ABSTRACT
This chapter is concerned with a different process to that of the differentiation of rituals, namely the attempts to reunify various areas of life into a less highly differentiated system. The Church of England has been a national Church, providing rituals which reinforce nationalism. Ritual action of the kind meant here can sustain and articulate forms of consciousness and their associated values and action, which are in tension with the dominant forms of social action in industrial society—namely technical, instrumental, calculative action. A view of social change must reflect assumptions about the nature of man as well as assumptions about the nature of society. Some clergy and laity in Churches, artists of all kinds, and part of their audiences, drug-youth—oriental subculture, cultural minorities and ethnic minorities, and students; all these play a part in the counter-culture process. The more creative members of the pop music world reflect values which are part of the counter-cultural ‘subterranean’ system.
