Understanding Rituals

Understanding Rituals PDF Author: Daniel de Coppet
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 9780415061216
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 120

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Book Description
Understanding Rituals explores how ritual can be understood within the framework of contemporary social anthropology, and shows that ritual is now one of the most fertile fields of anthropological research. The contributors demonstrate how rituals create and maintain - or transform - a society's cultural identity and social relations. By examining specific rituals from various theoretical viewpoints, they reveal the ultimate and contradictory values to which each society as a whole is attached.

Understanding Rituals

Understanding Rituals PDF Author: Daniel de Coppet
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134926634
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 144

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Book Description
Understanding Rituals explores how ritual can be understood within the framework of contemporary social anthropology, and shows that ritual is now one of the most fertile fields of anthropological research. The contributors demonstrate how rituals create and maintain - or transform - a society's cultural identity and social relations. By examining specific rituals from various theoretical viewpoints, they reveal the ultimate and contradictory values to which each society as a whole is attached.

Understanding Rituals

Understanding Rituals PDF Author: Daniel de Coppet
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 116

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Book Description


Understanding Religious Ritual

Understanding Religious Ritual PDF Author: John Hoffmann
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136889922
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
This book represents contributions from leading scholars from several disciplines that show the diversity of approaches to religious rituals, while also providing cross-disciplinary perspectives on this topic.

We are what We Celebrate

We are what We Celebrate PDF Author: Amitai Etzioni
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814722261
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 259

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Book Description
How did Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday become a national holiday? Why do we exchange presents on Christmas and Chanukah? What do bunnies have to do with Easter? How did Earth Day become a global holiday? These questions and more are answered in this fascinating exploration into the history and meaning of holidays and rituals. Edited by Amitai Etzioni, one of the most influential social and political thinkers of our time, this collection provides a compelling overview of the impact that holidays and rituals have on our family and communal life. From community solidarity to ethnic relations to religious traditions, We Are What We Celebrate argues that holidays such as Halloween, Fourth of July, Thanksgiving, New Year's Eve, and Valentine's Day play an important role in reinforcing, and sometimes redefining, our values as a society. The collection brings together classic and original essays that, for the first time, offer a comprehensive overview and analysis of the important role such celebrations play in maintaining a moral order as well as in cementing family bonds, building community relations and creating national identity. The essays cover such topics as the creation of Thanksgiving as a national holiday; the importance of holidays for children; the mainstreaming of Kwanzaa; and the controversy over Columbus Day celebrations. Compelling and often surprising, this look at holidays and rituals brings new meaning to not just the ways we celebrate but to what those celebrations tell us about ourselves and our communities. Contributors: Theodore Caplow, Gary Cross, Matthew Dennis, Amitai Etzioni, John R. Gillis, Ellen M. Litwicki, Diana Muir, Francesca Polletta, Elizabeth H. Pleck, David E. Proctor, Mary F. Whiteside, and Anna Day Wilde.

Awkward Rituals

Awkward Rituals PDF Author: Dana W. Logan
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226818500
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
A fresh account of early American religious history that argues for a new understanding of ritual. In the years between the American Revolution and the Civil War, there was an awkward persistence of sovereign rituals, vestiges of a monarchical past that were not easy to shed. In Awkward Rituals, Dana Logan focuses our attention on these performances, revealing the ways in which governance in the early republic was characterized by white Protestants reenacting the hierarchical authority of a seemingly rejected king. With her unique focus on embodied action, rather than the more common focus on discourse or law, Logan makes an original contribution to debates about the relative completeness of America’s Revolution. Awkward Rituals theorizes an under-examined form of action: rituals that do not feel natural even if they sometimes feel good. This account challenges common notions of ritual as a force that binds society and synthesizes the self. Ranging from Freemason initiations to evangelical societies to missionaries posing as sailors, Logan shows how white Protestants promoted a class-based society while simultaneously trumpeting egalitarianism. She thus redescribes ritual as a box to check, a chore to complete, an embarrassing display of theatrical verve. In Awkward Rituals, Logan emphasizes how ritual distinctively captures what does not change through revolution.

