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Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions
From handshakes and toasts to chant and genuflection, ritual pervades our social interactions and religious practices. Still, few of us could identify all of our daily and festal ritual behaviors, much less explain them to an outsider. Similarly, because of the variety of activities that
qualify as ritual and their many contradictory yet, in many ways, equally legitimate interpretations, ritual seems to elude any systematic historical and comparative scrutiny. In this book, Catherine Bell offers a practical introduction to ritual practice and its study; she surveys the most
influential theories of religion and ritual, the major categories of ritual activity, and the key debates that have shaped our understanding of ritualism. Bell refuses to nail down ritual with any one definition or understanding. Instead, her purpose is to reveal how definitions emerge and evolve
and to help us become more familiar with the interplay of tradition, exigency, and self-expression that goes into constructing this complex social medium.
qualify as ritual and their many contradictory yet, in many ways, equally legitimate interpretations, ritual seems to elude any systematic historical and comparative scrutiny. In this book, Catherine Bell offers a practical introduction to ritual practice and its study; she surveys the most
influential theories of religion and ritual, the major categories of ritual activity, and the key debates that have shaped our understanding of ritualism. Bell refuses to nail down ritual with any one definition or understanding. Instead, her purpose is to reveal how definitions emerge and evolve
and to help us become more familiar with the interplay of tradition, exigency, and self-expression that goes into constructing this complex social medium.
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First published November 20, 1997
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
April 4, 2025
A painstakingly sober look into ritual (?)
May 24, 2013
Great text book but way above my mental pay grade, very dense and packed with information. Felt dumber than when I started it quite honestly as Bell is just such a brilliant academic and knows her shit.
October 29, 2020
Must-have intro book. Fantastic references.
April 2, 2024
Smartest writer on ritual by far. "The British anthropologist Max Gluckman (1911-1975) brought two major insights to bear on the study of ritual; the first modified Durkheimian theory, while the second modified van Gennep's approach. Gluckman argued that Durkheim's model of ritual as the projected expression of social cohesion and the unity of the group does not do justice to the presence, degree, and role of conflict that is always built into any society. "Every social system," he wrote, "is a field of tension, full of ambivalence, of co-operation and contrasting struggle."? Stressing the difficulty of actually achieving social unity, Gluckman suggested that rituals are really the expression of complex social tensions rather than the affirmation of social unity; they exaggerate very real conflicts that exist in the organization of social relations and then affirm unity despite these structural conflicts. Bell 38"
September 10, 2022
This is a really impressive textbook. Catherine Bell provides a comprehensive outline of how theorists have explained ritual over time, all the while reminding the reader that the theories of armchair anthropologists often say more about their own time and culture than that of the culture they theorize about. The first section compares and contrasts every ritual theorists you could ever want to know about, followed by a second and third section that explain how rituals have been categorized and how rituals change over time and what ritual looks like in a secular society. This was a difficult, but fascinating read.
March 6, 2023
Rituals offer insights into the dynamics of religion, culture and personhood.
Ritual calls attention to the dichotomy of thought and action.
This book is structured in three parts:
1) A history of theories about ritual and religion (History of interpretations)
2) Ritual and ritual-like activities (spectrum of ~ritual activities)
3) Social and cultural context in which people turn to rituals (fabric of ritual life)
*fluidity and confusion*
Ritual calls attention to the dichotomy of thought and action.
This book is structured in three parts:
1) A history of theories about ritual and religion (History of interpretations)
2) Ritual and ritual-like activities (spectrum of ~ritual activities)
3) Social and cultural context in which people turn to rituals (fabric of ritual life)
*fluidity and confusion*
July 23, 2021
Fijne stijl en aanpak. Stimuleert zelf denken en vragen stellen.
February 22, 2024
The big idea: ritual is a construct, rather than an intrinsic, universal category or feature of human behavior. That’s why there is fluidity in the way ritual is defined. There is also enough consensus among students of ritual that it’s possible to fruitfully discuss it.
Bell divides her study into three parts, which she characterizes as theories, rites, and contexts. To discuss “theory� before “practice� might strike some as a counterintuitive approach, but I found it helpful, for this part offers “a roughly chronological overview of the most influential approaches to defining and explaining ritual behavior� (page x). Bell is careful to point out that her apportionment of scholars to various “schools� is meant generally. Some scholars embraced two or more approaches. Nevertheless, this was a handy way to organize and supplement what I already knew about the history of scholarship.
Bell offers a fascinating rumination on the effect of media on rituals such as coronations and state funerals. The number of those who “attend� is greatly increased. A people lining the route get a punctual glimpse, while those watching on television can follow from beginning to end and get a a better view. How does this change the nature of the event?
I found this book a useful introductory overview of the study of ritual. The amount of literature Bell incorporates is impressive. To do this, of course, means relying on the studies of others who are specialists in their field. In her discussion of Christian baptism, for instance, she relies on overviews of others and takes over from them the fallacy that infant baptism became widespread because of Augustine’s dogma of original sin. On my understanding, this gets it backward. Augustine was able to point to the widespread practice in order to promulgate and justify his innovation.
This error of detail from an area that is a special interest of mine is a useful caution not to take over the details of any other topic she discusses without checking what specialists in that area might say. But that’s a small cavil for such a comprehensive overview. And forty-three pages of notes and a twenty-eight page bibliography give the enterprising student a head start in that.
Bell divides her study into three parts, which she characterizes as theories, rites, and contexts. To discuss “theory� before “practice� might strike some as a counterintuitive approach, but I found it helpful, for this part offers “a roughly chronological overview of the most influential approaches to defining and explaining ritual behavior� (page x). Bell is careful to point out that her apportionment of scholars to various “schools� is meant generally. Some scholars embraced two or more approaches. Nevertheless, this was a handy way to organize and supplement what I already knew about the history of scholarship.
Bell offers a fascinating rumination on the effect of media on rituals such as coronations and state funerals. The number of those who “attend� is greatly increased. A people lining the route get a punctual glimpse, while those watching on television can follow from beginning to end and get a a better view. How does this change the nature of the event?
I found this book a useful introductory overview of the study of ritual. The amount of literature Bell incorporates is impressive. To do this, of course, means relying on the studies of others who are specialists in their field. In her discussion of Christian baptism, for instance, she relies on overviews of others and takes over from them the fallacy that infant baptism became widespread because of Augustine’s dogma of original sin. On my understanding, this gets it backward. Augustine was able to point to the widespread practice in order to promulgate and justify his innovation.
This error of detail from an area that is a special interest of mine is a useful caution not to take over the details of any other topic she discusses without checking what specialists in that area might say. But that’s a small cavil for such a comprehensive overview. And forty-three pages of notes and a twenty-eight page bibliography give the enterprising student a head start in that.
June 2, 2011
Good overview, good account of what's at stake. 1997 was a good year for Religious Studies to catch its tail: Bell, in circumscribing the field, provides readers the opportunity to ask what it means *for scholars* to demarcate a field called "ritual." The first three chapters on the intellectual history of the topic (1: Tylor to Eliade; 2: Durkheim through to structuralism; 3: structuralism, semantics, semiotics, performance) goes by quickly and densely. The next two treat kinds of rituals and gen'l characteristics of ritual respectively. The final three treat of ritual density (what does it mean to speak of certain cultures, times, peoples, worldviews, religions as more or less 'ritualistic'?), ritual change, and ritual reification (how does Theory of Ritual feed back into the larger culture?).
Perhaps frustratingly non-partisan. There are several moments in the book where I feel the author might have ben as bored as I was. Still...
Perhaps frustratingly non-partisan. There are several moments in the book where I feel the author might have ben as bored as I was. Still...
November 19, 2015
A wonderful review of ritual in religious practice and beyond. The ritual lens enables Bell to sketch an outline of many central thinkers in social theory and the book thus also serves as an intro to thinking about humanity more generally.
May 14, 2008
This book is a little overwhelming for an "introduction," but it's good, very good.
March 17, 2010
Please read my whole review at :
November 22, 2013
I'm not even sure why this one isn't on my bookshelves here! I read it a while back then read it again recently...
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January 3, 2014ALL HUMAN INTERACTION AND UNDERSTANDING IS BASED ON A LOGICAL FALLACY!
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