ABSTRACT
Even to say it in one word, ritual, is asking for trouble. Ritual has been so variously defined-as concept, praxis, process, ideology, yearning, experience, function-that it means very little because it means too much.1 In common use, ritual is identified with the sacred, another slippery word. But scholars have long discussed “secular ritual” (see Moore and Myerhoff 1977). Current opinion holds that the barriers between sacred and secular, like those between work and play, are both extremely porous and culture-specific. Rituals have been considered: 1) as part of the evolutionary development of animals; 2) as structures with formal qualities and definable relationships; 3) as symbolic systems of meaning; 4) as performative actions or processes; 5) as experiences. These categories overlap. It is also clear that rituals are not safe deposit vaults of accepted ideas but in many cases dynamic performative systems generating new materials and recombining traditional actions in new ways.
