ABSTRACT
In a number of seminal contributions to ritual studies, scholars have repeatedly expressed their discomfort with the concept of ‘ritual’ and reflected on possible alternative conceptualizations. Goody (1977: 25) included ‘ritual’ among the terms he deemed “virtually useless for analytic purposes”, given its wide occurrence in fields and disciplines ranging from ethology and sociology to archaeology and anthropology. Goody’s and others’ unease with ‘ritual’ as an analytical category are probably rooted in what Catherine Bell described as the development of the idea of ritual, “a category or tool of analysis built up from a sampling of ethnographic descriptions and the elevation of many untested assumptions” ([1997] 2009: 21), the latter part being the problematic element in the concept’s formation. The questioning of the category’s universal validity has led to the search for conceptual alternatives, an endeavor seen in the specialized theoretical literature as “not only challenging but also necessary for theorizing rituals” (Kreinath et al. 2006: xx). While not intending to offer any real alternative to a category he opposed and considered universalistic and vague, Goody reasoned nevertheless that “perhaps it is better to build up from nothing than break down from everything” (1977: 27). As a possible solution, he proposed to ‘translate’ (that is, to find alternative concepts for) the term every time the need of using it seems to occur. Another approach suggested by Goody follows the lines of Goffman’s (1967) ‘sociology of occasions’ and the study of so-called ‘small behaviors,’ seen as basic components of even large-scale rituals (ibid.: 33–4).
