ABSTRACT
This essay elaborates some of the broader implications of my previous work concerning everyday ritualised behaviour in Fiji and how it informs the process of children’s cognitive constitution over time of a concept of differential status between people in the community at large. It concerns the interplay between rule and practice in ritual and ritualised behaviour and, elaborating an idea put forward by Lévi-Strauss, suggests that one can generalise the cognitive product of such behaviour as being ‘the idea of the rule’, and further, that one can with reason speculate that ‘the idea of the rule’ is the ultimate raison d’être of ritual whose ‘meaning’ aspect is bound to remain secondary. I begin by summarising the results of earlier work and suggesting how they may be applied more generally (see note 1 of chapter 1).
