different voices and make for vivid reading.

Negotiating Rites

Negotiating Rites PDF Author: Ute Husken
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199812292
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 310

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Book Description
Ritual has been long viewed as an undisputed and indisputable part of (especially religious) tradition, performed over and over in the same ways: stable in form, meaningless, preconcieved, and with the aim of creating harmony and enabling a tradition's survival. The authors represented in this collection argue, however, that this view can be seriously challenged and that ritual's embeddedness in negotiation processes is one of its central features.

Seven Days of Nectar

Seven Days of Nectar PDF Author: McComas Taylor
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019061191X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 249

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Book Description
The thousand-year-old Sanskrit classic the Bhagavatapurana, or 'Stories of the Lord', is the foundational source of narratives concerning the beloved Hindu deity Krishna. For centuries pious individuals, families, and community groups have engaged specialist scholar-orators to give week-long oral performances based on this text. In recent years, these events have grown in number, scale, and popularity, filling vast public arenas, such as sports stadiums, and attracting live audiences in the tens of thousands while being simulcast around the world. In Seven Days of Nectar, McComas Taylor uncovers the factors that contribute to the explosive growth of this tradition.

Ritual: A Very Short Introduction

Ritual: A Very Short Introduction PDF Author: Barry Stephenson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199943583
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 143

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Book Description
Ritual is part of what it means to be human. Like sports, music, and drama, ritual defines and enriches culture, putting those who practice it in touch with sources of value and meaning larger than themselves. Ritual is unavoidable, yet it holds a place in modern life that is decidedly ambiguous. What is ritual? What does it do? Is it useful? What are the various kinds of ritual? Is ritual tradition bound and conservative or innovative and transformational? Alongside description of a number of specific rites, this Very Short Introduction explores ritual from both theoretical and historical perspectives. Barry Stephenson focuses on the places where ritual touches everyday life: in politics and power; moments of transformation in the life cycle; as performance and embodiment. He also discusses the boundaries of ritual, and how and why certain behaviors have been studied as ritual while others have not. Stephenson shows how ritual is an important vehicle for group and identity formation; how it generates and transmits beliefs and values; how it can be used to exploit and oppress; and how it has served as a touchstone for thinking about cultural origins and historical change. Encompassing the breadth and depth of modern ritual studies, Barry Stephenson's Very Short Introduction also develops a narrative of ritual's place in social and cultural life. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Ritual Textuality

Ritual Textuality PDF Author: Matt Tomlinson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019934115X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 193

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Book Description
A classic question in studies of ritual is how ritual performances achieve-or fail to achieve-their effects. In this pathbreaking book, Matt Tomlinson argues that participants condition their own expectations of ritual success by interactively creating distinct textual patterns of sequence, conjunction, contrast, and substitution. Drawing on long-term research in Fiji, Ritual Textuality presents in-depth studies of each of these patterns, taken from a wide range of settings: a fiery, soul-saving Pentecostal crusade; relaxed gatherings at which people drink the narcotic beverage kava; deathbeds at which missionaries eagerly await the signs of good Christians' "happy deaths"; and the monologic pronouncements of a military-led government determined to make the nation speak in a single voice. In each of these cases, Tomlinson also examines the broad ideologies of motion which frame participants' ritual actions, such as Pentecostals' beliefs that effective worship requires ecstatic movement like jumping, dancing, and clapping, and nineteenth-century missionaries' insistence that the journeys of the soul in the afterlife should follow a new path. By approaching ritual as an act of "entextualization"-in which the flow of discourse is turned into object-like texts-while analyzing the ways people expect words, things, and selves to move in performance, this book presents a new and compelling way to understand the efficacy of ritual action.

Schooling as a Ritual Performance

Schooling as a Ritual Performance PDF Author: Peter McLaren
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9780847691968
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 438

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Book Description
In this third edition, Peter McLaren engages with some of the latest anthropological thinking and presents the reader with a powerful manifesto for critical ethnography in the 21st century.

Circus as Multimodal Discourse

Circus as Multimodal Discourse PDF Author: Paul Bouissac
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1441102612
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
Now available in paperback, this volume presents a theory of the circus as a secular ritual and introduces a method to analyze its performances as multimodal discourse. The book's fifteen chapters cover the range of circus specialties (magic, domestic and wild animal training, acrobatics, and clowning) and provide examples to show how cultural meaning is produced, extended and amplified by circus performances. Bouissac is one of the world's leading authorities on circus ethnography and semiotics and this work is grounded on research conducted over a 50 year span in Europe, Asia, Australia and the Americas. It concludes with a reflection on the potentially subversive power of this discourse and its contemporary use by activists. Throughout, it endeavours to develop an analytical approach that is mindful of the epistemological traps of both positivism and postmodernist license. It brings semiotics and ethnography to bear on the realm of the circus.

Discourse in Ritual Studies

Discourse in Ritual Studies PDF Author: Hans Schilderman
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004158006
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
"Discourse in Ritual Studies" offers an introduction into the study of public worship from the perspective of ritual studies.The contributing authors confront an action-oriented and empirical approach of ritual studies with perennial and normative questions that characterize the study of liturgy.

Power in Performance

Power in Performance PDF Author: Joel C. Kuipers
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 1512803340
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
Among the Weyewa of the eastern Indonesian island of Sumba, spokesmen seek to inscribe their traditions and sacred obligations through ritual speaking performances. In a series of lively poetic dialogues, performers use a distinctive couplet style to pursue the trail of their ancestors.

Ritual Theatre

Ritual Theatre PDF Author: Claire Schrader
Publisher: Jessica Kingsley Publishers
ISBN: 0857003348
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
Ritual theatre is a powerful healing system that has been practised since ancient times by early societies and in tribal communities. It has the ability to effect deep transformation in its participants, support growth and development, and resolve personal issues. This book considers the relevance of ritual theatre in contemporary life and describes how it is being used as a highly cathartic therapeutic process. With contributions from leading experts in the field of dramatherapy, the book brings together a broad spectrum of approaches to ritual theatre as a healing system. It explores the anthropological and tribal roots of dramatic ritual and proposes that ritual theatre finds its most potent expression in personal development work. The practical application of ritual theatre in various clinical settings is discussed and the final chapters explore the possibilities of ritual theatre as performance. Offering a comprehensive discourse on the theory, application and potential of ritual theatre, this book will be an essential text for all students and practitioners of dramatherapy, arts therapists, psychotherapists, psychologists, counsellors and theatre professionals.