Rituals of Spontaneity

Rituals of Spontaneity PDF Author: Lori Branch
Publisher: Baylor University Press
ISBN: 1932792112
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 364

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Book Description
Winner of the Book of the Year Award for the Conference on Christianity and Literature.--Thomas H. Luxon, Dartmouth College "CHOICE"

Understanding Rituals

Understanding Rituals PDF Author: Daniel de Coppet
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134926626
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 187

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Book Description
Understanding Rituals explores how ritual can be understood within the framework of contemporary social anthropology, and shows that ritual is now one of the most fertile fields of anthropological research. The contributors demonstrate how rituals create and maintain - or transform - a society's cultural identity and social relations. By examining specific rituals from various theoretical viewpoints, they reveal the ultimate and contradictory values to which each society as a whole is attached.

Ritual

Ritual PDF Author: Robbie Davis-Floyd
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1800735286
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Foreword / Betty Sue Flowers -- Preface. About the authors and their personal and academic engagements with ritual -- Introduction. What is ritual? Its definition and characteristics -- Symbolism in ritual -- The cognitive matrix of ritual : belief systems, myths, and paradigms -- Belief systems, myths, paradigms, rituals, and the process of truing -- Ritual drivers : generating and controlling stages of consciousness -- Ritual techniques and technologies -- Ritual framing, order, and formality : how ritual generates a sense of inevitability and inviolability -- Ritual as performance : generating emotion, belief, and transformation -- Ritual and the 4 stages of cognition -- Ritual's paradoxical roles : preserving the status quo and effecting social change -- Designing rituals -- Conclusion. Ritual : what it is, how it works, and why.

For Small Creatures Such as We

For Small Creatures Such as We PDF Author: Sasha Sagan
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 073521879X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
"A charming book, ringing with the joy of existence." --Richard Dawkins The perfect gift for a loved one or for yourself, For Small Creatures Such as We is part memoir, part guidebook, and part social history, a luminous celebration of Earth's marvels that require no faith in order to be believed. Sasha Sagan was raised by secular parents, the astronomer Carl Sagan and the writer and producer Ann Druyan. They taught her that the natural world and vast cosmos are full of profound beauty, and that science reveals truths more wondrous than any myth or fable. When Sagan herself became a mother, she began her own hunt for the natural phenomena behind our most treasured occasions--from births to deaths, holidays to weddings, anniversaries, and more--growing these roots into a new set of rituals for her young daughter that honor the joy and significance of each experience without relying on a religious framework. As Sagan shares these rituals, For Small Creatures Such as We becomes a moving tribute to a father, a newborn daughter, a marriage, and the natural world--a celebration of life itself, and the power of our families and beliefs to bring us together.

Is „meaning“ a useful analytical category for understanding the symbolism of rituals?

Is „meaning“ a useful analytical category for understanding the symbolism of rituals? PDF Author: Johannes Lenhard
Publisher: GRIN Verlag
ISBN: 365637760X
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 8

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Book Description
Essay from the year 2013 in the subject Pedagogy - Theory of Science, Anthropology, grade: 65%, University of Cambridge, language: English, abstract: According to Turner (1970:19), ritual can be defined as "formal behaviour for occasions not given over to technological routine, having reference to beliefs in mystical beings of powers. The symbol is the smallest unit of ritual". Even if one does not – as Humphrey and Laidlaw (1994) – accept Turner’s definition of ritual focused on a religious context, we might still agree that rituals are build up of symbols. Symbols in this moment are ambiguous, supposedly meaningful ‘metaphors’ that – so the debatable thesis of for instance Geertz (1993, 2004) and Bloch – need to be interpreted. In this essay, I want to follow three strands in the underlying debate. First of all, scholars such as Geertz and Bloch have taken over the notion of meaning as device in order to understand rituals – but added contextual dimensions to its sphere. Others have secondly dismissed the notion of ‘ritual as a text’ in favour of ‘ritual as performance’ (Lewis), whereas a third school of thought warns of the danger of the concept of meaning and symbolism per se (Humphrey and Laidlaw). If we accept the claim that rituals are made up of symbols, an approach that searches for the meaning of those symbols might be helpful – if the meaning is not imposed by the analyst. Rituals that are intended as a performative act, do not ask for a textual analysis, however. They are better understood with categories such as effect and emotion. If we add those dimensions to our repertoire of meaning, many rituals or ritual facettes can be made ‘comprehensible’.