Ritual: A Very Short Introduction

Citation

Stephenson, B. (2015). Ritual: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press.

Chapter Summary

Like other titles in the Very Short Introductions series, the book is a pocket-sized survey: an introduction followed by seven chapters. The publisher's summary says it describes a number of specific rites while exploring ritual from theoretical and historical angles. It concentrates on the places where ritual touches everyday life, on ritual as a vehicle for forming groups and identities, on how it generates and transmits beliefs and values, on how it can be used to exploit and oppress, and on how it has served as a touchstone for thinking about cultural origins and historical change. The chapter order is unusual: biological and evolutionary approaches come first, and definitions are left until Chapter 5.

Introduction

The introduction poses the book's questions: what ritual is, whether it is useful, and what kinds of ritual there are. It casts the net wide, from religious and nonreligious rites, the traditional and the new, the prescribed and the improvised, the human and the nonhuman, to neighbouring domains such as play, games, performance and theatre. It also treats ritual as both an action and an idea "we think with", and the book moves between these two dimensions.

Chapter 1: Ritualization

The book begins with ethology, the study of animal behaviour, where ritualization means the evolutionary process by which actions become stylized signals that communicate advantageous information and emotional states. The chapter asks what this biological approach adds to the understanding of human ritual and where it falls short, and presents ritual as the point where biological and cultural being meet.

Chapter 2: Ritual and the origins of culture

If ritualization is adaptive, ritual was presumably present at the beginnings of humanity. The chapter reviews scholarly answers about its role in early cultural evolution, which the publisher's summary calls diverse and speculative: shamanic trance and the emergence of advanced cognition; the building of ritual sites as a driver of large, settled societies and of the separation of sacred and profane; and sacrifice as a mechanism for controlling violence and so as the origin of the sacred and of religious systems.

Chapter 3: Ritual and society

What ritual does socially. The chapter sets out the view, dominant in the first half of the twentieth century, that ritual binds groups together and maintains orders of meaning and value, with discussion of Émile Durkheim (solidarity and collective effervescence), Roy Rappaport and Clifford Geertz, and of ritual's role in politics, power and negotiation. It then describes the shift in the 1970s, associated with Victor Turner and others, towards ritual's critical and creative potential: rites can conserve tradition, but they can also be used strategically to bring about change.

Chapter 4: Ritual and transformation

Healing rites, funerals, magic, sacrifice, rites of inversion and rites of passage all deal in transformation. Taking ritual as practically effective rather than merely expressive, the chapter asks how it does its work. It focuses on initiation and magic, and closes with ritual criticism, Ronald Grimes's approach to evaluating, qualitatively and ethically, the changes that rituals bring about.

Chapter 5: Definitions, types, domains

Only now does the book turn to definition. It distinguishes three uses of "ritual": as a kind of action, as a cultural domain or arena in which people act and are acted upon, and as an actor in its own right. It explains the limits of definitions and separates three overlapping concepts: ritualization, rites and ritual. It also discusses the difference between religious ritual (liturgy) and political ritual, civil religion and ceremony.

Chapter 6: Ritual as performance

Across cultures, ritual typically includes music or rhythm, dance or stylized movement, and masks, costume and make-up. The chapter introduces performance theory through J. L. Austin and Richard Schechner, using the kōan tradition of Zen Buddhism to illustrate Schechner's continuum running from efficacy to entertainment. It also discusses embodiment and inscription, and what ritual action, such as pilgrimage, can teach about knowing.

Chapter 7: The fortunes of ritual

The last chapter traces the history of attitudes to ritual. It starts with the Confucian Liji (Book of Rites), in which ritual practices (li) bind society together. It moves to Enlightenment Europe, where ritual came to be seen as superstitious and outmoded, and then to the twentieth-century rehabilitation of ritual through Durkheimian functionalism and Julian Huxley's link between social ills and failed ritualization. It ends with recent theory on ritual and group solidarity, seen in contemporary festivals.

Key Concepts

Introduction and Chapters 1–2: Ritual, biology and origins

• Ritualization (ethological): the evolutionary stylization of behaviour into signals that communicate information and emotional states.
• Ritual as action and as idea: something people do, and also a concept scholars and societies think with.
• Origin theories: competing, speculative accounts that link early ritual to trance and cognition, to monumental ritual sites, or to sacrifice and violence.

