Finding the divine in the bovine

This posting on Savage Minds commented on the state of ritual theory in anthropology in response to this posting on Open Anthropology about the ritual slaughter of a cow at the World Cup in South Africa:

Animal slaughter is a ritual among local tribal groups to call on ancestors to bless an occasion. Some 2,000 people attended Tuesday’s ceremony, many wearing traditional animal skins.

Maseko said the ceremony was meant to cover all the World Cup’s 10 stadiums, including Johannesburg’s second stadium Ellis Park, where 43 fans died in a stampede at a local derby in 2001, the country’s worst soccer disaster.

“The spirits of those people are hanging over all of the stadiums. We need to cleanse those spirits,” she said.

I confess that I am just too untheoretical to follow precisely what the comments on Open Anthropology were all about. I think not only that ritual is significant in our lives (as I am certain that the Open Anthropology bloggers would agree), but also that anthropological analysis of ritual is insightful and inspiring (as the Savage Mind blogger suggests):

Arnold Van Gennep originally published The Rites of Passage in 1903. He was not the first, or last, anthropologist to note the importance and meaning of ritual (or of particular rituals in particular cultures and societies), but his work brought attention to the structure of rituals, which he claimed could be observed across contexts.

Victor Turner later elaborated upon what he called the ritual process, which begins with "separation" from an individual's former status in a group, "liminality" (which he described as the state of being "betwixt and between"), and "incorporation" into an individual's new status in a group.

For example, in what we call a traditional church wedding, when a bride is walked down the aisle by her father and she is "given" in marriage at the altar, this ritual marks her separation from her unmarried status (and from her father as representative of her natal family and so on). The liminal individuals (bride and groom) exchanges rings and vows. In the end, they are invited to kiss (sealing the deal), then introduced as wife and husband, which marks their incorporation (or reincorporation) into the community. The wedding illustrates completely the ritual process, or rites of passage.

Think baptism, First Communion, weddings, funerals, even pledging in a fraternity or sorority. Or pregnancy and childbirth, for that matter. A structure or process is what Van Gennep and Turner suggested that they all have in common. It is, in fact, what makes rituals "work" for us.

Van Gennep himself suggested that rites of separation, of transition (liminality), and of incorporation will not be "developed to the same extent by all people or in every ceremonial pattern" (11). Also, not all rituals are rites of passage. Exhibiting a late 19th / early 20th century thinker's mania for taxonomies, Van Gennep describes rites of passage as a category, with rites of protection, divination, initiation, and propitiation being others.

Anthropological analysis of ritual offers a tool for understanding activities such as the ritual slaughter of a cow as not senseless. (I leave aside concern about animal rights. My particular ax to grind here is animal rites. Ha ha.) In fact, it turns out that the ritual is overladen with meaning - for example, to mark the start of the World Cup games, to recognize the tragedies of the past and even "separate" them from the present (i.e., to "appease" the spirits, to lay them to rest), to create community, to express a wish for connection, and so on.

I think it might be an important "intervention" of anthropology to introduce the framework of ritual, hopefully enabling us all to recognize the importance and meaning and even necessity of ritual in our lives.

Ceremony

Two points that I wish to make about ceremony:

Do not pooh-pooh the importance of ceremony. On Saturday, I participated in commencement exercises, a.k.a. graduation, a.k.a. the walk. I have to say, participating in such a ritual makes me appreciate it all the more. There are too few occasions (I think) in our modern American lives where we engage directly and overtly in symbols. The contemporary criticism made of ritual being so much hocus pocus - so what? Does it truly make us more clear eyed and less mystified not to engage in ritual? Or based on what I observe in college students, it seems to me that they know even less about symbols, even when they are being enacted (even preyed) upon by symbolism. Looking to classic ethnographies, I suggest that the Trobrianders and the Nuer, with all their rituals and symbols, seem to have been more aware of and articulate about their realities.

Grown-ups need to start acting and dressing like grown-ups. There am I, in my archaic robes. It would not do simply to "dress up": All aspects of the ceremony, including the robes, call attention to the rituals and symbols. That is the point of commencement exercises. So, what is with the parents and siblings and other relatives or friends of graduates attending the ceremony in baggy jeans or shorts (even cut-offs) and XXXL t-shirts with questionable language printed on them - and blowing those annoying air horns? Why not bring in the Number One foam fingers, too? Certainly graduation is an occasion for celebration, but is the Super Bowl the only model that we have for a larger, community-based observation? Apparently, it is.

I also wish to add that the families of color - the phenotypically black, Latino, or Asian-looking families - looked notably good: Fathers in suits and ties with polished shoes, brothers showered and shaved and wearing pressed shirts and slacks, mothers and sisters in flowered dresses and high heels. To be fair, most of the families, white and otherwise, seemed to be dressed for the occasion, but it was striking to me which families were not. Half-joking, I said to StraightMan: "See, this is why your race is on its way down and out in America." To which StraightMan responded that in fact, being able to appear in such a slovenly manner at commencement exercises is a sign that white privilege is as strong as ever.

StraightMan also wonders whether or not the lack of ceremony and knowing how to act and dress for formal occasions might not be linked to church-going or not-going. Church was, and is, one of the domains of everyday life in which Americans engaged in rituals and symbols and ceremony. The Super Bowl, it seems, cannot fill the void on its own.

On a not entirely related, but also not entirely unrelated point:

The last time that I visited my parents, I came home with a box of books saved from my childhood, including Johanna Spyri's Heidi, which I remember finding just fascinating. Like other books that I loved from my childhood - the Little House books, Little Women, and so on - I always became quite interested in the houses and the preparation of food. In Heidi, I especially found fascinating the descriptions of goat's milk and golden toasted cheese, bread, and sausage.

This time around, reading aloud to Beanie in the evenings, I became struck with how much God there is in the story. I am teaching Beanie that many, even most, other people in the world believe in God, and that this is an important belief for them that she does not need to share, but that she wants to understand and respect, in part because because many people whom she loves, like her grandparents, go to church.

I am starting to think also that it is important for Beanie to learn "about" God because without understanding what and why and how people believe, Beanie might not be able to develop fully a connection and a compassion for other people - for whom God is important - also to appreciate what it means to be awed and humbled and inspired. Which, a non-believer I am, I feel that I have glimpsed in other people's ideas and practices of faith.

Rituals, symbols, ceremony. Not to be pooh-poohed.