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Bricoleurs de rites et artistes-ritualistes au Québec : figures de proue d’un régime religieux en émergence
Abstract
This article discusses the contemporary figures of the ritual bricoleur (amateur ritual crafter) and the ritualist artist. Distanced from religious institutions, these practitioners are creative and innovative in the ritualization of daily life and the life cycle. Based on two bodies of data from ethnographic research conducted in Quebec, the authors analyze the initiatives of these self-taught ritualists in an ascending order of virtuosity, drawing on Lévi-Strauss’s categorization of creative modalities in the field of culture (ideotypes of the bricoleur and the artist). Ethnographic exploration of these emerging ritual practices highlights the dynamics of a post-institutional type of religious regime associated with the rise of holistic spiritualities and personal growth. These new and seemingly disparate ritual practices aim at the transformation of the subjects’ interiority while reorganizing their relationship to the other, to the sacred and to the world according to a holistic, experiential and voluntarist approachy.
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This critical response to the chapters is not a mere polite afterword but rather a chapter in its own right. In the process of evaluating and teasing out the implications of the book's preceding chapters, this chapter forges an understanding of ritual. What is dubbed here "identity-refracting" rituals are characterized by a high degree of self-consciousness, the use of immaterial props, and deliberative creativity-three characteristics less typical of "canonical" rituals. This chapter states that understanding the dynamics of identity refraction can sharpen or further enlighten the views of ritual, media, and conflict proposed by the volume's other chapters.
(Re)Creaing the World at Burning Man. Play, Gift and Ritual Creativity
In the wake of Roberte Hamayon’s book Jouer (2012) and based on ethnographic fieldwork and complementary methodology, this article mobilises gift and play theory to analyse the Burning Man festival. Following a brief presentation of gift and play theory, the article proceeds to describe this event which has been at the core of important “counter-cultural” developments in the last three decades and which is today at the centre of a growing international event-culture. The analytical section starts by examining Burning Man from the perspective of the gift and thus pays special attention to the concrete practices of gift and their dynamics, something which has been largely ignored by existing academic production on the subject. The second part of the analysis seizes Burning Man from the perspective of play as defined by Hamayon while underlining the specifics and complementarity of this approach with respect to the above section on gift. The analysis finally turns to the religious dimensions of Burning Man and the rapports between play, ritual and religion in the light of Hamayon’s theory of play defined as freedom of action within a given frame or set of rules. This approach overcomes the limitations of theories which cast play as degraded or inchoative ritual and religious forms and thereby allows us an insight into a better understanding of contemporary religious reconfigurations that often display a playful and creative character.
This paper is based on fieldwork among Portuguese, Italians, Catalans and Spaniards influenced by the transnational Goddess spirituality movement. Through an analysis of ritual narratives the author analyses the role of doubt and uncertainty in contemporary rituals created within Goddess spirituality. She will show that contemporary crafted rituals offer a privileged window on the uncertainty intrinsic in ritual because participants feel less constrained by a long-standing religious tradition and talk more openly about their doubts and their strategies to neutralize them than in the case of secular ceremonies. Drawing on Simon Coleman’s analysis of pilgrimage and ritual (2009, 2013) she suggests that uncertainty may play an important role not only in rituals created in the context of ‘New Age’ spirituality but also in other contemporary rituals created in plural and increasingly secularized Western contexts.
La lecture de la production en sociologie des religions donne à penser que nous sommes toujours dans une période transitoire, en chemin vers une nouvelle configuration religieuse encore largement indiscernable. Or la littérature sociologique et les enquêtes empiriques depuis une trentaine d’années décrivent une situation se stabilisant autour de certaines caractéristiques globales, tant et si bien qu’on peut se demander si de nouvelles logiques n’auraient pas vu le jour dont il serait possible de montrer la systématicité. Inspiré des travaux de Charles Taylor, cet article esquisse les grandes lignes de l’hypothèse d’une nouvelle régulation du religieux en proposant de comprendre l’avènement de la société de consommation sous l’angle d’un accomplissement du tournant subjectif moderne et de la radicalisation conséquente de la culture de l’authenticité et de l’expressivité. Par-delà leur éclatement, les religiosités contemporaines se donnent à lire comme autant de réponses à l’impératif social d’un projet de soi, des constructions identitaires ou « itinéraires de sens » (Raymond Lemieux) soumis aux enjeux d’une reconnaissance porteuse d’une puissante normativité.
