The Place of Ritual in Our Time

Mizruchi, Susan L.

doi:10.1093/alh/12.3.467

“…Shils andYoung (1953), Chaney (1983), Dayan and Katz (1992), and Rothenbuhler (1998 To argue that ritual expresses and reproduces forms of social integration through the collective imagining of community by invoking the power of "an overarching parahuman authority, such as a deity, the state, or an institution such as a university" (Santino 2005, 364) troubles scholars like Couldry (2005), who argue that "it is precisely this association of ritual with social integration and with the standard integrationist reading of Durkheim that we need to challenge" ( 61). Yet, although this dissertation draws on Couldry himself in order to problematize traditional methods of analyzing civic ritual, it does not entirely reject the established neo-Durkheimian approach, which views ritual as a regularly occurring, symbolic, social, and integrative "act of commemoration" (Mizruchi 2000). The dissertation follows Rothenbuhler (1998), Couldry's sometime collaborator, in arguing that "the ideas celebrated by inaugurations and other state and political events... are a model of a better world, and their periodic celebration draws attention to the possibilities" of Good politics ( 92), while at the same time conducting analysis in accordance with the assumption that civic ceremonies "can have social functions only via their communicative capacities" (104).…”

Section: Citizenization: Of Civic Ritual Of Legislative Politicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

From social celebration to politics as usual : newspaper coverage of the Legislative opening in Ontario, 1900-2007

Cairns¹

2021

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This dissertation analyzes twentieth century changes in the representation of political authority in Ontario. It does so by conducting narrative analysis and framing analysis of newspaper coverage of the ceremonial Opening of the Legislature. In contrast to standard political science approaches to this key civic ritual, the dissertation builds upon cultural theory that views news as central to the social construction of reality and addresses three research questions: In what ways has the meaning of the legislative opening been represented in mainstream Ontario newspapers? How have mass mediated processes of ritualization changed over time? And what do answers to the first two questions suggest about the development of popular conceptions of political legitimacy in Ontario? Textual analysis demonstrates that social knowledge about the legislative opening has changed significantly between 1900 and 2007. During the first half of the twentieth century, journalists approached and described the Opening of the Legislature as a Social Celebration: a popular festival at Queen's Park that was also a break from routine policy discourse and partisan battle. By contrast, by the 1970s coverage was organized around the Speech from the Throne. Increasingly aggressive journalistic tones and techniques represented the ritual as a performance of rationality--a special iteration of Politics as Usual. Once a celebration of social order centred around Ontario High Society, the legislative opening is now depicted as a debate among competing interests in Ontario society. While remaining critical of the emergent ritual of liberal-pluralism for its part in normalizing systems of inequality, the dissertation argues that changes in newspaper coverage both reflect and reinforce the rise of what Smith calls "electoral democracy", a conception of politics in which extra-parliamentary actors are legitimized as participants in government. At the level of scholarly practice, the study makes an original contribution to recent debates in media anthropology by using longitudinal textual analysis to study the ritualization of civic ritual; and shifts in news coverage are used to advocate further interdisciplinary studies of legislative politics in Canada.

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“…Shils andYoung (1953), Chaney (1983), Dayan and Katz (1992), and Rothenbuhler (1998 To argue that ritual expresses and reproduces forms of social integration through the collective imagining of community by invoking the power of "an overarching parahuman authority, such as a deity, the state, or an institution such as a university" (Santino 2005, 364) troubles scholars like Couldry (2005), who argue that "it is precisely this association of ritual with social integration and with the standard integrationist reading of Durkheim that we need to challenge" ( 61). Yet, although this dissertation draws on Couldry himself in order to problematize traditional methods of analyzing civic ritual, it does not entirely reject the established neo-Durkheimian approach, which views ritual as a regularly occurring, symbolic, social, and integrative "act of commemoration" (Mizruchi 2000). The dissertation follows Rothenbuhler (1998), Couldry's sometime collaborator, in arguing that "the ideas celebrated by inaugurations and other state and political events... are a model of a better world, and their periodic celebration draws attention to the possibilities" of Good politics ( 92), while at the same time conducting analysis in accordance with the assumption that civic ceremonies "can have social functions only via their communicative capacities" (104).…”

