240514 SE MM3 Anthropology of ritual action (2023W)

This course introduces anthropological concepts and theories of ritual and analyzes the relationship between rituals and profane actions under four related aspects: intentional agency (Weberian perspectives), the ritual form (Durkheimian perspectives), responsibility, and language ideology. The units (lectures) consist of anthropological theory presentations by the lecturer (45 min), and student presentations with classroom discussion of case studies (45 min). Based on ethnographic case studies of prayer, sacrifice, blessings, wedding, healing, taboo, magic and divination, we shall examine the social consequences of rituals in the domains of kinship, economy, authority, ethnicity, health and well-being.

On the one hand rituals are just like other instrumental actions performed in view of achieving desired ends. On the other hand they are special (without formal equivalent) because one cannot perform such acts without accepting the concepts and social conventions entailed by the ritual order. Since it would be self-contradicting to perform a ritual while rejecting its accepted meaning, performers can be held accountable for the purported consequences of the act, even when they do not believe the outcome to have been caused by the ritual.

Ritual performers are able to act vicariously for others (on other people's behalf) because they are co-responsible for the ritual action itself or the consequences it purports to achieve. Although ritual actions are performed intentionally, one can also be held responsible for bad luck (unintended outcomes) as well as for the ritual actions of others (collective responsibility). An important consideration is that ritual accountability is central to the constitution of personhood as it socially expands or distributes individual agency in groups.

This idea of collective or socially distributed responsibility contrasts with practice-theoretical approaches that oppose intentional actions and social constraints, free will and causal determination of action. It also sheds light on the so-called rationality problem. Why do 'apparently irrational beliefs' persist alongside rational ones? How can ritual actions pursue economic or political goals, when the means/end relationship between action and effect is not fully evident to the ritual agents and participants? What conceptual entailments and formal structures in a ritual determine how the performers are able to act on their own and others' behalf?

Following the rationality debate of the 1970s, the study of ritual has been influenced by practice theory and, more recently, by the ontological and ethical turns in anthropology. An important discussion topic concerns the role of language in ritual performances, and of ritual as meta-linguistic means of communication. It has been argued for example that rituals eliminate falsehood and ambiguity by making basic assumptions or social conventions indisputable, and that religious ideas result from ritual speech acts. How this plays out in specific cases depends on social structure and language ideology.

In modern individualist societies ritual communication is redundant if ordinary speech and formal legal acts are understood to express speakers' intentions truthfully. Traditional societies by contrast need ritual discourse to the extent that they might distrust the sincerity of ordinary speech. Ritual efficacy is an alternative to linguistic performativity (how to do things with words), because ritual performances (or reactive attitudes to purported effects of such) commit the participants to accepted social roles, conventions, and religious concepts.