Ritual Character Research Articles

Why is the Special Eating Special? : To Reflect on the Ritual Character of Christian Practice through the Debates over the Eucharist

Christianity is the religion of practice. Even though the elements of the practice and the actual performances vary by cultural and denominational traditions, it is undeniable that Christianity is a system of ought to do. In the face of the crisis of the COVID-19 that results in the hardship of keeping religious practices in the ways that church members have been used to, many churches try to develop new tools for their members' practice of faith. This process is always followed by the division between essential and nonessential. We may ask, "which element should be contained in the new way of worshipping?" In this regard, the writer looks into the Eucharst, one of the most primary Christian ritual. Most Christians, if not all, believe that the Eucharist was enacted by the Lord Christ. However, even the most important ritual has been differently taken by most Christians in theory as well as in practice. This paper skims through the historical debates over the Eucharist. "Why is the special eating special? How is this special as well as non-special piece of bread the body of Christ? What is the actual meaning of eating the body of Christ?" The answers raised by Paschasius Radbertus, Ratramnus Monk of Corbie, Martin Luther, the Council of Trent, Anabaptists, and John Calvin are all different. Radbertus argues that the bread is the historical body of Jesus. Ratramnus argues that the bread is mystical body of Jesus. Luther argues that the special eating performed by the individuals in faith is the authentic way of receiving divine grace. The Council of Trent argues that the special eating offered by the Church is the authentic way of receiving the divine grace. According to Anabaptists, the special eating is helpful for evoking one's own faith. According to Calvin, the special eating is helpful for leading the participants to Christ. Despite all the warring opinions, these arguments reveal Christians' seriousness of practicing their faith. The implicit faith, also supported theoretically by John Zizioulas, is that human beings are realized through the continuos event of communion. Thus, in the crises of Christian practice during the COVID-19, churches should be aware that human beings are always ritual beings regardless of circumstances. It is more important than prioritizing the elements of worship service or sorting out the essential Christian practices in order to adapt the church to the changing situation.

조선왕실 문희묘(文禧廟) 의례의 형성과 특징

조선왕실 문희묘(文禧廟) 의례의 형성과 특징

The early Bronze Age feature from Wilczyce, site 10, Sandomierz district – An interpretation of its functioning in light of multidimensional analysis

The aim of this paper is to present the multidimensional characteristics of the feature number 4 at the site in Wilczyce located on the Sandomierz Upland. During exploration of the pit rich flint material, fragments of pottery vessels and animal bones were found and just above the bottom a “deposit” involved a human skull of the young female, two cattle mandibles, a sheep/goat tibia and astragalus, a damaged cattle scapula and radius, and a polishing stone were deposited. The C14 date obtained from the tooth from the cattle jaw was 3790 ± 35 BP. Based on the shape and the size of discovered feature it is possible to classify it as a typical storage pit but presence of “deposit” enable to postulate a ritual character of assemblage that reflect some kind of burial practices of the Mierzanowice culture. Rituals in the form of interring the dead or parts of their bodies can be found also in the Unietice culture so such features may indicate the emergence of a certain supra- -regional and cross-cultural trend in the early Bronze Age.

Combustion structures between the Neolithic and Bronze Age in Eastern Sicily

The paper deals with the study of firing structures of different sites present in the territory between Etna and the Catania Plain. We have analyzed both sites with a prevalent ritual character and settlements and we have presented different types of structures: hearths, firing pits, burning plates, stone platforms and ovens. In the case of settlements, for each type of structure, we tried to define, where possible, the function and the relationship with the other structures of the settlement.

