ABSTRACT
One of the gravest problems of our day is the lack of commitment to common symbols. If this were all, there would be little to say. If it were merely a matter of our fragmentation into small groups, each committed to its proper symbolic forms, the case would be simple to understand. But more mysterious is a wide-spread, explicit rejection of rituals as such. Ritual is become a bad word signifying empty conformity. We are witnessing arevolt against formalism, even against form. 'The vast majority of my class-mates just sat through four years.' So wrote Newfield of what he called the ungeneration of his college year: 'They didn't challenge any authority, take any risks or ask any questions. They just memorised "the given", not even complaining when instructions turned them into mindless taperecorders, demanding they recite rather than reason' (Newfield, 1966: 41). Shades of Luther! Shades of the Reformation and its complaint against meaningless rituals, mechanical religion, Latin as the language of cult, mindless recitation of litanies. We find ourselves, here and now, reliving a world-wide revolt against ritualism. To understand it, Marx and Freud have been invoked, but Durkheim also foretold it and it behoves the social anthropologist to interpret alienation. Some of the tribes we observe are more ritualist than others. Some are more discontented than others with their traditional forms. From tribai studies there is something to say about a dimension which is usually ignoredthe band or area of personal relations in which an individual moves. But in trying to say it, we are handicapped by terminology.
