Ritual

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Copyright © 1997 by Catherine Bell

Foreword © 2009 by Oxford University Press

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Bell, Catherine M., 1953–

Ritual : perspectives and dimensions / Catherine Bell. p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-19-973510-5

1. Ritual. 2. Religion. I. Title. BL600.B47 1997

291.3'8—dc20 96-23945

1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2

Printed in the United States of America

on acid-free paper

The meaning of ritual is deep indeed.

He who tries to enter it with the kind of perception that distinguishes hard and white, same and different, will drown there.

The meaning of ritual is great indeed.

He who tries to enter it with the uncouth and inane theories of the system-makers will perish there.

The meaning of ritual is lofty indeed.

He who tries to enter with the violent and arrogant ways of those who despise common customs and consider themselves to be above other men will meet his downfall there.

Xunzi (third century B.C.E.)

Foreword vii

Foreword

Catherine M. Bell was, until her untimely death on May 23, 2008, Professor of Religious Studies at Santa Clara University and one of the world’s leading experts in the field of ritual studies. She was also a close friend, a brilliant teacher, and a mentor to me and to hundreds of other students who were fortunate enough to pass through her classes at SCU.

As an academic and theorist of religion, Dr. Bell was unmatched. Her seminal work, Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice, which has become required reading among students of religious studies, launched a revolution in the way scholars think about those peculiar, unique, and difficult to define activities that are usually understood as ritual. Indeed, the book challenged the widespread assumption in ritual studies that there is any such thing as a universal, autonomous phenomenon called ritual; that is, a set of orchestrated human activities with distinct and recognizable features that differentiate it from other, more mundane forms of activity. “Ritual,” Dr. Bell wrote, “is always contingent, provisional, and defined by difference.”

With Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions, Bell used her unique analytical insights to sketch a broad survey of the ideas and major figures that have informed the history of ritual studies, from the early theorizing of 19th century social scientists like Max Muller, Edward Tylor and Robertson Smith to the later developments of the so-called phenomenologists, represented by scholars like Mircea Eliade and Jonathan Smith. By mapping out the entire spectrum—or as Bell called it, “genres”—of activities that fall under the rubric of ritual, the book demonstrates how ritual gives shape and meaning to society and culture.

Dr. Bell’s contribution to the field of ritual studies forged a new framework for defining ritual as a situational and strategic activity that can only be recognized and understood precisely in relation to other activities, much as the significance of any symbol can only be understood vis a vis its relation to other symbols. In doing so, she

viii Foreword

placed a massive and much-needed roadblock in the path forged by earlier scholars and ethnographers who attempted to develop universal or cross-cultural models of ritual theory that more often reflected the interpretative bias and worldview of the researcher than they did the significance of the particular ritual being observed. More than that, her fundamental re-imagining of the nature and function of “ritualization”— the term Bell preferred when speaking of ritual as a form of privileged action—for- ever altered our conception of the simple dichotomies of belief and behavior, the individual and the collective, the sacred and the profane.

It is for her rigorous scholarship that Catherine Bell will be remembered for generations to come. But to those who knew her, who were touched by her grace and her intellect, even as she slowly succumbed to her harrowing illness, she will be remembered for her razor sharp wit, her boundless compassion, and refusal to accept anything but the best from her students. It is no exaggeration to say that I owe my career as a writer and scholar to Catherine Bell, who ushered me through my initial theoretical stumblings in the History of Religions, and who shaped my understanding of the meaning and significance, not only of religion, but also of faith. For Catherine was that unique scholar of religions who never fell into the trap, so well laid by her colleagues and predecessors, of reducing religion to its constituent elements. She refused to treat either religious faith or religious activity as things to be observed under a microscope. And because of that, she taught me not only to be a better scholar, a better thinker, and a better teacher. She taught me to be a better person. And for that I will always be grateful.

Reza Aslan

Los Angeles

May 15, 2009

Preface

While the activities we think of as “ritual” can be found in many periods and places, the formal study of ritual is a relatively recent and localized phenomenon. When made the subject of systematic historical and comparative cultural analysis, ritual has offered new insights into the dynamics of religion, culture, and personhood. At the same time, it has proven to be a particularly complicated phenomenon for scholars to probe—because of the variety of activities that one may consider ritual, the multiplicity of perspectives one may legitimately take in interpreting them, and the way in which defining and interpreting ritual enter into the very construction of scholarship itself.

