G. Ritualization in man: Ritualization in man in relation to conceptual and social development

Abstract

It has become plain that the various contributors to this Symposium use the key term ritual in quite different ways. The ethologists are consistent with one another; Professor Hinde’s definition will serve for all: ‘ritualization refers to the evolutionary changes which the signal movements of lower vertebrates have undergone in adaptation to their function in communication’. Such a definition has no relevance for the work of social anthropologists. Unfortunately, although ritual is a concept which is very prominent in anthropological discourse, there is no concensus as to its precise meaning. This is the case even for the anthropologist contributors to this Symposium; for example, I myself use the term in a different way from Professor Fortes whose paper immediately follows my own. Even so certain major differences between the positions of the ethologist and the social anthropologist need to be noted. For the ethologist, ritual is adaptive repetitive behaviour which is characteristic of a whole species; for the anthropologist, ritual is occasional behaviour by particular members of a single culture. This contrast is very radical. Professor Erikson has suggested, by implication, that we may bridge the gap by referring to ‘culture groups’ as ‘pseudo-species’. This kind of analogy may be convenient in certain very special kinds of circumstance, but it is an exceedingly dangerous kind of analogy. It is in fact precisely this analogy which provides the basis for racial prejudice wherever we encounter it. It cannot be too strongly emphasized that ritual, in the anthropologist’s sense, is in no way whatsoever a genetic endowment of the species.