ABSTRACT
In the social science literature, there is substantial agreement that ritual serves the double function of linking individuals to the community or society, and bridging the gaps separating social differences as between social classes, families, men and women, and so on. It is through the agency of a ritual that individual behavior and accomplishment are ratified as socially appropriate or inappropriate, exemplary, worthy of advancement, demotion, respect, disgust, or as typifying a particular social position, class, or category. After van Gennep’s Rites of Passage (1960), and Victor Turner’s (1967; 1977) generalization of van Gennep’s insight to all of ritual, it is a widely acceptable that the ‘interstices of social structure’ are filled with ritual.
