Thirteen Ways of Looking at a 'Ritual'
Ritual' has long been a key concept in anthropology and many rituals' have been identified, described, and interpreted. In most cases, those interpretations have been generated and presented by anthropologists. Occasionally, however, the interpretations of participants themselves are pre...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Carfax Publ.
[2005]
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| In: |
Journal of contemporary religion
Year: 2005, Volume: 20, Issue: 3, Pages: 323-342 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (Resolving-System) |
| Summary: | Ritual' has long been a key concept in anthropology and many rituals' have been identified, described, and interpreted. In most cases, those interpretations have been generated and presented by anthropologists. Occasionally, however, the interpretations of participants themselves are presented and can be equally multifarious. These sets of ways of looking at ritual' may or may not overlap. In this paper, I present thirteen ways of looking at one particular ritual'—the (British) Quaker meeting for worship—and suggest that ways of looking are sometimes shared by academics and adepts. I conclude from this, firstly, that we are likely to produce an impoverished understanding of social phenomena when we ignore the interpretations of protagonists and, secondly, that to eschew a multivocal appreciation of ritual' will result in an unnecessarily crude representation of social life. |
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| ISSN: | 1469-9419 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Journal of contemporary religion
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1080/13537900500249855 |