Ritual Today
Ritual Today

Summary/Abstract: The article presents a suggestion for a new approach towards ritual, one of the key anthropological concepts. Generations of anthropologists have used the term to describe and interpret cultural practices related to different types of liminality and transgression (social relations, religious beliefs, theatrical practices, etc.) in a rigid meaning limited to describing a formalized scenario of symbolic behavior, sanctioned with ancient beliefs and values cherished by a given community. This case makes room for similar symbolic practices, thinned down and scattered among the whole cultural reality (e.g. in fashion, politics, ways of spending free time, etc.), which serve the same purpose, but are deprived of formalized scenarios and boundaries of tradition. Because of all this, a new term – rituality – needs to be used to better convey the essence of the numerous modern-day rituals. This advance in terminology helps to interpret and understand several cultural practices, and to create new terms, necessary for describing the fast-changing modern cultural landscape. Accepting a broad meaning of rituality requires an interdisciplinary approach, in which classic anthropological theories by Malinowski, Redcliff-Brown or Geertz are equally important as Goffman’s symbolic interactionism, Austin’s speech acts philosophy, Rothenbuhler’s social communication, or Csikszentmihalyi’s emotional flow psychology.

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