Discourse and the construction of society: comparative studies of myth, ritual, and classification

Abstract

In this bold theoretical work, Bruce Lincoln explores ways in which myth, ritual, and classification hold human societies together--and how, in times of crisis, they can be used to take a society apart and reconstruct it. Without overlooking role of coercive force in maintenance (or overthrow) of social structures, Lincoln argues his thesis with compelling illustrations drawn from such diverse areas as Platonic philosophy, Upanishads of India, African rituals of kingship, ancient Celtic banquets, English gentlemen's clubs, Iranian Revolution, St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre, professional wrestling, and Spanish Civil War. Professional wrestling, Lincoln shows, can be viewed as a drama of classification in which American dream of opportunity is set forth, challenged, and finally firmly reestablished in good-versus-evil encounters between wrestlers categorized by their relative Americanness. The exhumation of nuns' mummified corpses by leftist forces and their sympathizers during Spanish Civil War, often dismissed by liberal historians as an embarrassing aberration, is more readily understandable as a ritual in which Spanish Catholic Church, which had long played role of the religion of status quo, was symbolically exposed as corrupt in both a moral and concretely physiological sense. Discourse and Construction of Society draws on work in fields of history, anthropology, sociology, religious studies, classics, indology, and semiotics to demonstrate multiple uses of myth, ritual, and symbolic classification in effecting ideological persuasion and evoking sentiments that bind people to one another within distinct social groupings while separating them from others, who are thereby defined as outsiders. This wide-ranging interdisciplinary study provides challenging new insights into complex dynamics of social cohesion and change.