Constitutional Piety: The Integration of Anti-Corruption Education into Islamic Religious Learning Based on Neuroscience

Abstract. The new phenomenon of corruption cases that ensnared Islamic religious leaders in Indonesia indicates that so far Islamic education in Indonesia has not taught anti-corruption. As a result, religious leaders only have ritual and social piety, but do not yet have constitutional piety. From a neuroscience perspective, Corruptor's brain is basically normal but not healthy. The purpose of this study is to find a conceptual model of the integration of anti-corruption education in neuroscience-based Islamic religious learning to develop character constitutional piety. The research approach used is qualitative method in the form of Creswell model library research. Data sources are obtained from literature in the field of Islamic education, anti-corruption, and neurosciences. The Sugiyono model was performed to collect the data, namely by searching related literature, both manually and digitally. The data were then analyzed using Moleong’s content analysis. The results showed that the character of constitutional piety could be developed in students through anti-corruption education integrated with neuroscience-based Islamic religious learning. Seven forms of corruption (detrimental to the state, bribery, embezzlement, extortion, cheating, conflict of interest and gratification) are examined in perspective of jinayah jurisprudence and or anti-corruption jurisprudence (al- ghûl, riswah, khiyanat, ghasbah) then formally configured. The anticorruption education model in Islamic religious learning based on neuroscience has the potential to develop the character of ritual, social and constitutional piety integrally.Keywords. Islamic Education; Anti-corruption; Neuroscience; Ritual Piety; Social and Constitutional.

Animales y ritualidad en el mundo inka. Un caso de estudio en el sitio arqueológico El Shincal de Quimivil (Londres, Catamarca).

El objetivo del presente trabajo es presentar los resultados del análisis del conjunto arqueofaunístico recuperado del Recinto 62 del Complejo 17 del sitio El Shincal de Quimivil (período inka con breve ocupación durante el hispano-indígena), a través de una perspectiva que destaca las posibles relaciones que se forjaron entre personas humanas y no humanas (Hallowell 1960). Este análisis pretende discutir dichos resultados relacionándolos con prácticas de uso y consumo en un contexto ritual. Las múltiples investigaciones realizadas en el sitio, permiten interpretarlo como un centro de importancia política y administrativa en la estructura del Tawantinsuyu (Raffino 2004), donde se celebraban importantes fiestas y ceremonias del calendario oficial. En las mismas se compartían abundantes cantidades de comidas y bebidas entre diversas comunidades (Giovannetti 2009, Giovannetti et al. 2012). Aquí, los restos faunísticos juegan un importante papel para la interpretación de las prácticas de comensalismo (Bray 2012). Los resultados zooarqueológicos obtenidos contribuyen a la discusión acerca del uso y consumo de animales en el pasado inkaico, específicamente en aquellos eventos que exceden la cotidianeidad. Su articulación con el análisis de otros elementos (cerámica, rasgos arquitectónicos y restos arqueobotánicos), junto a su disposición espacial, ha permitido destacar el carácter ritual del contexto.

Religion: costs, signals, and the Neolithic transition

ABSTRACT This paper extends the picture developed in Religion Re-Explained (Sterelny, 2018) to groups in transition from egalitarian to inegalitarian social environments, “big men” societies and their archaeological equivalents. It begins by giving a more nuanced account of the relationship between signals, rituals, and costs, showing that the costly signaling model of religion is best seen as a family of models. These vary in the extent to which they scale from smaller to larger social worlds. Some are scale-independent; others can be scaled up, but only by overcoming increasingly difficult signal broadcast problems; one is an intrinsically small scale intimate social world model. These issues of scalability are then integrated with transformations in the character and function of ritual and belief, as ritual becomes an instrument for competitive interactions within and across groups, and an expression of unequal status and power, while also retaining in important ways earlier roles of mediating social cohesion. Changes in ritual were both a mechanism and an expression of the shift to a less equal social world.

‘A Portrait of Lower Silesia’: Researching identity through collodion photography and memory narratives

In this article, I discuss a performance arts–based visual methodology based on the use of the archaic wet collodion photography. The collaboration between Street Collodion Art photography collective and myself, as a researcher, had two aims: to generate a large scale photographic and narrative portrait of Lower Silesia in Poland, and to explore identities in the region where nearly all of its inhabitants represent recent migrant populations. Data generated through this project include collodion portraits, their interpretations and narratives collected through unstructured interviews. Initial data analysis has generated identity narratives linked to work, place and belonging and ethnicity/nationality. In addition, in 2016 and 2017, three exhibitions of the portraits and a selection of edited stories took place in Lubin, Legnica and Wrocław attended by local inhabitants, including project participants. The examination of the arts-based methodology finds that the ritual character of the wet collodion photographic encounter has acted as a form of artistic intervention which, in generating memory narratives, enabled an articulation of social identities in the climate dominated by nationalist discourses. Such symbolic work emerging out of the project reveals a critical potential in the collaboration between the arts and social research. Furthermore, the project has shown that despite different traditions of practice, a collaboration between the artists and social researchers can yield rich data and access participants in ways that conventional methodologies cannot.

