ABSTRACT
Among anthropologists, words like ritual, myth, ceremony, and symbolism are central to the study of social life in primitive societies. In the past two decades, and especially in the last few years, some sociologists and anthropologists have begun to examine a number of areas and activities in modern societies using approaches drawn from analyses of ritual, ceremony, and symbolism. This chapter reviews this kind of sociological studies in the hope of achieving a clearer understanding and some sense of direction to the use of symbolic analysis in contemporary sociology. It divides the review of contemporary studies into three groups. The first is comprised of studies in traditional sociological areas where other perspectives have conventionally been used. They are broken up further into those that focus on politics, political ceremony and ritual, and the law and social control. The second includes analyses of special events, life-cycle rituals and festivals. The third encompasses studies of everyday life that employ less conventional perspectives.
