Ritual ecology

Abstract

In agreement with ‘the material turn’ in the humanities and social sciences and informed by psychological studies of priming, the authors argue that human action can be deeply influenced by objects and other features of the environment coordinated by ritual practices. They suggest that the moods and behaviors catalyzed by an effective ritual result from a ‘mangle’ of human and material agencies. But this mangle is not the result of an accidental fusion of disparate elements; rather, they consider it a complex adaptive system in which the organic and inorganic interact in such a way that each component provides some of the necessary conditions for the others’ activities. In line with this, there is a need to identify the reciprocally causal relationships among people, places, plants, animals, stones, relics, icons and idols that constitute ritual, an approach they call ‘ritual ecology’.