Relational Ritual Politeness and Self-display in Historical Chinese Letters*

This paper delivers an interdisciplinary approach to historical Chinese epistolary data, by examining the language and style of historical Chinese letters from the perspective of linguistic pragmatics, historical politeness research and relational ritual theory. It argues that various discursive characteristics of Chinese epistles, which previous Sinological research has identified, may be systematically modelled if one approaches historical Chinese letter writing as a ritual practice. Language use in historical Chinese letters tends to have a strongly ritual character, due to two reasons. First, Chinese epistles represent interpersonal interaction in a sociocultural context that triggered intensive ritual politeness. Second, many literati regarded letter writing as an activity of fine art by means of which one could ritually display one’s epistolary skill. Owing to this, the language of historical Chinese epistles features a duality of (1) other-oriented ritual politeness and (2) self-oriented ritual display. The present paper examines this duality by setting up an analytic model, and by investigating a renowned corpus of Qing Dynasty letters, Xuehongxuan chidu 雪鴻軒尺牘 (Letters from Snow Swan Retreat).

Linguistic violence and the “body to come”: The performativity of hate speech in J. Derrida and J. Butler

AbstractThis text analyzes the question of linguistic violence in J. Derrida and in J. Butler and shows how this question implies a consideration of the relation between language and body. The starting point is Derrida’s critic of Austin’s theory of speech acts. Through this critic Derrida establishes a relation between speech acts and writing. This connection brings to the fore the importance of the iterability as a structural feature of speech acts. The iterability becomes fundamental in Butler’s analysis of hate speech in Excitable Speech. In this book the iterability is interpreted as the ritual character of the hate speech, which reveals its political dimension. Comparing Butler and Derrida’s ideas of speech act, I try in this text to make emerge the idea of a textual body as the possibility of the resistance to the linguistic violence.

EARLY TRYPILLIAN SANCTUARY AT SABATYNIVKA II. PROBLEM OF INTERPRETATION OF TRYPILLIAN BUILDING REMAINS

The remains of three burnt mud houses and one depression were investigated at Trypillia A site Sabatynivka II. Particular interest in this explorations was attracted by findings related to the sacred practice, namely by famous M. L. Makarevych’s reconstruction of the dwelling 3 as a sanctuary. During the last 50 years, the graphic reconstruction of this object was used many times by different authors without a slightest attempt of its verification.
 The article analyzes the data for the reconstruction of the sanctuary at the early settlement of Sabitatynivka II in the Kirovohrad region.
 The analysis of field documentation and the description of the excavation of dwelling 3 in Sabatynivka II from all available sources reveals some inconsistencies in the real object and details reconstructed by various researchers. The fact that the object is partially destroyed by the late trench makes it difficult to reconstruct and interpret it. Turning to the possible reconstruction of this building, the obvious traces of the ritual fire in which the building died should be noted. The obtained data suggest that the dwelling 3 was a rectangular adobe two-storey building. Most of the items found during excavations, including numerous figurines, are connected to the second floor. The ritual character of the fire is indicated by the inventory placed in the house before burning. However, there are no grounds for the reconstruction of the furnace, the elevation-altar and clay chair, as well as the «ritual of baking bread» in this house.

