Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural Anthropology
According to most theories, ritual either involves different forms of action from everyday life, or at least different purposes. For example, in Christian ritual, the act of ingesting bread during holy communion is different from eating bread at any other time. The difference relates to the meaning attached to the ritual act, which is suggested by the use of †symbols. Paraphrasing †Clifford Geertz’s definition of *culture, David Kertzer defines ritual as ‘action wrapped in a web of symbolism’ (1988:9). This assumes that ritual has a communicative role. Thus, despite the idea that ritual denies the everyday relationship between an action and its purpose, it is assumed that this denial is not gratuitous. There is assumed to be a purpose, a function and a meaning behind ritual action.
This has implications for the relationships between ritual, politics and *social structure.
Accounts vary as to the purpose, function and meaning of ritual. As Kelly and Kaplan have pointed out, unlike a riot for example, ritual is habitually connected to ‘tradition’, the sacred, to structures that have been imagined in stasis’ (1990:120). This has led to the †synchronic pursuit of an inevitable and generalized ritual form. Appeals to a universal ritual form imply a generalized ritual function; the assumption being that what looks the same is the same. Attempts to define this function have generally seen ritual as either supporting social structure by directly representing it, or legitimizing social authority by concealing it. Thus ritual’s social role is either to bolster, or conceal, the prevailing political order.
The turn towards an anthropology of †practice has drawn attention to the †diachronic study of particular rituals as they are performed and experienced by their participants. Rather than playing out of eternal pattern, the actors in ritual are seen as conscious agents in the reproduction of that pattern. This means that rather than directly representing, or even concealing, social structure, ritual itself becomes part of the political process.
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