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^ 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