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Paper short abstract:

The practice of the ritual cem in Alevi cultural centers reflects the dynamic processes of transformation of Alevism in urban areas of Turkey and Europe. The ritual is an indicator of this transformation, and was re-invented and re-structured as an identity marker for building and shaping the identity of the Alevi community in the struggle for public recognition.

Paper long abstract:

Since the end of 1980s the Alevis of Turkey aim for institutional and legal recognition as a religious community. For this purpose, they founded their cultural and religious centers wherewith they entered the public sphere through uncovering themselves as Alevis. The Alevis maintain those traditions, which stem from a village based community life, under the urban conditions that they consider as constitutive for marking their religious identity. In reserving rooms for the practice of their traditional ritual cem, they disclosed the tradition of their ritual that was formerly kept secret. This practice of cem is nowadays made accessible also to the non-Alevi public. Not only the requirements for participation but also the introduction of new elements and the attempts for standardization are put to disposition so that the ritual practice became an issue of continuous negotiation and debate. It clearly became not only an identifier and identity marker for the Alevi practice, but also a public arena through which the Alevis articulate and negotiate their own identity within the public sphere as distinct from Sunni and Shiite Muslims. This transformational process of the Alevi ritual practice mirrors and triggers the dynamics in changing the Alevi ritual practice so that the cem is not merely to be seen as an organizational form for regulating social relations and executing moral sanctions. I will argue that the ritual is transformed and becomes reflexively a mirror of the self-understanding of urban Alevis in which they portray themselves and allow others to portray them in public discourse.

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Paper short abstract:

The paper will discuss how women affected by HIV-Aids in a South African township transform "the course of things" by divining forth a new, fluid canon with a new fluid sense of authority and kinship by intertwining Zulu and Christian ritual heritage.

Paper long abstract:

In his essay "The Bare Facts of Ritual", Jonathan Smith has argued that ritual should not be understood as congruous with something else, as magical imitations of desired ends or as symbolic acting out of ideas. Rather the opposite, ritual tend to be incongruent with the way things are or are likely to be by the very fact that it factors out contingency, variability and accidentality. Socalled magical ritual expresses, says Smith, a realistic assessment of the fact that the world cannot be compelled, only thought about and remembered in the course of things. Ronald Grimes has contested this highly intellectual approach to ritual and showed how ritual is more than memory and reflection: as profoundly embodied practices ritual generates an oriented habitat, a gendered cosmos. Thus rites are not only about establishing, confirming or opposing views and practices that people already hold, but also about divining new ways to behave in changing circumstances. In dialogue with these two theorists, the paper will discuss how women affected by HIV-aids in a South African township transform "the course of things" by divining forth a new, fluid canon with a new fluid sense of authority and kinship by intertwining Zulu and Christian ritual heritage

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Paper short abstract:

By introducing the concept of a 'catalyst' the paper intent to clarify some underlying processes and conditions that profoundly transformed the Marian pilgrimage in El Rocío (Spain) during the political transition after the dead of Franco in 1975.

Paper long abstract:

The insight that rituals are always changing has let to an increased interest in the different ways this transfer/transformation/transplacement takes place. Synchronic, diachronic and even reciprocal modes are thereby observed. This paper would like to draw the attention to a wide rage of processes and conditions which, in varying degrees, can accelerate a ritual dynamic through their interference with the contextual factors and internal dimensions of a ritual. The image of a 'catalyst' is thereby put forward to make a clear distinction between these catalysing processes and conditions and contextual elements as well as internal dimensions. The main difference between these and contextual elements lies in the fact that the latter exerts their influence only from the outside while the former becomes part of the internal dimensions of the ritual. On the other hand catalyst processes and conditions can't be conceptualised simply as internal dimensions because their presence is linked to the new situation and their influence is highly volatile. As a true 'catalyser' their dominant influence will fade away once a new ritual is established. The changes that underwent the Marian pilgrimage in the Spanish hamlet of El Rocío during the last 50 years, will be used as a example to elucidate this theoretical concept. More specifically, the importance of the political transition (after the dead of Franco in 1975) on the internal structure of the ritual and the way how this was profoundly transformed by it, will be analysed using ethnographic and historical data.

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Paper short abstract:

In Vodun rituals are institutionalised ‘spaces of contest’(Benin/Haiti), where critical debate is as important as the actual performance to create sense and meaning. This paper will discuss several notions of critical discourse and reflexivity in kinetic and verbal performance, relating the Vodun-paradigm, where reflexivity is a central component, to selected issues in current ritual theories.

Paper long abstract:

In almost all forms of Vodun rituals, whether large collective performances or small private ceremonies, reflexivity is a central component. Rituals are basically conceived as ongoing processes of communication work between different existing domains and with effects in visible and non-visible realms, in everyday life and in non-ordinary spheres. They are institutionalised 'spaces of contest', where critical debate is as important as the actual performance to create sense and meaning for all participants, whether performers or spectators. Therefore the 'Gestalt' or the configuration of a ritual is never complete and is open to ever-changing interpretation.

Based on field-research in Benin and Haiti this paper will discuss several notions of critical discourse and reflexivity in kinetic and verbal performative expression, relating the Vodun-paradigm to selected issues in current ritual theories.

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This paper describes the rituals of a women's prayer group in Brazil. It argues that negotiations over the play/non-play distinction itself are fundamental to the "like but unlike" of syncretism.

