532
Christine
A. Kray
characterization of Catholicism as promoting rela-
tionality. However, while historians have focused
on messages explicitly communicated in church
doctrine, this work also examines how Catholic rit
ual obliges people to act as a cooperative commu
nity. As such, this work asserts a practice approach,
which considers the ways in which relationships
are instantiated in ritual practice. In the community
of Dzitnup, the church stands at the center of both
the physical and social space. Generally speaking,
Catholic ritual practices tend to reproduce relations
that unite villagers into a corporate body. As they
reproduce Catholic practice, villagers indirectly re
produce community structures. To be a Catholic in
rural Yucatán is, in a real way, to act as a member
of a village community.
This work describes semantic and pragmatic
theories about how religions influence social life,
which focus on signs that are read by practition
ers and the audience. The article explores a prac
tice perspective, which reveals how ritual practices
oblige people to enact (put into practice) “right” so
cial relationships. By way of illustration, the article
shows how Catholic rituals in Yucatán semiotically
project relationality, and further, how they actually
forge or instantiate social relations through oblig
ing large groups of people to interact collectively
and cooperatively, and to do so nearly continuously
for large portions of the calendar year. While an
thropologists have become accustomed to think of
ritual as a clearly demarcated, discrete time “out of
time” (Turner 1977: 96), this case calls attention to
other cycles of ritual activity that stretch out over
long periods of time, overlap, and blend into ev
eryday activities. In such cases, ritual is the actual
stage for social life, rather than merely a represen
tation of it.
The Power of Religion
In the anthropological literature, the power of re
ligion - the effect that it has on people - is typi
cally attributed either to the creation of a worldview
through symbols or to the representation of a world
through indexical signs in the performance of ritual.
First, in what we might call a semantic approach,
religion projects a worldview that then shapes how
people interact in their daily lives. (Tambiah [1979]
makes the basic semantic/pragmatic distinction.)
This approach is most often associated with Geertz,
who considered religion both a “model of” and
“model for” (1973: 94) the sociocultural order. In
his view, the supernatural order is also a direct re
flection of (a model of) the social world, and there-
as
ial
In
the
by serves as a model for its reproduction. Religi^f
rituals may be read as texts to reveal the won
view which they impart. For Geertz, religion
a set of symbols, is able to reproduce the soc
order because of its manipulation of emotion,
religious ritual, the worldview and the ethos,
moods and motivations by which people live, &
united in one set of symbols. In this way, the mo°
and motivations are more permanently attached ^
the established social order: “By inducing a set
moods and motivations - an ethos - and defining
image of cosmic order - a world view - by meanS he
a single set of symbols, the performance makes
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1973:
model for and model of aspects of religious
mere transpositions of one another” (Geertz
118; emphasis in the original). v
Turner similarly attends to the social effi ca ^
of ritual symbols. In particular, he notes that rfid
symbols often encode both “physiological phene
ena” - blood, breast milk, semen, birth, death - aI V
also “normative values of moral facts” - respect
elders, matriliny, generosity to kin, etc. The v
performance of ritual is essential for its effect 1
ness: the singing, dancing, etc., lead to an alter
sensitivity, so that the normative becomes inves
with the physiological, and, therefore, imbued
deep sentiment: “The drama of ritual action "
singing, dancing, feasting, wearing of bizarre dr ^
body painting, use of alcohol or hallucinogens,
so on, causes an exchange between these P
which the biological referents are ennobled and
normative referents are charged with emotional .
nificance” (Turner 1974: 55). Ritual achieves s °^
effects because through the ritual process ern°
is attached to the symbols of societal norms.
In contrast, in what we might call a prag 1 ^ t
perspective, religion affects the social world ^
necessarily through symbols of a worldview,
more so through indexical signs that signal a j
lationship between those who wield the sig nS ^
others. Crucial is the idea that the actual P ra ^
of the ritual - who performs it and how " ^
greater effect on social life than does any w ^
view embedded in its symbols. The pragma! 1 *' ^
proach may be traced back to Durkheim, ^ ^
fact begins his discussion of ritual with a se ^
tic approach. As such, he asserts that the ^
bols of religions (such as totems) are actually
bols of the society: “the sacred principle is n
more nor less than society transfigured an
sonified” (Durkheim 1965: 388). In collectif^
ship of these symbols, the participants in
indirectly worship the society, thereby real 11
their collective beliefs. Moreover - and th lS ^
pragmatic element - through their collective P
Anthropos