Ritual Categories Research Articles

The Syntactic Roles of Touch in Shared Festivals in Kerala: Towards an Analysis of Ritual Categories

The following discussion of touch as a syntactic-semantic unit in ritual structures is based on an analogy of ritual and language postulating a 'deep structure' or a 'universal grammar' for rituals as presented by Frits Staal, Axel Michaels, and Naphtali Meshel. Following E. Thomas Lawson and Robert N. McCauley in their cognitive approach to ritual competence and in identifying actions as building blocks in ritual structures, I propose an analysis of ritual events as a category with distinctive semantic and syntactic properties and within the framework of ritual communication and ritual competence. I extend Martina Wiltschko’s universal spine hypothesis for linguistic categories to the language-ritual analogy in the domains of semantics and syntax. The viability of this analytical framework is demonstrated by categorizing touching events in rituals in shared festivals in Kerala. I conclude the discussion by hypothesizing universal categories for ritual events and entities, and universal structural patterns partially analogous (perhaps even homologous) to categories and patterns used in Wiltschko’s universal spine hypothesis.

“What Sacrifices Are Necessary”: The Corruption of Ritual Paradigms in Euripides’s Electra

This diachronic exploration of Euripides’s Electra seeks to demonstrate that the play’s systematic deviation from normative ritual categories and experiences supplies a dramatic world congruent with the transgressive, divinely ordained violence undertaken by Orestes and Electra. Apollo’s punitive intervention, it is argued, comes after and strategically reinforces the miasma initiated by Agamemnon’s murder, and in this way the god models his retribution upon an existing pattern of Atreid transgression.

Rituals in Unmarried Couple Relationships: An Exploratory Study

This study provides an understanding of rituals enacted in unmarried couple relationships. One hundred and twenty-nine individuals involved in unmarried relationships reported on their rituals in an online, open-ended questionnaire. A typology of 16 ritual types was developed. Twelve of the rituals have been shown to be common in marital relationships. Four new ritual categories, unique to unmarried relationships, emerged from the data. The new categories were gift-giving, helping each other/being supportive, future planning/daydreaming about the future, and family involvement. Implications for future research on couple rituals are suggested.

"Modern language" or "spin"? Nursing, "newspeak" and organizational culture: new health scriptures.

A new managerial language of modernization has accompanied political restructuring of the National Health Service. Corporate goals of efficiency and audit have been integrated with the ideological manifesto of New Labour in stressing citizenship, inclusion and empowerment. Drawing on the theoretical insights of anthropology and sociology, this article critically reviews the relationship between health policy, organizational culture and nursing practise through an exploration of language in terms of "rhetoric", "jargon" and "metaphor". It is suggested that beyond the bewildering vocabulary of "buzz words" is a fundamental contradiction between the ethic of caring and the expectations of Government. Finally thought is given to the role of professional education and training where intellectual engagement with the ritual categories of "newspeak" is a subversive act.

La cultura de la homosexualidad: lecciones desde los ritos de «pasaje»

In his seminal work, The Rites of Passage, Arnold van Gennep (1960) described three categories of rituals with successive and distinct moments in ritual time: separation, margin and aggregation. Found in all societies, these rites accompany every change of place, state, social position and age. These rites indicate and constitute transitions between relatively fixed or stable conditions or state (Turner, 1964). The life of an individual in any society according to van Gennep is a series of passages from one state to another i.e. age, occupation. Progression from one group to another are enveloped in ceremonies whose essential purpose is to enable the individual to pass from one defined position to another which is equally well-defined. Since the goal is essentially the same, the rituals of progression share similarities in the sense that they possess the same beginnings and ends. Human life, for instance, is made up of succession of predictable stages from birth, puberty, marriage, parenthood, occupational achievement and death.

Mental Disorders and Traditional Healing Systems Among the Dogon (Mali, West Africa)

Based on research at the Regional Center of Traditional Medi cine of Bandiagara (Mali), this paper outlines characteristics of the Dogon systems of traditional health care, with particu lar reference to mental disorders. After considering the characteristics of some therapeutic figures (diviners, healers, etc.) and discussing the major nosologic categories inherent in mental disorders, the role of a complementary (semantic, hermeneutic) approach is emphasized together with the need to correlate the use and social significance of nosologic and therapeutic ritual categories with present cultural changes.

Activación neutrónica en el estudio de la producción local de la cerámica ritual en el sitio moche, Perú

Neutron activation analysis and local production of ritual ceramics at the Moche site, Peru With the Moche civilization, ceramic production reached a high level of specialization but few aspects have been detailed. The discovery of an important ceramic workshop associated with the Moche Site's Huaca de La Luna offers a unique opportunity to verify the production of ceramics with the local clay source. To determine the chemical composition of the ceramic products, neutron activation analysis has been used. The results confirm the local production of figurines as well as the tight control over the production of different categories of ritual vessels. However, control over the production of domestic vessels may have been looser and based on a procurement system at the regional level, while that for the ritual categories may have been under the direct control of the ruling class at the presumed capital of the first state on the north coast of Peru.

Ritualstruktur og ritualklassifikation

The purpose of this article has been to evaluate some major contributions in the study of ritual in order to reach some strategy, according to which it will be possible to describe and classify the different categories of rituals. It is suggested that the description of the structure must include both the horizontal structure as investigated by van Gennep and the vertical including the opposition between liminal and non-liminal ritual space, as this has been outlined by Victor Turner. As to the classification it is proposed that the only structural criteria to match the functional division of rites of passage, calendrical rites and crisis rites is the relation between the quality of the level of the initial and the final phases.

El matrimonio y la autoconstrucción de alianzas en Sarhua (Ayacucho, Perú)

This article analyzes the marriage ritual in the community of Sarhua in the Rio Pampas area of Ayacucho. Focusing on the social and ritual categories involved in the ceremony, it is argued that the election of these categories, elucidates the fundamental structure through which alliances are created. This structure implies that the basic units of marriage exchange are composed of two groups of sisters. This case presents a counter-example to the prevailing anthropological paradigm that holds that these interchanging groups (wife-givers and wife-takers) are universally composed of genealogically related males.