Ritual, Reform and Resistance in the Schoolified University - On the dangers of faith in education and the pleasures of pretending to taking it seriously

Why is there such a striking discrepancy between the flexibility, democracy and empowerment that the Bologna process aims for, and the superficial educational activities that it actually results in? Our answer is based on the ritual theory of the American anthropologist Roy Rappaport and the psychoanalytical framework of the Austrian philosopher Robert Pfaller. Interpreting schoolified education as a ritual, we argue that both the reform initiative and its ensuing educational activities should be interpreted as mainly productive of a certain appearance, of compliance with prominent norms of modern society: the norms are articulated in policy documents and enacted in educational activity. We take schoolified education to be a normal ritual, in that this appearance is accepted ‘as if’ it corresponded with reality, while at the same time most people are aware (in a certain sense) of its superficial and ritualistic character. A twist, however, is added by the fact that modern society is distinctly anti-ritualistic, and therefore constantly tries to make education work ‘for real’. Drawing on Pfaller’s distinction between belief and faith, we show that this pursuit of de-ritualisation actually makes education progressively more formalised and coercive.

„Stierkampf in Bayonne“ – Corrida in Lissabon

Abstract Two bold descriptions of bullfighting in German literature – a section of Kurt Tucholsky’s Ein Pyrenäenbuch and the final episode of Thomas Mann’s Bekenntnisse des Hochstaplers Felix Krull – can be read in the context of French authors who (about the 1920 s and 1930s) were fascinated by the corrida and the idea of abject sacredness and transgres­sion. The comparison of striking motives (e. g., the art of the matador, the suffer­ing of the horses) reveals how literary texts reflect the ritual character of bullfighting, represent its disgusting aspects, and deal with the taurobolic “scandalon” of death and eros. Whereas Tucholsky encounters a trivial spectacle and nevertheless feels the attrac­tion of violence, Thomas Mann’s narrator is confronted with mythic thought (Mithras) and Dionysiac excess.

A Philip III Tetradrachm Die Pair Recycled by Seleukos I

A newly identified Alexandrine tetradrachm type struck from a recycled pair of Philip III dies, recut to include the anchor insignia and name of Seleukos, is to be added to the corpus of Babylonia Uncertain Mint 6A (Opis). It represents a new series in the mint’s output, Series V(a), that is closely allied to, but preceding Series V in the name of Seleukos. It is distinguished from the latter by the presence of the anchor symbol and the archaized depiction of Zeus. It precedes the decision to eliminate the anchor insignia from coinage of Uncertain Mint 6A and thus must be amongst the first, if not the first coin type to bear the name of Seleukos, die linked as it is to the last of the issues in the name Philip III Arrhidaios, the last of the Macedonian pure blood Argead line. Considered in the context of other die links between different series in the corpus of Babylonian Uncertain Mint 6A, this die link has a ritual character, in effect a numismatic statement of the legitimacy of Seleukos as the successor to Philip III Arrhidaios.

«FAVORITE TRAM» IN SATIRICAL WORKS BY M. ZOSHCHENKO, I. ILF AND E. PETROV

The theme of the article is relevant, because at present there is a new understanding of the national literature of the 1920-ies-1930-ies: there are articles and monographs devoted to the works by V. Kataev, M. Zoshchenko, I. Ilf and E. Petrov and demonstrating a radically different approach to the texts by Soviet writers. The scientific novelty of the topic lies in the fact that the topos indicated in the title did not become the subject of consideration in literary articles and monographs before.The purpose is: to restore the meanings generated by the studied topos. The objectives of the article are: a) to correlate the tram topos with the corresponding fragment of real space; b) to list the values and connotations associated with the tram topos; c) to formulate the functions of the characters in the context of the tram topos. The article uses the method of semiotic analysis of literary text. In addition to the texts by M. Zoshchenko, I. Ilf and E. Petrov, the fragments of the works by B. Pasternak, D. Kharms, M. Bulgakov, and folklore sources are analyzed. In theoretical terms, the article is based on the research by V. Propp, V. Prokofieva, A. Zholkovsky.The following conclusions were made in the article: the topos of the tram creates the meanings of ceremonial and ritual character (this refers to initiation rites and funerals). Initiation is directly related to the communal/collective body, a part of which a soviet individual must become. Death appears to be a punishment prepared for the character who failed to pass a series of ritual tests. Thus, the study of such topos, correlating with fragments of real space, seems promising for consideration of the Russian literature of the 1920-ies-1930-ies and its history. In this regard, the topos of the communal apartment and of the soviet bureaucratic institution are of interest, as they largely determined the genesis and development of the soviet mythology.

