Full Answer
What is ritual anti-structure and social norms?
He observed that adolescent Ndembu males undergoing ritual initiation into manhood experience a communitarian bond while they are separated from their tribe. Liminality and communitas, which together constitute “ritual anti-structure,” call attention to the arbitrariness and artificiality of social structure and social norms.
What is the relationship between ritual and social structure according to Turner?
Turner understood ritual and social structure to stand in a dialectical relationship. Ritual, including rites of passage, emerges in response to structure and its limitations. Structure has the positive quality of organizing a society so it can meet its material needs, yet it also draws distinctions between human beings.
What do ritual and ritual symbols mean?
ritual and ritual symbols is interesting and original. He finds that the polar meanings of ritual objects pair a physiological referent with referents from the socio-moral order proclaiming their ultimate religious unity, over and above conflicts between and within these orders. Powerful drives and
What is the difference between life crisis ritual and Affliction ritual?
THE PROCESS OF RITUAL. Life crisis-rituals among the Ndembu include initiation ceremonies for boys and girls, and funeral rites. Rituals of affliction, on the other hand, are performed for individuals who are said to have been "caught" by the spirits of deceased relatives whom they have forgotten or neglected.
What is Ritual's purpose?
Ritual’s fundamental purpose, then, is to infuse everyday social statuses and roles with communitas, thus putting them in the service of human community and the common good.
What are the social and ritual authorities concerned with maintaining the status quo?
The social and ritual authorities who are concerned with maintaining the status quo often attempt to control rites of passage, which proscribe social statuses and identities in the face of changes and crises that may alter or challenge the standing social order.
What is the role of the crown elect in rites of passage?
Participants in rites of passage may also engage in role reversal. Among the Ndembu people of Zimbabwe, for example, the crown-elect takes on the role of a commoner. In many cases participants also experience one another in spontaneous and direct ways as equals, a phenomenon that Turner labeled “communitas.” He observed that adolescent Ndembu males undergoing ritual initiation into manhood experience a communitarian bond while they are separated from their tribe. Liminality and communitas, which together constitute “ritual anti-structure,” call attention to the arbitrariness and artificiality of social structure and social norms.
What is the role of liminality and communitas in the rites of passage?
A second role of rites of passage, according to Turner, is that they direct the attention of a society’s members to their community. Turner understood ritual and social structure ...
What is the significance of rites of passage?
Many scholars who emphasized the functional significance of rites of passage tended to reduce them—and religion in general —to their social utility; others gave primacy to it. These reductionist approaches, according to some critics, often minimized or ignored the significance of the symbolic content of religious rites of passage and of religion itself. The development of religious studies as an academic discipline in the early 20th century helped to draw attention to the existential and philosophical significance of religious beliefs and symbols for adherents of religions. Scholars of religious studies have emphasized the symbolic content of religious rites while examining belief systems and other symbolic dimensions in historical and social contexts. In a similar vein, the 20th-century American anthropologist Barbara Myerhoff and others have called attention to the personal dimension of rites of passage and to the individual’s own experience of the human life cycle. These scholars of religion approach religious belief and experience as phenomena that have significance and are worthy of study in their own right. In their attempt to understand religion from the point of view of practitioners, some scholars have undergone ritual initiation into the religious community or group that is the subject of their study. The contemporary American anthropologist Karen McCarthy Brown, for example, was initiated into the ranks of Haitian Vodou priestesses.
What is Samskara rite?
The samskara s are transitional rites intended to prepare a person for a certain event or for the next stage in life by removing taints (sins) or by generating fresh qualities. If the blemishes incurred in this or a previous life are not…
What is the act of admission to the Sangha?
Admission to the sangha involves two distinct acts: pabbajja (lower ordination), which consists of renunciation of secular life and acceptance of monastic life as a novice, and …
