The Anthropology of Ritual

optional courses

This course analyzes the general scope of the anthropology of ritual, its main theories, approaches, and methodologies.

The course aims to provide students with an in-depth view of the different anthropological theories of ritual, major ethnographic topics, definitional problems, and significant authors. The objective is to give students the tools to reflect critically on the importance of rituals in culture and how to approach them methodologically. The course stresses a view that conceives rituals as creating worlds that help people define and change their lives meaningfully.

Archetti, Eduardo and Noel Dyck (eds). 2003. Sports, Dance and Embodied Identities, Oxford, New York, Berg.

Bloch, Maurice. 1992. Prey into Hunter. The Politics of Religious Experience. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Bloch, Maurice. 2006. “Deference” in J. Kreinath, J. Snoek, and M. Stausberg (eds.) Theorizing Rituals; Issues, Topics, Approaches, Concepts. Leiden & Boston, Brill Academic Publishers. Pp.495-506.

Durkheim, Émile. 1995. The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. London: The Free Press.

Girard, René. 1979. Violence and the Sacred. Baltimore and London: The John Hopkins University Press.

González Varela, Sergio. 2013. “Mandinga: Power and Deception in Afro-Brazilian Capoeira” in Social Analysis: The Internacional Journal of Social and Cultural Practice. Vol. 57 (2): pp. 1-20.

Goody, Jack. 1961. “Religion and Ritual: The Definitional Problem,” in British Journal of Sociology 12 Pp.142-64.

Grimes, Ronald. 2000. Deeply into the Bone: Re-Inventing Rites of Passage. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Grimes, Ronald. 2006. Rites out of Place: Ritual, Media, and the Arts. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Grotowski, Jerzy. 2002. Towards a Poor Theatre. Edited by Eugenio Barba. Preface by Peter Brook. New York: Routledge.

Handelman, Don. 2005. ” Introduction: Why Ritual in Its Own Right? How So?” in Lindquist, Galina (eds). Ritual in its own right. Exploring the dynamics of transformation. Oxford: Berghahn Books. Pp. 1-34.

Handelman, Don. 2006. “Conceptual Alternatives to ‘Ritual’” in J. Kreinath, J. Snoek, and M. Stausberg (eds.) Theorizing Rituals; Issues, Topics, Approaches, Concepts. Leiden & Boston: Brill Academic Publishers. Pp. 37-49.

Holbraad, Martin. 2008. “Definitive Evidence, From Cuban Gods,” in Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (NS) S93-S109.

Huntington, Richard, and Metcalf, Peter (eds.). Celebrations of Death. The Anthropology of Mortuary Ritual. London: Cambridge University Press.

Hüsken, Ute (ed.). 2007. When Rituals Go Wrong: Mistakes, Failure, and the Dynamics of Ritual, Leiden/Boston: Brill.

Kapferer, Bruce. 2006. “Virtuality” in J. Kreinath, J. Snoek, and M. Stausberg (eds.) Theorizing Rituals; Issues, Topics, Approaches, Concepts, Leiden & Boston, Brill Academic Publishers. Pp. 671-684.

Kapferer, Bruce. 2007. “Sorcery and the Beautiful; A Discourse on the Esthetics of Ritual,” in Angela Hobart and Bruce Kapferer Aesthetics in Performance; Formation of Symbolic Construction and Experience. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books. Pp. 129- 160.

Lewis, James, and Hammer, Olav (eds). 2007. The Invention of Sacred Traditions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Napier, David. 1992. Foreign Bodies: Performance, Art and Symbolic Anthropology. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Rapapport, Roy. 1979. “The Obvious Aspects of Ritual,” in Ecology Meaning and Religion. Richmond, California: North Atlantic Books. Pp. 173-222.

Schechner, Richard. 1985. Between Theatre and Anthropology, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Schieffelin, Edward. 1995. “On Failure and Performance,” in Laderman, C., and Roseman, M. (eds.) The Performance of Healing, New York: Routledge, 59-90.

Snoek, Jan. 2006. “Defining ‘Rituals’” in J. Kreinath, J. Snoek, and M. Stausberg (eds.) Theorizing Rituals; Issues, Topics, Approaches, Concepts. Leiden & Boston: Brill Academic Publishers. Pp. 3- 14.

Turner, Edith. 2012. Communitas. The Anthropology of Collective Joy. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Turner, Victor. 1969. The Ritual Process. Structure and Anti-Structure. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Turner, Victor. 1982. From Ritual to Theatre. The Human Seriousness of Play. New York: Paj Publications.

Wagner, Roy. 1984. “Ritual as Communication: Order, Meaning, and Secrecy in Melanesian Initiation Rites”, Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol. 13, pp. 143-155.

At the end of the course, students will identify the main anthropological approaches to studying rituals. They will learn how to describe rituals ethnographically and will

know the different methodologies to do so. Students will assess the importance of ritual practice in society and its most relevant topics, like aesthetics, violence, cosmology, rites de passage, and the relationship with theater, performance, and art.

A final take-home exam about the course topics, with a value of 60%.

Participation in class and exposition of a relevant theme: 40%

Attendance is mandatory