ABSTRACT
In many respects, Cultural Sociology was established through the study of ritual. For Durkheim, ritual is the central social process that bonds the individual to society; at the same time, rituals serve to reinforce core social values, through the division or the world into the two basic categories of sacred and profane. As a particular mode of action, ritual serves to infuse culture with collective energy and affectivity, which increases its power and its ability to enact an identification of the individual with society. In more recent times, however, scholars have criticized Durkheim’s ritual theory for its
functionalist assumptions; in the process, they have worked to rethink the connection between ritual and meaning in a way that is less mechanistic and more open to contingency, strategic action, and historical specificity. This essay provides a review of these attempts, through a critical examination of the work of Swidler, Bourdieu, Collins, and Alexander. Swidler and Bourdieu emphasize how ritual events facilitate strategic action as well as social integration. Collins and Alexander focus on the contingency of the ritual event, attempting to explain why some rituals are more successful than others. Throughout the essay, I illustrate the relative advantages that each approach offers, by focusing on a single empirical case, the Olympic Games.
