The Interweaving Of Rituals

The death of the Italian Jesuit Matteo Ricci in China in 1610 was the occasion for demonstrations of European rituals appropriate for a Catholic priest and also of Chinese rituals appropriate to the country hosting the Jesuit community. Rather than burying Ricci immediately in a plain coffin near the church, according to their European practice, the Jesuits followed Chinese custom and kept Ricci's body for nearly a year in an air-tight Chinese-style coffin and asked the emperor for burial ground outside the city walls. Moreover, at Ricci's funeral itself, on their own initiative the Chinese performed their funerary rituals, thus starting a long and complex cultural dialogue in which they took the lead during the next century. The Interweaving of Rituals explores the role of ritual - specifically rites related to death and funerals - in cross-cultural exchange, demonstrating a gradual interweaving of Chinese and European ritual practices at all levels of interaction in seventeenth-century China. This includes the interplay of traditional and new rituals by a Christian community of commoners, the grafting of Christian funerals onto established Chinese practices, and the sponsorship of funeral processions for Jesuit officials by the emperor. Through careful observation of the details of funerary practice, Nicolas Standaert illustrates the mechanics of two-way cultural interaction. His thoughtful analysis of the ritual exchange between two very different cultural traditions is especially relevant in today's world of global ethnic and religious tension. His insights will be of interest to a broad range of scholars, from historians to anthropologists to theologians.

"Discourse in Ritual Studies" offers an introduction into the study of public worship from the perspective of ritual studies.The contributing authors confront an action-oriented and empirical approach of ritual studies with perennial and normative questions that characterize the study of liturgy.

The first book dedicated to the propagation of the Mass in late Imperial China unfolds dynamic interactions between this essential Catholic ritual and various cultural expressions in Chinese society, including traditional religion, architecture, art, literature, government, and theology.

This book includes a collection of articles by leading researchers on the topic of religious contact in the study of religion. Resulting from the final conference of the Käte Hamburger Kolleg "Dynamics in the History of Religions"–one of the largest research initiatives in the interdisciplinary study of religion worldwide in recent years (2008-2020)—this book encapsulates the twofold aim of this conference: first, to "step back" and reflect upon the merits and challenges of studying religious dynamics as a result of intra-, inter-, and extra-religious contact, and second "to look beyond" and pave ways for future approaches to study religion as a social phenomenon.

This book provides a timely intervention in the fields of performance studies and theatre history, and to larger issues of global cultural exchange. The authors offer a provocative argument for rethinking the scholarly assessment of how diverse performative cultures interact, how they are interwoven, and how they are dependent upon each other. While the term ‘intercultural theatre’ as a concept points back to postcolonialism and its contradictions, The Politics of Interweaving Performance Cultures explores global developments in the performing arts that cannot adequately be explained and understood using postcolonial theory. The authors challenge the dichotomy ‘the West and the rest’ – where Western cultures are ‘universal’ and non-Western cultures are ‘particular’ – as well as ideas of national culture and cultural ownership. This volume uses international case studies to explore the politics of globalization, looking at new paternalistic forms of exchange and the new inequalities emerging from it. These case studies are guided by the principle that processes of interweaving performance cultures are, in fact, political processes. The authors explore the inextricability of the aesthetic and the political, whereby aesthetics cannot be perceived as opposite to the political; rather, the aesthetic is the political. Helen Gilbert’s essay ‘Let the Games Begin: Pageants, Protests, Indigeneity (1968–2010)’won the 2015 Marlis Thiersch Prize for best essay from the Australasian Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies Association.

This book describes and evaluates how institutional innovation and technological innovation have impacted on humanity from pre-historical times to modern times, and how societies have been transformed in history. The author interrogates the relationship between innovation and civilisation -– particularly the dynamic whereby innovation leads to empire-building -– and explores innovation efforts that stimulated economic and social synergies from the Babylonian Empire in 1900 BC up to the British Empire in the twentieth century. The author uses historical cross-cultural case studies to establish the factors which have given competitive advantages to societies and empires. This book will be of interest to researchers and students in political economy, economic history, economic growth and innovation economics.

This wide-ranging and accessible book offers a stimulating introduction to the field of media anthropology and the study of religious ritual. Johanna Sumiala explores the interweaving of rituals, communication and community. She uses the tools of anthropological enquiry to examine a variety of media events, including the death of Michael Jackson, a royal wedding and the transgressive actions which took place in Abu Ghraib, and to understand the inner significance of the media coverage of such events. The book deals with theories of ritual, media as ritual including reception, production and representation, and rituals of death in the media. It will be invaluable to students and scholars alike across media, religion and anthropology.

The growing absence of meaningful ritual in contemporary Western societies has led to cohesive research on the history of ritualizing behaviour in different cultures. The relatively new field of ritology, which includes neuroscience, anthropology, cultural psychology, psychotherapy and even art and performance, raises questions about the significance and practice of ritual today. This book is the first of its kind to discuss the importance of secular rituals for cultural and personal growth. Using a transdisciplinary approach, a range of contributors provide an authoritative account of the science and history of rituals and their role in creating healthy societies in the modern age.