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Full Text: Anthropos, 102.2007

533 
^ Practice Approach to Ritual 
Ration in the ritual, the participants recognize their 
Collective membership in a group. Durkheim insists 
Pat the collective performance of rituals is essen- 
tla l to the maintenance of society: “Society cannot 
|P a ke its influence felt unless it is in action, and it 
ls not in action unless the individuals who compose 
!* are assembled together and act in common. It is 
. ^ common action that it takes consciousness of 
lts elf and realizes its position; it is before all else an 
ac Üve co-operation. The collective ideas and senti 
ments are even possible only owing to these exte- 
Per movements which symbolize them” (Durkheim 
. 65:465 f.). The social order is doubly reaffirmed 
ln fitual: both in the worship of symbols that repre- 
Se nt it and in the recognition of comembership by 
e Participants. 
, ^hen Durkheim claims that the collective ac- 
to °n signals to ritual participants that they belong 
, a common group, he is essentially asserting that 
. at action is an indexical sign. Tambiah (1979) 
v dops the focus on indices in his “performative 
, Pproach” to ritual. He claims that the signs may 
b e 
,, s ymbols representing a world order, yet because 
. e y are signs manipulated by participants in the 
jP.m and in front of observers, they also serve as 
ry lc es, representing relationships between people 
Ua mbiah 1979; also Bloch 1986). 
Although Tambiah’s approach to ritual very im- 
, hantly points out the meanings communicated 
the facts of who manipulates the signs and who 
Ca as them, still in his analysis signs are depicted as 
mying meanings which are interpreted by actors 
a udience. This approach implies that people 
a nd 
sti ^ d rituals like texts. Schieffelin (1985), while 
J focusing on signs, also highlights ritual perfor 
in Ce - He argues that ritual symbols are not read, 
the ^ ex P er i ence d by the participants as they enact 
sy rdu al itself: “Performance does not construct a 
g Ur bol ic reality in the manner of presenting an ar- 
s 0 , en t’ description, or commentary. Rather, it does 
the ^ s °cially constructing a situation in which 
Pa rt Partici P an t s experience symbolic meanings as 
th e process of what they are already do- 
a s (Schieffelin 1985: 709). Participants construct 
ipat mb °l ic rea lity vis-à-vis their creative partic- 
the s ^ n * n the ritual and they directly experience 
lw s ytnbols as they manipulate them (Schieffelin 
Season 1994). Kaluli people do not make a 
Mth 1Stlnct i°n between the “ritual” and “real life” 
s y Aspect to their curing séances; instead the 
Pan f C World created within the performance is 
^ e in& pragmatic world of health and well- 
Sch Schieffelin 1985) - 
a rii vi f leffelin rightly points out that many ritual 
les ftray involve collective participation as 
Mthr, 
°P°s 102.2007 
opposed to a clear performer-audience dichotomy. 
In such cases, the actions of people as part of 
the ritual deserve the greatest attention as people 
may be more focused on their own participation as 
opposed to an abstract symbolic worldview. This is 
the case for Yucatecan folk Catholic rituals since, in 
most of them, there is no distinct set of performers, 
but all participate. Further, Schieffelin’s insight that 
Kaluli séances are considered part of the “real” 
world - not constituting a distinct sphere of life - is 
relevant to most Catholic rituals in rural Yucatán. 
Although Catholic rituals are considered special 
times, they do not constitute a wholly separate mo 
ment in time. The ritual activities stretch out over 
weeks, as people continue to take care of pragmatic 
tasks. Firm boundaries demarcating the beginning 
and end of a ritual do not exist; I often found 
myself asking, “Has it started yet?” and “Is it over 
now?,” waiting for a clear symbolic marker, and 
not finding one. Also, sets of activities for one 
saint overlap with the next, and planning for ritual 
activities begins months in advance. The point is 
that ritual is part of ongoing social life rather than 
constituting a “time out of time.” Social life in 
Yucatán is thoroughly and continuously infused 
with ritual. As such, the relationships enacted in 
ritual persist even after the dishes have been washed 
and people have gone home. 
Even though he discusses the emergence of sym 
bolic meanings through performance, Schieffelin 
still stresses the interpretation of signs. There re 
mains another analytical element to be considered. 
Durkheim made an additional observation about rit 
ual that can be labeled neither semantic nor prag 
matic. He wrote that periodic rituals actually phys 
ically bring people together, sometimes being the 
only occasion upon which this group of people 
gathers: “Howsoever little importance the religious 
ceremonies may have, they put the group into ac 
tion; the groups assemble to celebrate them. So 
their first effect is to bring individuals together, to 
multiply the relations between them and to make 
them more intimate with one another” (Durkheim 
1965: 389). In fact, a third kind of perspective is 
necessary to describe the ways in which ritual af 
fects the social world, and for this we must leave 
the realm of signs and talk about practice. 
A practice approach to ritual would consider 
how the ritual obliges (or provides the opportunity 
for) people to move their bodies in such a way as 
to practice, to enact, certain kinds of social rela 
tionships. Ritual, sometimes, perhaps most of the 
time, does more than represent a social world - it 
creates a social world. People move their bodies 
in specific ways, inhabiting ways of being. Ritual
	        
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