Bulgarian Ritual Kinship (Kumstvo)

Among the Orthodox Christians on the Balkans, the rituals of Christian baptism and marriage traditionally give rise to ritual kinship relationships, not only among individuals but also among family groups that were until then unrelated. Only among Bulgarians, Serbians, and Macedonians, these relationships are carried on hereditarily and are constructed according to the patrilineal kinship model. The godfather’s role ( kumstvo) is inherited as symbolic capital by the family-kin groups of both the godparents and the godchildren. These are relations of symbolic inequality and have a ritual character: both the calendar feast cycle and the lifecycle rituals are marked by symbolic rights and obligations, which are still observed until the present day in most Bulgarian families, for example, mandatory gift exchange. The belief in the power of the godparent’s curse is still alive today in a number of regions in Bulgaria. On the other hand, the godparent tradition among Bulgarians acquired new meaning and new dimensions during the decades of socialism and postsocialist transition. During the last two or three decades, the godparent relationship has become a way of building new social networks, often of a clientelist nature. More and more often, ritual kinship relations are used for benefits and hierarchical ascent, similarly to nepotism. This process leads to the reformation of social networks—it still functions as social capital, but to each new generation. Every new family chooses different godparents, thus creating new social networks. Research about godparent relations among Bulgarians and, more generally, on the Balkans, is based on both existing studies on the subject and on the author’s personal fieldwork research in Bulgaria.

The Ritual Character of the Brand: the Challenge of the New Spaces between Consumerism and Religion

In a world where everything is connected even realms which seem remote can be close. The ways of commerce and religion have always crossed, but recently one can speak, at least, about mutual inspiration. To deal with this complex, but fascinating and highly relevant phenomenon it is good to find some categories which make a comparison possible. One of them is rite, whose importance in modern branding is growing. The fact that a sense of community and relations construct both good brands and profound religious experience seems to open up new horizons in a dialogue between economics and religion.

TIC Y EDUCACIÓN. Creación de mundos narrativos transmediáticos en procesos de aprendizaje

¿Para qué sirve la transmedia en la educación? entre muchas otras cosas para volver a poner la literatura en el centro del salón de clases, para invitar a docentes y estudiantes a soñar, hablar y vivir en una interacción creativa. Vivir una experiencia transmedia es imaginar un mundo narrativo, vivir una historia, navegar por un universo conceptual de manera auténtica. La transmedia borra límites, fluye entre la realidad y la ficción, lo análogo y lo digital. Los salones de clase deben ser nichos que permitan al ecosistema educativo la emergencia de la vida. En la diversidad del aula se tiene una fuente de creatividad, juego y risa. En ese sentido su carácter teatral y ritual, pasa por desentronizar las tecnologías y resaltar la simplicidad de las historias. En este artículo se presentan los resultados del proyecto adelantado por el grupo de investigación y experimentación Madeja, que indaga por los usos de las narrativas transmedia en los procesos de enseñanza y aprendizaje, para desarrollar competencias comunicativas en los estudiantes de educación superior.

Historical Cultural Value and Ritual Character of Jinminsa Shrine in Uiseong

Historical Cultural Value and Ritual Character of Jinminsa Shrine in Uiseong

The Vös’as’, the Udmurt sacrificial priest: an old task for young men

In the Udmurt diaspora of Northern Bashkortostan, the Udmurt traditional religion is very much alive; it is part of the villagers’ everyday life. Rituals are regularly held both at the village level and at a wider community, composed of several villages, and they involve the whole population. This article focuses on the key character of Udmurt ritual: the sacrificial priest, called vös’as’, and attempts to sketch a pattern of function performing and transmission, taking into account the lightly different practice in two local groups of villages. Further on it reflects on its historical perspective, in a Finno-Ugric context in which often practice of ethnic religions is seen and/or used as a marker for ethnicity.