Rites Of Power

Rites of Power provides a sweeping overview of the symbolism of power from tenth-century France to modern Britain. Approaching their topic from an eclectic range of intellectual traditions, the authors turn the study of politics, social relations, and cultural creation into a single endeavor. The essays begin with three assumptions: that all societies are ordered and governed by "master fictions" (divine right, equality for all) which make political hierarchy appear natural; that political rhetoric includes nonverbal communication (royal portraits, statistics on crop yields); and that common rhetoric can mean different things to various segments of a culture ("states' rights" during the American Civil War). Societies studied include France and Spain in the Middle Ages, post-Revolutionary France, the modern British monarchy, tsarist Russia, colonial Virginia, and industrial Germany. The essays were selected to provide methodological as well as historical coverage; the result is a comprehensive treatment along the cutting edge of several disciplines. This book will appeal to scholars and students in the fields of history, political science, sociology, anthropology, and art history.

Examines the history and purpose of political rituals, discusses examples from Aztec cannibal rites to presidential inauguration, and argues that the use of ritual determines the success of political groups.

Explore affirmation and coping rituals for lesbian singles, couples, and communities! This pioneering book is a multidisciplinary compilation of scholarship addressing lesbians, the rituals in their lives, and the meaning and impact of those rituals for the women involved and the people and communities around them. It offers a diverse range of perspectives on what it means to be a lesbian, what ritual is, what it means to enact a ritual, and how we can understand lesbian ritual experiences. Lesbian Rites: Symbolic Acts and the Power of Community presents five explorations of ritual that bring forth themes of lesbian-centered social change. In “Death's Midwife,” Sharon Jaffe creates a narrative that illustrates the power of ritual to reconcile straight and gay, Christian and Pagan, in end-of-life situations. Next, Ruth Barrett's exploration of Dianic traditions provides a brief history of the importance of Goddess-worship to radical lesbian feminists, and uses those traditions to create life-course rituals. Marla Brettschneider's “Ritual Encounters of the Queer Kind” challenges notions of a static “lesbian self” and instead reworks Judaism and anarchist politics to propose rituals of continuous “becoming.” Krista McQueeney then analyzes the paradoxes of a lesbian commitment ceremony held within a gay-affirmative African-American congregation in the southern United States. Elizabeth Suter and editor Ramona Faith Oswald use exploratory survey data to examine how lesbian couples may use name changing as a strategy to claim family status. In addition, Lesbian Rites also includes two chapters that examine how lesbians have been compromised, if not harmed, by the ritualization of heterosexism and homophobia. The first is an insightful analysis of the community response to the feminist retreat known as Camp Sister Spirit. In this chapter, Kate Greene uses Mary Daly's seven patterns of sado-ritual syndrome to show how the people opposed to the camp were organized to uphold heterosexual patriarchy through an obsession with purity that defined the camp as a refuge for immorality. The second chapter on this subject reviews the editor's own experiences of being hidden and devalued at heterosexual family weddings.

?The stories within these books have the poignancy of new discoveries as well as the unworn imagination of the ancestors. The commentary has the sharp edge of modern thought and the intricacy which results from the intellect being woven through the ritual complexities of tribal life. The purpose of constructing thresholds that bring this world together is to find the powers that can heal the rends in tribal as well as modern communities.? --Michael Meade, from the IntroductionVersed in the languages of psychology, comparative literature, as well as ancient mythology, healing, and divination, Malidoma Patrice Some bridges paths between the ancient tribal world of the West African Dagara culture and modern Western society. Ritual is written with wild imagination, careful critical reflection, and intuitive insights that will force the reader to encounter the world anew.

13 papers by 16 leading archaeologists and historians of late antiquity and the early middle ages break new ground in their discussion, analysis and criticism of present interpretations of early medieval rituals and their material correlates. Some deal with rituals relating to death, life cycles and the circulation in other contexts of objects otherwise used in the burial ritual. Others are concerned with the symbolism and ideology of royal power, the formation of a political ideology east of the Rhine from the mid-5th century onwards, and penance rituals in relation to Carolingian episcopal discourse on ecclesiastical power and morale. All deal with the creation of new identities, cultures, norms and values, and their expression in new rituals and ideas from the period of the Great Migrations through the Later Roman Empire down to the society of Beowulf and the later Carolingians.

Providing a personal, informed and cultural perspective on rites of passage for general readers, this text illustrates the power of rites to help us navigate life's troublesome transitions.

Heads of state today mark their rites of passage with splendid ceremonial, from Reagan's inaugural to Andropov's funeral. Such spectacles continue to be a prominent part of modern political systems, of varied ideological hue, but their precise meaning and importance often remain unclear. The essays in this book - all specially written for it - address the central problem in the understanding of royal rituals, namely the relation between power and anthropologists, and the traditional societies examined range from ancient Babylon to nineteenth-century Madagascar, from medieval Europe to contemporary Ghana.

This book shows how necessary ritual is to human freedom and to social processes of liberation. It aims to reflect upon the deep human longing for ritual and to interpret it in the light of our physical, social, political, sexual, moral, aesthetic, and religious existence. .