don't worry about me, I'm sane as can be

[hawkwing_lb]

Ritual is the process by which humans impose form on something essentially formless; create narrative out of something essentially illogical; impose a framework of order onto a chaotic world.

I was going over my notes on Renfrew's The Archaeology of Cult, which puts forth suggestions for how archaeologists identify religious activity in the material record. He points out that ritual isn't solely a religious construct: it's employed at every level of human life, from the purely personal (if one is in the habit of performing certain household tasks in certain ways at certain times) to reinforcing social hierarchies, of which, historically, hierarchies associated with kingship and aristocracy appear most prominent because more effort goes into delimiting the elite from the non-elite.

So. Logical extension of Renfrew's brief note on the nature of ritual. Ritual. We look for patterns, because human brains are optimised for pattern-recognition. When we create them, we find ways of reinforcing them. On a personal level, it's a way of exerting control over subjective experience and imbuing heretofore neutral actions and symbols with significance. On a social level, it's a way of asserting status and reinforcing levels of belonging or exclusion, which operate at the same time. Significant actions and symbols function as group identifiers, and reinforce social cohesion.

Diversity of ritual experiences - a diversity of options within, as opposed to between, the different levels of the social hierarchy - therefore, might be an indicator of social fragmentation? Stasis? Is there a significant difference between the operant rituals in a democracy and an aristocracy or oligarchy? (Well, from the written sources of the Greek city-states, socially, probably yes, but are these archaeologically distinguishable allowing for regional variation, and do they extend into matters of state religion?) How do non-citizens, or citizens of the lowest voting classes, integrate into religious ritual? And has someone done a study on the intersection of ritual and social and/or government systems in general so I don't have to strain my brain wondering about this stuff when I have exams to study for?

Comments

[etumukutenyak.livejournal.com]

Fascinating! I am personfully resisting my innate tendency to start pondering out loud along with you. At least, until after your exams..

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

Oh, do please ponder aloud. That's part of what LJ is for, after all! :P

[etumukutenyak.livejournal.com]

Well, it was interesting because I immediately started thinking of all the things that we -- in my profession -- "ritualize", or do we simply standardize it to make it easier to comprehend? Is it ritualistic or is it "proven practice" and thus better? Is it ritual or is it maintaining order? In this, they seem to overlap -- perhaps the human brain does require order imposed upon everything, and without it, functionality is diminished.

Surgeries, traffic, mealtimes, daily operations -- what human behavior cannot be "standardized" -- or "ritualistic" -- in its execution?

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

Ritual, I think, is primarily a religio-social tool. And I suspect it is most emphasised as a tool (I'm using this word 'tool' in a neutral sense) to define and reinforce closed-group systems. It'd be harder to define in a profession - except perhaps law: what is the courtroom but public ritual? and maybe politics: certainly the campaign trail and the press conference appears to follow certain ritual patterns - than within a workplace: a regular staff meeting is a kind of ritual, or likewise if a certain group within the workplace all go out together on a Friday night.

Hierarchies are attended by ritual. See churches, parliaments, and boards of directors. But I think it's a lot harder to identify rituals whose primary (as opposed to being primarily 'functional', and only as a bonus reinforcing the social hierarchy) function is to maintain the boundaries of said hierarchy in daily life. Mainly because 'class' is not only a dirty word these days, class and hierarchy markers have become increasingly blurred over the course of the last century. Most people find dubious the proposition that some (individual or classes of) people are innately better than others, after all. At least, they don't like to admit that they believe it out loud.

(And since such a proposition is poison to a just society, I wish fewer people believed it in the privacy of their own heads.)

Anything can be ritualised. But ritual itself, I think, serves a social purpose. I've only been thinking about this recently, but I think there's a distinct difference between actions that serve to formalise (or sacralise) relationships between sets of people, or between people and symbols (like flags, nations, football teams) and actions that acquire ritual or symbolic overtones through use and repetition? Does that make any sense?

*hath not the brain*