Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explores the relevance of ritual and ritual theory to discourses of authenticity and originality. It assembles perspectives from social and cultural anthropology, performance studies, education and arts. The book analyses different strategies of various agents concerned with the politics of revitalisation and conservation of ritualised traditions. It deals with the ritualisation of cultural heritage in various ways. The acceptance of rituals as cultural products not only depends on the appropriate management of the tension between tradition and modernity, but also on the aesthetic dimensions this appropriation takes. The book provides a theoretical framework for the concept of heritage and the role of ritual in it, and provides an important foundation for the ethnographic studies.