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"Not then, men and their moments. Rather, moment and their men," writes Erving Goffman in the introduction to his groundbreaking 1967 Interaction Ritual, a study of face-to-face interaction in natural settings, that class of events which occurs during co-presence and by virtue of co-presence. The ultimate behavioral materials are the glances, gestures, positionings, and verbal statements that people continuously feed into situations, whether intended or not. A sociology of occasions is here advocated. Social organization is the central theme, but what is organized is the co-mingling of persons and the temporary interactional enterprises that can arise therefrom. A normatively stabilized structure is at issue, a "social gathering," but this is a shifting entity, necessarily evanescent, created by arrivals and killed by departures. The major section of the book is the essay "Where the Action Is," drawing on Goffman's last major ethnographic project observation of Nevada casinos. Tom Burns says of Goffman's work "The eleven books form a singularly compact body of writing. All his published work was devoted to topics and themes which were closely connected, and the methodology, angles of approach and of course style of writing remained characteristically his own throughout. Interaction Ritual in particular is an interesting account of daily social interaction viewed with a new perspective for the logic of our behavior in such ordinary circumstances as entering a crowded elevator or bus." In his new introduction, Joel Best considers Goffman's work in toto and places Interaction Ritual in that total context as one of Goffman's pivotal works: "His subject matter was unique. In sharp contrast to the natural tendency of many scholars to tackle big, important topics, Goffman was a minimalist, working on a small scale, and concentrating on the most mundane, ordinary social contacts, on everyday life.'"
Ritual is part of what it means to be human. Like sports, music, and drama, ritual defines and enriches culture, putting those who practice it in touch with sources of value and meaning larger than themselves. Ritual is unavoidable, yet it holds a place in modern life that is decidedly ambiguous. What is ritual? What does it do? Is it useful? What are the various kinds of ritual? Is ritual tradition bound and conservative or innovative and transformational? Alongside description of a number of specific rites, this Very Short Introduction explores ritual from both theoretical and historical perspectives. Barry Stephenson focuses on the places where ritual touches everyday life: in politics and power; moments of transformation in the life cycle; as performance and embodiment. He also discusses the boundaries of ritual, and how and why certain behaviors have been studied as ritual while others have not. Stephenson shows how ritual is an important vehicle for group and identity formation; how it generates and transmits beliefs and values; how it can be used to exploit and oppress; and how it has served as a touchstone for thinking about cultural origins and historical change. Encompassing the breadth and depth of modern ritual studies, Barry Stephenson's Very Short Introduction also develops a narrative of ritual's place in social and cultural life. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
The Politics of Divination, first published in 1982, was a ground breaking work in the political economy of an African culture, the Sisala of Northern Ghana. The author shows how elders use divination as a political tool to control the behavior of women and young men. Gerontocratic control through ritual means is an attempt by elders to dominate the economic activities of youthful men, and the production and reproduction of women. Yet, the elders are not entirely successful in such attempts, and their efforts at social control sometimes have less than altruistic motives, as the many cases in the book show. The author presents divination and ancestral sacrifice in a processual view. Within the context of the divinatory process strategizing elders work and rework the rules of their society to deal with real life situations, illness, misfortune and death. Like many other Africans, the Sisala believe that such misfortunes are ultimatley caused by ancestral anger, which can be seen as a reflection of social tension and conflict among the living. Divination points out deviants in the family who are poised as the cause of such misfortunes, and this conflict is rectified through ancestral propitiation via blood sacrifice on family shrines.
An exploration of how the nonrational aspects of schooling, especially ritual(s), have been harnessed to construct a commonsense which serves the interests of transnational corporations, leaving those educators committed to democracy to develop a new pedagogy that rejects the technical solutions that present reforms demand.
First published in 1972. A revival of interest in primitive religion has been one of the most marked characteristics of British social anthropology of recent years. Inspired by the work of Audrey Richards, whose writing on ritual contains many of the insights that have been developed in later studies, this volume uses material drawn from all over Africa and Polynesia. The contributors include: Raymond Firth, Esther Goody, Aidan Southall, R.G. Abrahams, Edwin Ardener, J.S. La Fontaine, Monica Wilson, Elizabeth Bott, Edmund Leach and P.H. Gulliver.
Readings for a History of Anthropological Theory curates and collects many of the most important publications of anthropological thought spanning the last hundred years, building a strong foundation in both classical and contemporary theory. The sixth edition includes seventeen new readings, with a sharpened focus on public anthropology, gender and sexuality, race and ethnicity, linguistic anthropology, archaeology, and the Anthropocene. Each piece of writing is accompanied by a short introduction, key terms, study questions, and further readings that elucidate the original text. On its own or together with A History of Anthropological Theory, sixth edition, this anthology offers an unrivalled introduction to the theory of anthropology that reflects not only its history but also the changing nature of the discipline today.