Cet article propose une description et une analyse des rituels célébrés lors des premières menstruations dans l'Occident contemporain. À la différence des initiations féminines exécutées dans d'autres sociétés, ces rites de passage ne médiatisent ni l'accession de la postulante au statut d'adulte, ni une reconnaissance formelle de ses aptitudes à procréer. Ils lui fournissent l'expérience d'une identité féminine originale, celle d'un être spirituel doté de capacités créatives, la consacrant ainsi comme agent indépendant au sein d'une communauté de femmes vitales et responsables.
Religious rituals can provoke a deeply ambigious reaction in those who practise them. What happens in religious traditions when the nature of the ritual is questioned, but the practice of performing rituals is not itself abandoned? This book draws on the authors' observations of such reactions among Jains in western India, and asks why they can tell us about ritual as a universal mode of human action. Most anthropologists have assumed that ritual is a special kind of happening, which requires a special kind of interpretation. The authors argue that 'ritual' is a quality which can in principle apply to any kind of action. The question they try to answer is: what is distinctive about actions which are ritualized? They reject the common view that ritual carries intrinsic meaning, and explore the apparent paradox that ritualization, which makes action in an important sense non-intentional, is itself the result of an intentional act - the adoption by the actor of what the authors call the 'ritual commitment'.
This article takes an epistemological approach to link the anthropological concept of participation mystique
with fundamental dimensions of ordinary life experience which give us a sense of a real world.
Développé au 18ème siècle en Grande-Bretagne et présent aujourd’hui dans l’ensemble des pays occidentaux, le néo-druidisme est une vaste mouvance dont l’objet central est la restauration de l’ancienne religion des peuples celtes. Pour ses pratiquants, les druidisants et les druidisantes, il s’agit de remettre au goût du jour les croyances et les rituels des druides de l’Antiquité, perçus comme les personnages centraux de cet ancien système religieux. Néanmoins, si les divinités et le calendrier liturgique celtiques ont fait l’objet d’attentives réhabilitations, une pratique rituelle antique est, elle, sujette à de vives condamnations de nos jours : le sacrifice animal et humain. Les quelques sources anciennes concernant les druides mentionnent en effet que ces derniers immolaient lors de populaires rassemblements des offrandes animales et plus rarement des offrandes humaines. À partir des données ethnographiques issues d’une enquête de terrain au Québec, l’objet de cet article est ainsi d’analyser le processus de réinvention qu’a connu cette pratique rituelle, largement transformée pour être adaptée au contexte actuel.
What are we to make of the Latina schoolteacher who considers herself a good Catholic, rarely attends Mass, but meditates daily at her home altar (where she mixes images of the Virgin of Guadalupe with those of Frida Kahlo, and traditional votive candles with healing crystals), yet feels particularly spiritual while preparing food for religious celebrations in her neighborhood? Diverse religious practices such as these have long baffled scholars of contemporary religion, whose research started with the assumption that individuals commit, or refuse to commit, to an entire institutionally-defined package of beliefs and practices. Social surveys typically ask respondents to self-identify by denominational or other broad religious categories. Sociologists attempt to measure religiosity according to how well individuals conform to the official religious standards, such as frequency of church attendance, scripture reading, or prayer. This book points the way forward toward a new way of understanding and studying religious behavior. Rather than try to fit people into prearranged packages, the book argues, scholars must begin to study religion as it is actually lived and experienced in peoples' everyday lives. Drawing on extensive fieldwork, as well as recent work by other scholars, the book explores the many ways that people express themselves spiritually and shows that they rarely fit neatly into the categories developed. Challenging those who see declining church attendance as the death of religion in the Western world, the book demonstrates that religion is as widespread and vital as ever, if you know where to look.
Résumé
Cet article s’appuie sur plusieurs recherches menées au cours des années 1990 dans différents milieux sociaux et culturels à Montréal sur la question des identités ethniques des jeunes issus de l’immigration. Ces divers travaux ont permis de constater que les parents immigrants, les parents en union mixte et ceux qui adoptent à l’étranger formulent des projets spécifiques quant à l’identité ethnique de leur enfant et déploient plusieurs stratégies concrètes à cet effet. Une étude récente que nous menons sur les unions mixtes inclut un échantillon de parents qui ont grandi en milieu ethnique minoritaire à Montréal. Leurs projets identitaires pour leurs enfants sont comparés avec leur propre socialisation et les projets identitaires qu’avaient leurs parents immigrants pour eux. Cet article démontre que les projets identitaires actuels des jeunes parents issus de milieux immigrés se distinguent de ceux des cohortes précédentes à plusieurs égards, notamment en ce qui a trait aux enjeux de la réalité pluraliste.