In contrast to an earlier work, Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice, which addressed specific theoretical issues concerning the dichotomy of thought and action in ritual theory, this book is meant to be a more holistic and pragmatic orientation to multiple dimensions of the phenomenon of ritual.1 It provides a fairly comprehensive depiction of the history of theories about ritual and religion (part I), the spectrum of both ritual and ritual-like activities (part II), and the fabric of social and cultural life that forms the context in which people turn to ritual practices—and even to ritual theories (part III). In continuity with the earlier book, however, this study brings a particular perspective to these discussions, namely, the position that “ritual” is not an intrinsic, universal category or feature of human behavior—not yet, anyway. It is a cultural and historical construction that has been heavily used to help differentiate various styles and degrees of religiosity, rationality, and cultural determinism. While ostensibly an attempt to identify a universal, cross-cultural phenomenon, our current concept of ritual is also, and inevitably, a rather particular way of looking at and organizing the world. The import of this particularity is one of the concerns of this book. While sections of part III extend some of the theoretical arguments raised in Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice, for the most part, this study is also a broad application of the methodological suggestions raised there.

xPreface

To anyone interested in ritual in general, it becomes quickly evident that there is no clear and widely shared explanation of what constitutes ritual or how to understand it. There are only various theories, opinions, or customary notions, all of which reflect the time and place in which they are formulated. This complexity is portrayed in the organization of this book. Traditionally, comprehensive surveys of a topic lay out their subject in either of two ways: as a narrative telling of the “story” of the topic or as an analytic “inventory” of the topic’s subtopics. This book attempts to take a third course by presenting the fluidity and confusion, as well as the consensus and commonsense, that have shaped so much of the way we have talked about ritual. Therefore, instead of approaching ritual as a clear-cut and timeless object of scrutiny, the following chapters focus on how a variety of definitions and constructed understandings of ritual have emerged and shaped our world. As such, this presentation recognizes that any discussion of ritual is essentially an exercise in reflective historical and comparative analysis.

While each of the major sections of this book plays a role in constructing the overall argument about ritual, they also organize the issues and data autonomously in terms of three distinct frameworks. Part I, Theories: The History of Interpretations, presents a roughly chronological ordering of the most influential approaches to defining and explaining ritual behavior. It begins with theories concerning the origins of religion and then depicts the emergence of various schools that have developed distinctive perspectives for analyzing ritual. While far from exhaustive, this account tries to highlight the significance of ritual to most of the important understandings of religion and culture. This account also suggests that the history of theories contains only limited instances of any progressive development and refinement of the idea of ritual. To a great extent, multiple and even mutually exclusive perspectives on ritual continue to coexist due to fundamental indeterminacies that attend the identification of ritual, on the one hand, and historical changes in the projects of scholarly analysis, on the other. Nonetheless, to provide as much clarity as possible, there are three special sections that present extended “profiles” of specific rituals that have been much studied by the preceding theoretical schools. These profiles give readers the opportunity to compare and contrast how different theoretical approaches have actually interpreted particular rites.

Part II, Rites: The Spectrum of Ritual Activities, opens by exploring those activities that most people consider to be good examples of ritual: birth and death ceremonies, healing and exchange rites, sacrifices and enthronements, and so on. In each case, the analysis attempts to uncover the particular logic and symbolic structures of these familiar genres of ritual practice. However, by shifting attention to various activities that are not ritual but are readily thought to have “ritual-like” quali- ties—such as etiquette, meditation, and certain sports or theatrical performances— it is possible to uncover some of the fundamental ways of acting that are intrinsic to ritualizing in European and American culture. These examples suggest that larger questions concerning the nature of ritual action may be very dependent upon the context in which certain qualities of action are elaborated or muted.

Part III, Contexts: The Fabric of Ritual Life, explores the broader relationships between ritual activities and social life, specifically addressing why some groups have more ritual than others, how rituals change, and the place of ritual in so-called

Preface xi

traditional and modern settings. The vitality of much traditional ritual, experiments in new forms of ritualization, the influence of anthropological writings, and the development of a new paradigm for self-conscious ritualization—all indicate the variety of factors that influence both how we view ritual and how we do it. In this section, the instabilities of theory and data uncovered in parts I and II are recast in the context of the very emergence of “ritual” as a category for depicting a putatively universal phenomenon. Critiques of the function and operation of such universal categories necessitate a more systematic awareness of the way in which concepts like “ritual” construct a position of generally scholarly and objective analysis in contrast to the activities identified as data and as irredeemably locked within their cultural particularity.

