Ritual and Belief

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Ritual and Belief
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What is Belief?

• powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and
  motivations in people
• conceptions of a general order of existence
• auras of factuality
• moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic

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Clifford Geertz on Religion

• a religion is "(1) a system of symbols which
  acts to (2) establish powerful, pervasive, and
  long-lasting moods and motivations in people by
  (3) formulating conceptions of a general order of
  existence and (4) clothing these conceptions with
  such an aura of factuality that (5) the moods and
  motivations seem uniquely realistic." (Geertz90)

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Psych Anthro and the Study of Emotion

• patterns of affect how people feel about
  themselves and others
• Emotion as cultural construct
• emotional feeling is structured by particular
  cultural systems and particular social and
  material environments
• emotions are appraisals, judgments based on
  cultural beliefs and values
• emotions involve the self in relationships to
  others
• emotions are learned or acquired rather than
  naturally given

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Ritual (Practice) and Belief Geertz

• belief practice - "a group's ethos is rendered
  intellectually reasonable by being shown to
  represent a way of life ... rendered emotionally
  convincing by being presented as an image of the
  actual state of affairs...

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What does religion do?
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functional, psychological explanations

• satisfy cognitive affective/emotional demands
  for a stable, comprehensible, and coercible world
  for the individual
• provides an orderly model of the universe
• explains the unknown
• reduces anxiety and fear
• enabling the individual to maintain an inner
  security in the face of natural contingency

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social, structural explanations

• sets precedents for appropriate behavior
• sanctions conduct
• a form of social control
• justifies perpetuates a social order
• maintains social solidarity
• educates believers in social knowledge
• provides a sense of control and a source of
  solace
• alleviation of grief

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i.e. witchcraft accusations

• accusations provide a socially proscribed way to
  deal with these problems
• allows for public hearing
• entire complex of social relationships
  investigated
• effects for the community of witchcraft
  accusations
• evil outsider ? community solidarity
• evil insider ? necessary societal realignment

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religion and worldview

• sacred symbols function to synthesize a people's
  ethos
• the distinguishing character, sentiment, moral
  nature, or guiding beliefs of a person, group,
  institution
• a basic congruence between a particular style of
  life and a specific metaphysic/cosmology
• encompassing pictures of reality based on a set
  of shared assumptions about how the world works

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Religion and society

• belief ritual reinforce social ties between
  people
• religion (ritual spirituality) represents one
  form of collective consciousness
• Durkheim shared representations that form the
  basis for religion

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Religion and social structure

• Geertz "the way in which the social structure of
  a group is strengthened perpetuated through the
  ritualistic or mythic symbolization of the
  underlying social values upon which it rests."

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Ritual

• ritual is a vital element in the processes that
  make and remake social facts and collective
  identities everywhere (Comaroff Comaroff)
• the symbolic behavior through which religion
  comes alive

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ritual is repetitive, sequential, non-ordinary,
and powerful

• repetitive innovation not tolerated
• sequential amen is at the end
• non-ordinary marked in time or space
• powerful power to change the world
• by intervention of supernatural entities
• transformation of the participant

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Functions of ritual

• Reinforce social bonds
• Relieve social tension
• Deal with life crises
• Celebrate life cycle events
• ritual is also a way a society remembers
• through habit
• through bodily practices

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Types of ritual
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Rites of Passage

• Van Gennep and Victor Turner
• rites include three stages
• Separation
• marginality or liminality
• Communitas and anti-structure
• incorporation or re-aggregation

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Other Types of Ritual

• Rites of intensification
• cyclical rituals that reinforce the solidarity of
  the group
• ritual inversion
• Divination rituals
• predict future gain hidden info
• Technological rituals
• designed to control nature for the purpose of
  human exploitation
• Protective rites
• aimed at coping with uncertainty of nature, seas,
  floods, crop diseases

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More Types

• therapy anti-therapy rituals
• designed to control human health curative,
  witchcraft, sorcery
• ideological rituals
• intended to control the behavior, mood,
  sentiments values of groups for the sake of
  community as a whole
• salvation rituals
• aimed at repairing self esteem other forms of
  impaired identity

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Violence as ritual practice?

• Violence, its forms and controls, is fundamental
  to human social existence and is central to
  theories regarding the nature of society.
• Violence as cultural expression and/or
  performance
• Scripted
• From anthropology of identity (pol. org.) to
  experience, emotive forces, bodily practices
• A discursive practice with rituals and symbols
• Violence as cultural practice
• Not just instrumental
• A way of affirming and subverting culture