In this paper, the author aims to take a general view of anthropological studies of ritual. Anthropologists have taken up ritual as a main topic of research since the beginning of their discipline. Particularly, functionalists’ and symbolists’ studies still have a great influence on the subject of ritual. But recent scholarship has pointed out the limitations and problems of former analyses and has developed some alternative ideas.
From my point of view, the main problem both functionalists and symbolists share in their analyses of ritual is that the former bases its understanding of social dynamics on an unquestioning premise that societal interaction is unchanging and the latter bases its analysis on a static semiotical schema.
This totalistic view has driven many scholars to search for the reason that motivates the act of ritual and to focus on the question of ‘why’ ritual is enacted. In so doing, ritual is transformed into a special, extraordinary act. And once they establish a reason or a schema which motivates people to perform ritual, they illustrate every detail deductively from that reason or schema.
As counter arguments to these analyses, some scholars such as Sperber and Bloch discuss ritual more personal, performative and practical perspective. And the most radical explanation can be found in Hamamoto’s discussion that says ritual is based on Searl’s ‘constitutive rule’ and the relation between ritual practice and the statement of that practice is arbitrary. It is arbitrary, therefore it is inevitable.
Hamamoto’s discussion has merit but it is this arbitrariness that allows the opportunity for change to occur. Ritual is continuously exposed to many kinds of social change in daily life. During this process, the stability of ritual will be endangered. But in almost all cases this crises will be overcome by the establishment of ad hoc rules or the expanded interpretation of already existing rules. These ad hoc rules exist only as fragments. But if they are enacted repeatedly, they will be integrated as essential rules of a particular ritual and become stabilized and internalized in the collective unconscious of the practitioners of ritual. It is this process, that enables ritual to consequently form itself.