Section: Citizenization: Of Civic Ritual Of Legislative Politicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

From social celebration to politics as usual : newspaper coverage of the Legislative opening in Ontario, 1900-2007

Cairns¹

2021

Preprint

0

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This dissertation analyzes twentieth century changes in the representation of political authority in Ontario. It does so by conducting narrative analysis and framing analysis of newspaper coverage of the ceremonial Opening of the Legislature. In contrast to standard political science approaches to this key civic ritual, the dissertation builds upon cultural theory that views news as central to the social construction of reality and addresses three research questions: In what ways has the meaning of the legislative opening been represented in mainstream Ontario newspapers? How have mass mediated processes of ritualization changed over time? And what do answers to the first two questions suggest about the development of popular conceptions of political legitimacy in Ontario? Textual analysis demonstrates that social knowledge about the legislative opening has changed significantly between 1900 and 2007. During the first half of the twentieth century, journalists approached and described the Opening of the Legislature as a Social Celebration: a popular festival at Queen's Park that was also a break from routine policy discourse and partisan battle. By contrast, by the 1970s coverage was organized around the Speech from the Throne. Increasingly aggressive journalistic tones and techniques represented the ritual as a performance of rationality--a special iteration of Politics as Usual. Once a celebration of social order centred around Ontario High Society, the legislative opening is now depicted as a debate among competing interests in Ontario society. While remaining critical of the emergent ritual of liberal-pluralism for its part in normalizing systems of inequality, the dissertation argues that changes in newspaper coverage both reflect and reinforce the rise of what Smith calls "electoral democracy", a conception of politics in which extra-parliamentary actors are legitimized as participants in government. At the level of scholarly practice, the study makes an original contribution to recent debates in media anthropology by using longitudinal textual analysis to study the ritualization of civic ritual; and shifts in news coverage are used to advocate further interdisciplinary studies of legislative politics in Canada.

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“…In a similar strategy to pursuing comparative-religions work by starting from perspectives that take as normative religions other than Christianity (McClymond 2108), how might our theoretical categories-such as theology, ritual, sacrifice, mysticism, secularism-change if women and their experiences were centered, rather than marginalized (e.g., Mahmood 2005;Walton 2011;Frederick 2003;Chireau 2003;Bell 1997, pp. 237-42;Sered (1992Sered ( , 1994Duncan 2008;Fedele 2103;Bynum 1987;Jay 1992;Mizruchi 2001;Dubisch 1995Dubisch , 2009Fedele and Knibbe 2013;Scott 2011;Zwissler (2011Zwissler ( , 2018…”

Section: Conclusion: In Theory Merry Meet and Merry Part And Merry mentioning

confidence: 99%

In the Study of the Witch: Women, Shadows, and the Academic Study of Religions

Zwissler

¹

2018

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This article examines historically competing categories of magic and religion and their gendered traces in the history of religious studies. On one hand, we have a genealogy that traces the term, "magic", back to an early modern European Christianity trying to understand itself through contrast with an imagined heresy that comes to be personified with a woman's face. On the other, we have contemporary political and religious communities that use the identification as Witches to reverse this version of dichotomous Christian gaze and legitimize religious difference, which also comes to be symbolized by a female body. Between these historical moments we have the beginning of the academic study of religion, the theoretical turn in which Christian-dominant scholarship comes to see itself on a continuum with, rather than opposed to, different religions, as first characterized by cultural evolution theories about the origins of religion. Especially given the field's theological roots, examining the constructed relationships between religion and magic, both of which represent crucial foci for early theorists, through the analytical lens of gender, which does not, provides opportunities to surface implicit assumptions of the current field about what is and is not worth studying.

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The Place of Ritual in Our Time

Cited by 6 publications

References 4 publications

From social celebration to politics as usual : newspaper coverage of the Legislative opening in Ontario, 1900-2007

From social celebration to politics as usual : newspaper coverage of the Legislative opening in Ontario, 1900-2007

From social celebration to politics as usual : newspaper coverage of the Legislative opening in Ontario, 1900-2007

In the Study of the Witch: Women, Shadows, and the Academic Study of Religions

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