Paper long abstract:

Drawing on recent fieldwork, this paper describes the rituals of a women's prayer group in Brazil. At two levels, the play/non-play boundary helps maintain the social space of this "Catholic" group that practices "a little of everything." (1) The diocese accepts this syncretistic lay group as Catholic because its unorthodox elements are seen as playing at religion: false doctrine and infantile spirituality, but good practice. (2) Moments of laughter and fun diffuse potential tensions arising from the group's diversity. I define syncretism in terms of meaning making and intelligibility, where social/religious boundaries offer leverage for relations of power. In this context, Droogers argues that the "as-if" of play allows religious actors to combine disparate domains of meaning. I extend this by arguing that negotiations over the play/non-play distinction itself are fundamental to the "like but unlike" of syncretism, and in religion's work at boundaries more generally.

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Paper short abstract:

The discussion will focus on the creative and projective dimensions of ritual. The argument will pursue an approach to rite that stresses practice rather than the reflexive potencies within practice. The argument is one that attempts to radically move away from representational perspectives.

Paper long abstract:

The issue of reflexivity in ritual is a complex phenomenon. In general perspectives have been of a high intellectual kind and often extensive from approaches to theatrical drama. More recently notions of "embodiment" have started to prevail, many of the more successful orientations following in the steps of Merleau-Ponty and others similarly influenced such as Bourdieu. These approaches do not depend so much on intellection as those before, although key works in ritual (e.g. Geertz and Turner) demonstrate lines of thought that are consistent with recent "embodiment" conceptions. The paper will pursue some of the dominant perspectives in the anthropological history of ritual that underline a concentration on reflexivity. Ultimately, however, the direction of the argument will turn away from dramaturgical perspectives and reorient towards what might be termed a more "cinematic" perspective. Here the issue will turn on the nature of the subject in rite. I will develop on notions of de-centered subjectivity and the idea that the subject is distributed across a complex series of potential subjective standpoints in rites that opens towards a new understanding of the potency of ritual and shifts away from the strongly intellectualist notions that have prevailed hitherto. In this context both the technology of rite and its virtual properties will be explored that do not depend, necessarily, upon the concept of reflexivity or upon ritual as a kind of reflective apparatus.

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Paper short abstract:

This paper argues that Spencer’s and Gillen’s pioneering cinematography of the Arrernte is an attempt to reflect upon the complexity of ritual performances beyond the limits of verbal communication. It questions the coherence between reflexivity und aesthetics in the transformation and transgression of ritual practices.

Paper long abstract:

In anthropological literature Spencer’s und Gillen’s 1901 camera-work about Arrernte ritual performances in Central Australia is often conceived as „aesthetic“ – in terms of its commendable artistic value or a deplorable linguistic incompetence (v. Leonardi in Carl Strehlow 1907, T.G.H. Strehlow 1971, Cantrill & Cantrill 1982, Mulvaney 1982, Long 1993, Batty, Allen & Morton 2006). Since the 1970s the controversy between observational and linguistic analysis of ritual practices in Aboriginal Australia entered an ethical arena which condemns aesthetical categories. In addressing the “tropes” in the transformation and transgression of ritual practices it seems worth to pose the question of the inherent coherence between reflexivity und aesthetics in a new way. I will demonstrate how and why Spencer’s and Gillen’s pioneering cinematography is an attempt to reflect and depict the complexity of ritual performances that reaches beyond the limits of verbal communication. In intuitively developing a set of film-aesthetical rules, they were able to operate with the visual depiction of ritual movement and the problem of deep space in cinematography. The choreography of ritual agents in the field of performance was transformed into the choreography of the filmmaker in the field of vision. Since the development of ocular centrism in Early Modern Times the latter is considered as „truthful description“, the basis of scientific writing.

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Paper short abstract:

The mimetic acts of filming and theorizing rituals are conceived as those forms of visual and discursive representations that refracts ritual practice by way of transforming and transgressing agency, reflexivity and indexicality in ritual practice.

Paper long abstract:

Since the invention of film as a technology of visual reproduction, the study of mimetic acts, bodily movements, and ritual performances became of major interest in anthropological research. The spread of this technology revolutionized the forms of visual perception and enhanced the very possibilities in anthropological research. Besides the shift towards an ethnographic study of ritual, one can observe a conceptual shift in the term 'ritual' itself that took place at the same time. The modern concept of ritual that emerged in the late 19th century as the bodily means of religious practice (Asad 1997) can be correlated to the enhancement of film technology and the related interest in the study of bodily movements. Beyond some of these incidents, this paper discusses various systemic features involved in filming and theorizing ritual practice as different attempts to reflect upon its formative features. In discussing the ethnographic and theoretical accounts of Jean Rouch, Alfred Gell and Howard Murphy, the argument will be made how filming and theorizing itself have to be conceived as different forms of semiotic practices and mimetic acts that get an agency on their own in the very process of imitation and representation. By further tackling the theoretical issues involved in mimetic acts as proposed by James Frazer, Theodor Adorno and Michael Taussig, the attempt will be made to conceive filming and theorizing rituals as mirror images, those forms of visual and discursive representations that refracts ritual practice by way of transforming and transgressing the very conditions of agency, reflexivity and indexicality in ritual practice.