ABSTRACT
In the last century, social scientists sought to understand rituals and ritualistic behaviors in terms of the social functions they served and the cultural practices they embodied. Early in the century, Émile Durkheim and Alfred Reginald Radcliffe-Brown described how rituals promote social unity and address other enduring aspects of social structure (Durkheim 1995 [1912]; Radcliffe-Brown 1952). More recently, Clifford Geertz and Pierre Bourdieu have emphasized the role of rituals in resolving problems of meaning and negotiating questions of power in specific historical circumstances (Geertz 1973; Bourdieu 1977 [1972]). In neither perspective do rituals of healing and health-related practices figure prominently. They are only somewhat more prominent in the thinking of ritual theorists who stress notions of performance. Victor Turner includes “curative cults” within the broader rubric of “rituals of affliction,” and these he contrasts with “life-crisis rituals” (Turner 1967:7-15). Ronald Grimes lists healings rites as one of sixteen types of rituals (Grimes 1985: v-vi).
