Project Area A

Ritual Dynamics Between Tradition and Recent Religious Practice

Synopsis

The symbolic significance of rituals in the representation and manifestation of cultural tradition is indisputable and frequently documented. However, for a long time, the primarily theoretical interest in the "expressive character" of rituals has led to a neglect of the detailed analysis of the ritual actions. It was not only the deeper insight into the competence and significance of rituals borne by the performative media and the performing agents that fell short. We also know very little about their transformative role in contexts marked by political alterations, religious pluralisms and cultural changes.

The research projects subsumed under project area A can rightfully claim to be countering these shortcomings of the former research on ritual. The potential for gaining cross-project insights is especially high, since the subprojects, although featuring different circumstances and theoretical approaches, are coalescing in their research on action-specific aspects. This prompts us to expect differentiated yet comparable statements about the change of rituals as well as their impetus for change.

Subproject A1 investigates the dynamics and effectiveness that rituals provide for the staging and transformation of socio-cultural identity. The case studies based in Taiwan and Morocco go beyond their specific contexts, insofar as their targeted research on performative effectiveness (relevant for all other subprojects) treats the following aspects:

·        transfer and appropriation of rituals (see A2 and A4),

·        ritual negotiation of regional, ethnical, nation-state identities (see A2 and A4),

·        ritual constitution of social authority (see A4), and

·        performative media (see A4).

All these aspects show specific contact points with other projects.

In a similar manner, subprojects A2 and A3 do not only specify forms of ritual proceduralization and diversification of normative traditions in Hinduism and Buddhism in Nepal and South India (lead by either local, folk-religious or "modern" modifications or by intra- or interreligious transfer). It is rather the specifically examined issues of "the relation of script and performance", the "change of ritual in the context of modernity", the "tension between high and folk traditions" (see A1 and A4) as well as the "various religious traditions" (see A3) and the relation between "ritual and acculturation" (see A4) that mark the specific options for connection with the other subprojects.

Finally, subproject A4 reaches beyond our regional North-Indian case studies with its analysis of the constitution of social agency through ritual manipulation of the concepts of territoriality.

On the one side, the investigation of the "complexity and distribution of competences to act in rituals" and on the other side, the theme of "ritually constituted places and territories", located between cosmological (see A3 and A2) and political (see A2 and A1) relations, both seem to have special importance for an interdisciplinary theorization.