The author argues that religious pluralism is the normal state of affairs. Religion itself is multi-dimensional, and the several dimensions of religious and spiritual experience can be combined in myriad ways across individual lives. Preliminary findings from new research are presented, detailing modes of spiritual discourse that include mystery, majesty, meaning, moral compassion, and social connection. These dimensions find expression across multiple social institutions. In addition, religion is multi-traditional and organized by plural producers of the goods and services and events that embody and transform religious tradition. Finally, it is argued that religious pluralism must be studied in terms of the structures of power and privilege that allow some religious ideas to be given free voice, but limit the practice of other religious rituals or the gathering of dissident religious communities.
Nothing appears more ancient, and linked to an immemorial past, than the pageantry which surrounds British monarchy in its public ceremonial manifestations. Yet, as a chapter in this book establishes, in its modern form it is the product of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. ‘Traditions’ which appear or claim to be old are often quite recent in origin and sometimes invented. Anyone familiar with the colleges of ancient British universities will be able to think of the institution of such ‘traditions’ on a local scale, though some - like the annual Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols in the chapel of King’s College, Cambridge on Christmas Eve - may become generalized through the modern mass medium of radio. This observation formed the starting-point of a conference organized by the historical journal Past & Present, which in turn forms the basis of the present book. The term ‘invented tradition’ is used in a broad, but not imprecise sense. It includes both ‘ traditions’ actually invented, constructed and formally instituted and those emerging in a less easily traceable manner within a brief and dateable period - a matter of a few years perhaps - and establishing themselves with great rapidity. The royal Christmas broadcast in Britain (instituted in 1932) is an example of the first; the appearance and development of the practices associated with the Cup Final in British Association Football, of the second. It is evident that not all of them are equally permanent, but it is their appearance and establishment rather than their chances of survival which are our primary concern. © E. J. Hobsbawm, Hugh Trevor-Roper, Prys Morgan, David Cannadine, Bernard S. Cohn, Terence Ranger. 1983.
Abstract Symbolic meaning and representational and reflexive perspectives remain dominant orientations in the analysis of ritual. While these must be crucial, this essay argues that a focus on the perceptual dynamics of rite, especially as these are located in ritual aesthetics, may expand an understanding of the force of rite. The discussion develops critically upon Victor Turner's seminal work, suggesting ways in which ritual analyses may be redirected. The related concepts of dynamics and virtuality (distinguished from the cyber-technological kind) are developed, indicating that these may be critical for understanding how rites change or transform the situations to which they are directed. Ritual as a dynamic in virtuality that has no essential or necessary relation to the ordinary realities that surround it may, because of this fact, be greatly empowered as a force that can pragmatically intervene in ordinary realities.
'Héritiers de la logique grecque et du monothéisme jug nous appliquons d'instinct aux croyances religieuses le principe de contradiction; dieux et dévots se classent à nos yeux en groupes fermés, exclusifs jusqu'àl'antagonisme. Des statisticiens, sérieux à en mourir de rire, calculent le total des Bouddhistes, des Confucéens, des Shintoistes. Un Hindou, un Chinois, un Japonais n ‘arriveraient pasàles comprendre’ Sylvain Lévi, Le Népal, I,173.
Vanessa Ochs invites her readers to explore how Jewish practice can be more meaningful through renewing, reshaping, and even creating new rituals, such as naming ceremonies for welcoming baby girls, healing services, Miriam's cup, mitzvah days, egalitarian wedding practices, and commitment ceremonies. We think of rituals -- the patterned ways of doing things that have shared and often multiple meanings -- as being steeped in tradition and therefore unalterable. But rituals have always been reinvented. When we perform ancient rituals in a particular place and time they are no longer quite the same rituals they once were. Each is a debut, an innovation: this Sabbath meal, this Passover seder, this wedding -- firsts in their own unique ways. In the last 30 years there has been a surge of interest in reinventing ritual, in what is called minhag America. Ochs describes the range and diversity of interest in this Jewish American experience and examines how it reflects tradition as it revives Jewish culture and faith. And she shows us how to create our own ritual objects, sacred spaces, ceremonies, and liturgies that can be paths to greater personal connection with history and with holiness: baby-naming ceremonies for girls, divorce rituals, Shabbat practices, homemade haggadahs, ritual baths, healing services. Through these and more, we see that American Judaism is a dynamic cultural process very much open to change and a source of great personal and communal meaning.
A Cognition-Based Definition of Creativity and A Proposition for Approaching Creativity Artificially
- M Hedblom
- Tremblay S