ENGLISH

The Archetypal Actions of Ritual: A Theory of Ritual Illustrated by the Jain Rite of Worship

By Caroline Humphrey , James Laidlaw

Book information

Publisher
Oxford University Press
Year
1994
ISBN
0198277881, 0198279477, 9780198277880
Language
english
Format
PDF
Filesize
20 MB (20698423 bytes)
Series
Oxford Studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology
Pages
312\309
DPI
600
Orientation
portrait
Paginated
yes
Scanned
yes
Time added
2016-05-06 15:24:25
Cultural Anthropology;Ritual

Description

Religious rituals can provoke a deeply ambigious reaction in those who practise them. What happens in religious traditions when the nature of the ritual is questioned, but the practice of performing rituals is not itself abandoned? This book draws on the authors' observations of such reactions among Jains in western India, and asks why they can tell us about ritual as a universal mode of human action. Most anthropologists have assumed that ritual is a special kind of happening, which requires a special kind of interpretation. The authors argue that 'ritual' is a quality which can in principle apply to any kind of action. The question they try to answer is: what is distinctive about actions which are ritualized? They reject the common view that ritual carries intrinsic meaning, and explore the apparent paradox that ritualization, which makes action in an important sense non-intentional, is itself the result of an intentional act — the adoption by the actor of what the authors call the 'ritual commitment'. This book is intended for scholars and postgraduates in social and cultural anthropology, and religious and cultural studies; South Asia specialists; philosophers.

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