These three frameworks contribute a number of perspectives to an overall analysis of the phenomenon of ritual. Let me highlight this analysis as succinctly as possible. Today we think of “ritual” as a complex sociocultural medium variously constructed of tradition, exigency, and self-expression; it is understood to play a wide variety of roles and to communicate a rich density of overdetermined messages and attitudes. For the most part, ritual is the medium chosen to invoke those ordered relationships that are thought to obtain between human beings in the here-and-now and nonimmediate sources of power, authority, and value. Definitions of these relationships in terms of ritual’s vocabulary of gesture and word, in contrast to theological speculation or doctrinal formulation, suggest that the fundamental efficacy of ritual activity lies in its ability to have people embody assumptions about their place in a larger order of things.

Despite the consensus surrounding this perspective on ritual, the emergence of the concept of “ritual” as a category for human action is not the result of any single or necessary progress in human development. Nor can the concept imply that all socalled ritual practices can be reduced to a uniform, archetypal, or universal set of acts, attitudes, structures, or functions. The definition, incidence, and significance of so-called ritual practices are matters of particular social situations and organizations of cultural knowledge. These have varied greatly even in European and American history. Critics of what we call ritual are found among the Old Testament prophets, Greek philosophers, Protestant reformers, and many secular participants in the current scene. Promoters of what we mean by ritual are just as varied. While 17thcentury Quakers espoused a particularly radical antiritualism, the late-20th-century

African-American writer and founder of the festival of Kwanzaa, Maulana Karenga, sees ritual as a primary means for self-transformation and cultural revolution.2

Ultimately, this book will argue that talk about ritual may reveal more about the speakers than about the bespoken. In this vein, analysis of the emergence of the concept of ritual and its various applications make clear the way in which the concept has mediated a series of relationships between “us” and some “other”—be they papist idolators, primitive magicians, or the ancient wise ones who have resisted the forces of modernity. The concluding arguments of part III attempt to demonstrate how the emergence and subsequent understandings of the category of ritual have been fundamental to the modernist enterprise of establishing objective, universal knowledge that, as the flip side of its explanative power, nostalgically rues the loss of enchantment. Overall, the organization of the book attempts to introduce the general but

xii Preface

serious reader to the basics as well as the complexities of this area of discussion about religion. As part of that project, it includes familiar figures and ideas, and some of both that are not so familiar. I hope that the mix will stimulate fresh inquiry on the practices of religion.

The ancient Chinese sage Xunzi (pronounced Shyun’-dz), quoted in the epigraph, offers three pieces of practical advice for anyone attempting to talk about ritual.3 In effect, he warns against the temptation to reduce this complex phenomenon to simplistic formulas or strict categories. He also suggests that elaborate theories constructed by means of labyrinthine methodological considerations will only lead one away from reality. Finally, he reminds us that we will never understand ritual if we are apt to look down on what other people do and view their actions from a position of intellectual or observational superiority. While recognizing the self-serving significance of this argument for a major proponent of Confucian teachings, this is still valuable advice that I have tried to take very seriously.

For historical clarity in part I and two chapters in part III, the dates for major theorists are provided in the first substantive discussion of their work but not for those born about 1940 or later. In general, foreign terms follow the spelling adopted in the Encyclopedia of Religion, edited by Mircea Eliade (New York: Macmillan, 1987), except for Chinese terms, which are given in the Pinyin system of Romanization. Various material in part III was previously published in Studia Liturgica (vol. 23, no. 1 [1993]) and The Proceedings of the American Benedictine Academy (Summer 1994), presented at Harvard University Divinity School in November 1995, and forthcoming in Critical Terms in the Study of Religion, edited by Mark C. Taylor (University of Chicago).

I want to acknowledge my debt to several diligent assistants: Victoria Waters, who helped edit the manuscript after Teresa Maria Romero and Jada Pogue assisted me in the research. I am also grateful for the assistance of colleagues who read sections of the manuscript, notably Frederick Denny, William Doty, Edmund Gilday, and Ninian Smart. I bear full responsibility, of course, for any errors of fact or interpretation. As usual, the most demanding critic and unflagging supporter has been my husband, Steven M. Gelber.

Preface xiii

Contents

Part I Theories: The History of Interpretation, 1

ONE Myth or Ritual: Questions of Origin and Essence, 3

Early Theories and Theorists, 3

The Myth and Ritual Schools, 5

The Phenomenology of Religions, 8

Psychoanalytic Approaches to Ritual, 12

Profile: Interpreting the Akitu Festival, 17

Conclusion, 20

TWO Ritual and Society: Questions of Social Function and Structure, 23

Early Theories of Social Solidarity, 24

Functionalism, 27

Neofunctional Systems Analyses, 29

Structuralism, 33

Magic, Religion, and Science, 46

Profile: Interpreting the Mukanda Initiation, 52

Conclusion, 59

THREE Ritual Symbols, Syntax, and Praxis: Questions of Cultural Meaning and Interpretation, 61 Symbolic Systems and Symbolic Action, 62

