Understanding Rituals

Understanding Rituals explores how ritual can be understood within the framework of contemporary social anthropology, and shows that ritual is now one of the most fertile fields of anthropological research. The contributors demonstrate how rituals create and maintain - or transform - a society's cultural identity and social relations. By examining specific rituals from various theoretical viewpoints, they reveal the ultimate and contradictory values to which each society as a whole is attached.

List of contents

1 Ritual as spatial direction and bodily division 2 From one rite to another: the memory in ritual and the 26 ethnologist’s recollection 3 Brothers and sisters in Brahmanic India 4 The brother—married-sister relationship and marriage ceremonies as sacrificial rites: a case study from northern India 5 Transforming Tobelo ritual 6 Ritual implicates ‘Others’: rereading Durkheim in a plural society

About the author

Daniel de Coppet is Directeur d’Etudes at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris.

Summary

Within any society, rituals create, maintain and transform cultural identity and social relations. Daniel de Coppet presents six different contributions on how to understand ritual within the frame of contemporary social anthropology.

Product details

• Authors: Daniel De Coppet, Coppet Daniel de, D. De Coppet, Daniel De Coppet, European Association of Social Anthropol
• Assisted by: Daniel De Coppet (Editor), Daniel De Coppet (Editor)
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd.
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 29.10.1992
• EAN: 9780415061216
• ISBN: 978-0-415-06121-6
• No. of pages: 132
• Series: European Association of Social Anthropologists; European Association of Social; European Association of Social Anthropologists
• Subjects: Non-fiction book > Politics, society, business > Politics; Social sciences, law, business > Social sciences (general)