Chapters 3–4: Society and transformation

• Solidarity and effervescence: Durkheim's view that shared ritual creates group cohesion and intense collective feeling.
• Ritual's critical potential: the post-1970s view, associated with Victor Turner, that rites can contest and change social order as well as preserve it.
• Efficacy: the claim that rituals really accomplish things (healing, initiation, transformation), not only express them.
• Ritual criticism: Ronald Grimes's term for assessing the quality and ethics of ritual change.

Chapters 5–7: Definitions, performance and history

• Ritualization, rites and ritual: three related but distinguishable concepts.
• Liturgy, ceremony and civil religion: religious ritual set against political and civic rites.
• Efficacy–entertainment continuum: Schechner's model placing ritual and theatre on one scale of performance.
• Li: the Confucian conception of ritual propriety as what holds society together.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• Wide in scope. Within a few chapters, the book reaches from animal behaviour and human origins to Confucian thought, Zen Buddhism, Enlightenment critique and modern festivals. It covers religious and secular, traditional and invented rites, so readers see that ritual is not confined to religion.
• Brings several disciplines into one conversation. Ethology, cultural evolution, sociology and anthropology (Durkheim, Rappaport, Geertz, Turner), ritual studies (Grimes) and performance studies (Austin, Schechner) appear side by side. This makes it a useful map of the field for students who will meet these authors separately later.
• Balanced on what ritual does. The book presents both the older view of ritual as conserving social order and the later view of ritual as critical and creative. It also attends to ritual's darker uses, the publisher noting that it shows how ritual can exploit and oppress.
• History of the concept. The final chapter's account of how ritual has been valued and devalued, from the Liji to the Enlightenment to twentieth-century functionalism, helps students see that theories of ritual are themselves products of their times.

Limitations

• Very short treatment of each theory. Each chapter covers several major theorists, so no single theory can be presented in depth. The book points towards classic works rather than replacing them.
• Definitions come late. Readers who like to begin with a working definition will find it only in Chapter 5. The publisher's own summary describes the origin theories of Chapter 2 as speculative, so the opening chapters need to be read with that caution in mind.

Where It Fits in the Course

This is the briefest overview of ritual among the course's books and a good starting point before the classic studies. Victor Turner's The Ritual Process, with its account of liminality and communitas in rites of passage, is the obvious next read after Chapters 3–4. Catherine Bell's Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice develops the idea of ritualization as a strategic form of practice and is a demanding, theoretical continuation of Chapters 1 and 5. Mary Douglas's Purity and Danger, on pollution, taboo and symbolic classification, pairs well with the discussion of ritual and social order in Chapter 3.

For the wider anthropology of religion, James Bielo's Anthropology of Religion: The Basics is another short introduction, organised around the questions researchers ask, and Stein and colleagues' The Anthropology of Religion, Magic, and Witchcraft is a fuller textbook that treats ritual alongside symbolism, healing, magic and witchcraft. Stephenson's chapter on magic and transformation connects naturally with the latter. Janet Carsten's After Kinship and David Lancy's The Anthropology of Childhood cover the kinship side of the course; rites of passage (Chapter 4) are a point of contact between the two halves.

How to Use This Book

The book suits first-year students in anthropology, religious studies or sociology, and general readers. It assumes no background and can be read in a few sittings.

A suggested approach:

• Read the Introduction and Chapter 5 together first if you want a working vocabulary (ritualization, rites, ritual; liturgy versus ceremony) before the theories, then return to Chapter 1.
• Core chapters for a course on ritual: 3 (society), 4 (transformation) and 6 (performance), which introduce the theorists most often assigned in full.
• Chapters 1–2 suit courses with an evolutionary or cognitive emphasis; Chapter 7 suits a historical or comparative one.

As you read, keep a list of the theorists named in each chapter (Durkheim, Rappaport, Geertz, Turner, Grimes, Austin, Schechner, Huxley) with a one-line summary of each position. Then follow up one or two in the original, starting with Turner. Test the book's distinctions on a ritual you know: a graduation, a wedding, a national commemoration or a sports event. Is it liturgy or ceremony? Does it conserve or transform? Where does it sit on Schechner's scale between efficacy and entertainment?