xiv ContentsPreface

Linguistics, 68

Performance, 72

Practice, 76

Profile: Interpreting British and Swazi

Enthronement Rites, 83

Conclusion, 88

Part II Rites: The Spectrum of Ritual Activities, 91

FOUR Basic Genres of Ritual Action, 93

Rites of Passage, 94

Calendrical Rites, 102

Rites of Exchange and Communion, 108

Rites of Affliction, 115

Feasting, Fasting, and Festivals, 120

Political Rites, 128

Conclusion, 135

FIVE Characteristics of Ritual-like Activities, 138

Formalism, 139

Traditionalism, 145

Invariance, 150

Rule-Governance, 153

Sacral Symbolism, 155

Performance, 159

Conclusion, 164

Part III Contexts: The Fabric of Ritual Life, 171

SIX Ritual Density, 173

Systems, 173

Typologies, 177

Orthopraxy and Orthodoxy, 191

Traditional and Secular, 197

ContentsPreface xv

Oral and Literate, 202

Church, Sect, and Cult, 205

Conclusion, 209

SEVEN Ritual Change, 210

Tradition and Transformation, 212

Ritual Invention, 223

Media and Message, 242

Conclusion, 251

EIGHT Ritual Reification, 253

Repudiating, Returning, Romancing, 254

The Emergence of “Ritual,” 259

Conclusion, 266

Notes, 269

References, 313

Index, 343

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PART I

THEORIES

The History of Interpretation

It might seem logical to begin a book on the subject of ritual with an introduction to the data, namely, examples of rituals, and then proceed to examine the theories that have attempted to explain what rituals are and what they do. In actual fact, however, that apparently logical approach would probably prove to be more confusing for the simple reason that scholarship on ritual, as in many other areas, does not usually proceed so directly from data to theory. Most often, explicit theories or implicit assumptions lead scholars to find data that support or challenge these views. Hence, what counts as data will depend to a great extent on what one already has in mind, the problem that one is trying to solve. Human beings have been involved in ritual activities of some sort since the earliest hunting bands and tribal communities about which we have information. Yet it is only in the late nineteenth century that people began to perceive all such activities under the rubric of “ritual” and identify them as “data” against which to test theories concerning the origins of religion and civilization. In doing so, people were asking new types of questions about history and culture and beginning to look for new forms of evidence. Ultimately, of course, the priority of theory or data is a classic chicken- or-egg issue; we identify something as data when we have theories that require it, and we formulate theories more clearly, subjecting them to challenge or support, when we

can elucidate them with data.

For these reasons, it is more instructive to begin an introduction to ritual with a survey of the major theoretical perspectives that have made people approach ritual as something identifiable and worthy of investigation. Although no introduction can be exhaustive, this survey attempts to do several things: first, to provide a fairly complete framework of major methods and figures so that the reader has a mental map that will facilitate further investigation; second, to provide background on the larger issues of

2Theories: The History of Interpretation

religion, society, and culture so that the reader understands why scholars have asked the particular questions they have and why their answers were received the way they were; and third, to demonstrate how creative and how inconclusive scholarly investigation can be or, in other words, how attempts to understand our world do not yield simple answers so much as become part of the way we create our world.

This section is organized into three chapters, each addressing a major theoretical perspective. The first theoretical perspective is concerned with the origins and essential nature of ritual and religion; the second is more concerned with the role of ritual in the social organization and dynamics of human societies; the third perspective focuses on ritual as a form of cultural communication that transmits the cognitive categories and dispositions that provide people with important aspects of their sense of reality. All of these perspectives are represented by a variety of theorists, some of whom would no doubt balk at the company they are being asked to keep here. Naturally, the classifications are merely provisional and heuristic; they should not be taken as clear or fixed. Each major theoretical perspective, for example, is also represented by people who have challenged some of its core assumptions or combined them with the assumptions basic to other perspectives. Although some perspectives go further back in history, they are still represented to some extent in current studies of ritual. Hence, while a loose historical thread runs through this section, many more theories are in use today than just those discussed at the very end of this section.

To illustrate as graphically as possible how different theoretical perspectives help shape our understanding of what constitutes data for the study of ritual, each of the three sections includes a “ritual profile,” which is the presentation of a ritual that theorists of the preceding schools of thought tended to analyze. These profiles provide a brief illustration of how various theories of ritual have been applied. The ancient Babylonian new year ritual known as the Akitu festival is the first ritual presented in this way, followed by the African Mukanda ritual of male initiation, and then two traditional enthronement rites, the Swazi Ncwala rite and the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain.