Only the user who asked this question will see who disagreed with this answer. Read more comments. English US French France. They can be used in the same places, but ritual tends to go more with the bad things. See a translation. Ritual is a habit or a religious celebration of sorts. I think that might be fair comment. A specimen sentence would be helpful here. Do you have one? But as Beryl agreed with my first post, I guess rites are part of rituals.
After all, that's the feeling I now have after going through those many Google results and encyclopedia explanations. I would say that a rite is a religious act, while a ritual doesn't have to be religious, it can as well be a social act, or a behaviour, for example you can talk about the rituals a person with a phobia can have, but you can't call those behaviours a rite. AutumnOwl said:. I would say that a rite is a religious act.
Click to expand To Autumn Owl Thanks for chipping in But a gang initiation rite is not religous. The right of passage is not necessarily religious, though that's how it originated.
Why most rather than all of them? What is the remaining part of the ritual? Footnote 1 Leach does not provide an answer. The analysis of the rite of passage in different ethnic groups reminds us of another fact: although the process structure of different ethnic groups is the same, the specific behaviors are very different.
After van Gennep the ethnography continues to enrich this ritual diversity—one side of human cultural diversity. In the case of initiation, a Nuer boy in East Africa has to cut six long marks on his forehead with a sharp knife Evans-Pritchard In Yunnan, China, a New Year ritual for children over the age of thirteen is to change their clothes; the boy wears trousers and the girl wears a skirt Cai ,.
There is no specific age requirement for children to sleep apart from their parents. Each family determines the time according to their own economic and construction conditions, but usually when the child is between the ages of eight and thirteen years.
Girls in Yiche begin to wear the hairstyle and the hat of a young girl. In addition, there is no observed initiation in Yiche. In today's Han village traditional initiation is almost dead.
Differences in initiation in ethnic groups is a common topic in anthropology. The few examples cited above emphasize that although initiation is usually regarded as a typical example of rite of passage, its complexity, duration, and even whether it exists or not show differences according to ethnic group. There is a spectrum of initiation ranging from none to complex.
The cause of the spectrum is complex and opaque Winzeler This means that we do not know what initiation is. Why do some people need a physical change to mark adulthood such as circumcision, which will bring children great physical pain especially in societies in which anesthesia technology has not been developed, while other people do not even need to change the type of clothes?
Ritual changes in different times. People will create rituals, but also eliminate rituals. What triggers these changes? Van Gennep tried to classify rites and repeatedly stressed that initiation should not be considered as only a rite of passage.
Can rite of passage be treated as a ritual type? If so, what other types of rituals are there? Or can we only use rite of passage as an analytical tool?
Is there another ritual process pattern? Finally, as van Gennep knows, the identifiable degree of the three stages of the rite of passage differs in various ethnic groups regarding the same kind of ritual, or different rituals in one ethnic group van Gennep What is the cause of these differences?
Gluckman , Gluckman hopes to answer the generating question through the degree of differentiation in social roles. According to this hypothesis, it is easy to arrange the Nuer, Na, Yiche, and Han into a sequence of degree of social differentiation degree from low to high.
This order also represents their degree of social development and rationalization. Unfortunately the degree of social role differentiation is not accurate enough to make an evaluation of the whole society. Even if we can say the Nuer is in a lower degree of social differentiation, it is hard to prove that Na, Yiche, and Han villagers have obvious differences in degree. When we focus on a particular ethnic group such as the Yiche, it is easy to find their social life filled with ritual activities.
The Yiche not only have a large number of religious ritual experts, but ordinary people also bear the task of some certain rituals such as sacrificial rituals within the family house. So can we include the Yiche in a highly ritualized society?
Why is it difficult to observe the existence of adult rituals in a society with highly complex funeral rituals? Religion and ritual have not been ended due to the secular Stark and Bainbridge To this day it is highly ritualized that English people still talk about the weather Fox Gluckman's theory inherits the genetic defect of functionalism theory: it cannot provide an effective explanation for the diversity and ritual changes in various ethnic groups.
Noting the limitation of functionalism, Turner returns to the psychological way that Gluckman criticized, risking excessive interpretation and extensive use of psychoanalysis, and finally made a hodgepodge of functionalism, psychology, and structuralism Turner We have analyzed many difficulties in the concept of rite of passage. Gluckman believed that the change in social relations brought by ritual is the core of the rite of passage, but he did not realize that these changes originate in the identity change of members of society, which is clearly pointed out by van Gennep.
Below I continue to explore the causes of identity change by using belief theory. When people hold a ritual they always have an aim, some existence that is targeted at the ritual. We call the ultimate target existence the ritual object for convenience. Before and after the rite of passage the social identity of the ritual object changes, which is the most general purpose of the rite of passage. The social relationship between the self and others is determined by the social identity of the self and the other.
Once the social identity changes, the social relationships of the self and other members of the community naturally shift. Further, social identity is a kind of social classification of individuals.
The category of ritual objects can be changed by rites of passage. Humans are social animals that have to rely on classification to understand the world. We try to put everything in the world into a certain category Durkheim and Mauss The human classification system satisfies the formal logic in most cases, and the classification itself implies the jump and fracture when we engage in classification activities.
The position of the classification of existence can give us a sense of security. An unclear classification position means social relations can be uncertain, and people's behavior can appear chaotic because of the lack of reliability.
In many cases the existence that has not been clearly classified can be considered unclean and dangerous Douglas Rituals help to restore purity. Rites of passage are rituals that change the classification of things Bourdieu Classification is a judging process. Once we make a judgment, it guides our way. Specific to the classification process, the way we treat an object depends on which category we believe it belongs to, not what it actually belongs to.
When we believe that the fungus we harvest is nontoxic, we eat it. When we reexamine the rites of passage, we find that what happens before and after the ritual is nothing but our belief. The rite of passage changes our belief about the ritual object and the way we judge the ritual object.
The Samo in Burkina Faso, who have an asymmetrical bilateral kinship system, have a wide range of social consanguinity that is banned from marrying Cai Some couples have unfortunately discovered that they are in this prohibition range after their marriage.
We see that before the ritual the Samo believe that the two people are socially consanguineous and their marriage will do harm to the society. Upon the completion of the ritual people no longer believe that the two people are connected by a culturally sanguine relationship and the marriage becomes harmless.
The society holds that this change of belief requires a ritual. On the other hand, they believe that the change of a certain property of existence does not require a ritual and no such ritual will be observed. The presence or absence of a rite of passage and its degree of complexity is decided by beliefs on whether it is necessary or possible to change it through a ritual, and the difficulty of the degree of the change.
For example, current Han villagers believe that the transition from child to adult is a biological process and no ritual is required. If there is no such ritual, the transition will not occur.
For example, in Han society there is no ritual to remove social consanguinity; the only solution for such a marriage is divorce. Before we act we make a judgment on the possible effects of this action, and begin to act only when we believe that the action will reach a certain valuable aim. We must act because we believe in the judgment that we have already made, and believe that our actions can change the state of the object of the action.
All actions are intended to make some kind of change. Specific to ritual, we believe that the classification of ritual objects before and after our actions will change. People take a particular action because they believe in the function of the action. When people do not think the action will play a proper role they have three options: abolishing the action, changing the action, or introducing new actions.
It can be seen that action must be intended to change our belief regarding the object of our actions. Of course, on occasion the action object will change their own beliefs about themselves because of the actions. The rite of passage belongs to ritual, and the ritual belongs to action.
The proposition for general action is also true for ritual. Like rites of passage, rituals are meant to change beliefs. Is there a difference between the rite of passage and the ritual? Grimes aims to distinguish different types of changes. These rites move but do not transform. By contrast, when effective rites of passage are enacted, they carry us from here to there in such a way that we are unable to return to square one.
A change that never comes back cannot be defined as a transformation—a marriage can end in divorce, and death can be followed by reincarnation.
We now see that the rite of passage is a ritual to change belief. Action and ritual must be carried out to enact change in beliefs, so the rite of passage, ritual, and action are equal. However, this conclusion seems absurd. Let us look at two famous anthropological definitions of ritual. Both of these cannot be used as a definition of ritual; they note the surface phenomena that apply to certain rituals without pointing out the entity of ritual.
To make matters worse, they also use wrong and misleading words. Is it a highly formalized activity that we go to work every day at the same time? Here are three examples. The first case is the ordinary flight process from not long ago. When we want to travel by air, we must first buy plane tickets at the booking point, by telephone, or on the Internet.
After that, we have to arrive at the airport at least half an hour before departure in order to obtain boarding passes, check luggage, and board the plane through security.
When the plane arrives at its destination we get off the plane and leave the airport with our luggage. Anyone who has experienced air travel is familiar with this, and no one would ever view it as a ritual. However, with a simple analysis, we find that this process is in line with a rite of passage.
The process of buying our ticket is similar to getting engaged, it is a separation ritual, and we begin building a relationship with the airline. With the boarding pass we enter a liminal phase. At this point we have constructed a social relationship with the airline. If we are late for boarding the airport will use a radio reminder to urge us to hurry or the plane may be delayed.
However, the airport will not remind the passenger with a ticket but no boarding pass. Notify me of new posts via email. Email Address:. My Literary Quest. Skip to content. To review — A ritual is the performing of a task in such a way that elevates it for the participants involved. JodiLMilner Be part of the conversation, comment below! Share this:. Share on Tumblr. Like this: Like Loading About Jodi Jodi L. Milner is a writer, mandala enthusiast, and educator.
She has been published in several anthologies. When not writing, she can be found folding children and feeding the laundry, occasionally in that order.
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