RELATIONAL1TY

Michael Houseman

My aim here is to outline and, in passing, briefly ¿Ilústrate an approachlargely inspíred by the work of Gregory Bateson, in which ritual per-formances are envisaged as experiences afforded by the enactmentof special relationships.' Particular emphasis is thus placed upon theinteractions that occur between ritual participants and the relationalconfigurations these interactions imply.2 By concentrating upon thepatterns of relationship ritual performances bring into play, my inten-ción is to speak to a fundamental issue which the two dominantapproaches in this field of study fail to address: the very nature ofritual behaviour itself.3 Almost everyone agrees to two things aboutritual. First, rituals have social and psychological effects: they maybe seen as a means of defining or maintaining group boundaries, ofbestowing status, of settling conflicts, of bringing about catharsis andso forth. Second, rituals are meaningful, that is, their symbolism canbe understood as expressing cultural valúes and ideas. What hasbecome increasingly evident, however, is the degree to which thesecomplementary perspectives, in spite of their undeniable usefulness,leave importan! things unsaid. Ritual as an observable phenomenonfar exceeds the sociological and/or affect-related functions that maybe assigned to it. Conversely, the meanings that may be attached toaspects of ritual performances far exceed the limits of the ritual itself.In other words, only some aspects of the ritual are taken into account

1 G. Bateson, Noven. A Survejí of the Problems Suggested by a Cmnposite Picture of theCulture of a New Guinea Tribe Diaum Jrom Time Points of View (Stanford, 1958 [2ndedition]); G. Bateson, Steps to an Ecology of Mind (New York, 1972).

2 See Houseman and Severi 1998.! As should become clear, I use the word 'ritual' (or the expression 'ceremonial

performance') to refer to a particular modality of embodied social action, definedby a number of presuppositions pertaining to the organisation of such action andto the experience of those participating in it. This term thus covers both certainnamed events in which these presuppositions expliciüy hold svvay ('rituals'), as wellas the process whereby these presuppositions are, often implicitly, put into effect('ritualization').

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by functionalist explanations, whereas in the case of symbolic inter-pretations, what calis for analysis first and foremost are categories,valúes and so forth, extraneous to the ritual proper. Thus, even whenthey are combined, as is often the case, these two approaches, theone concerned with the consequences of ritual, the other with itsideational premises, leave the specific complexity of ritual action itselfunaccounted for: what are the distinctive organizational features ofritual as such?

Acting out Special Relationships

Perhaps the most obvious property of ritual is that it is a quality ofaction. There are two aspects to this statement. First of all, whatparticipants may feel or say about the rituals they undertake remainssubordínate to what they actually do. It is above all the participants'outward conduct that is prescribed. Thus, ceremonial performancesleave less room for the type of ongoing, behavioural negotiation socharacteristic of ordinary intercourse: one has to kneel at appropri-ate times, pour libations in a particular fashion, put on certain masksand not others, and so forth. This does not mean that a given rit-ual is always performed in exactly the same way. ítems of behav-iour may vary from one performance to the next; indeed, as weshall see, ritual is no stranger to improvisation. However, the over-all pattern of behaviour of which these ítems form a part remainsrecognizably the same. As Humphrey and Laidlaw have recentlystressed, the foremost object to be attended to in the study of ritualis neither exegetical commentary, ñor doctrinal precepts, ñor evenspeculations regarding the feelings or ideas ritual experiences mayafford, but the structure of ritual practice itself, as an organizedsequence of acts.4

Secondly, rituals do not tell stories; they enact particular realities.They do not so much say things ("God, who is like a father, is inheaven", "This young person has attained manhood", "Your neigh-bour's witchcraft has been neutralized") as do them. For this reason,linguistic communication is a poor model for understanding what isgoing on in ritual. Some rituals may be largely comprised of litur-

4 See Humphrey and Laidlaw 1994.

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gical formulae. However, spells, chants and other ritual utterancesare characterized by a marked diminution of their semantic prop-erties; they are often obscure or highly ambiguous. Thus, ritual dis-course is used less to convey information than to accomplish certainacts,5 to demónstrate the presence of certain non-human agents,6 toestablish undeniable authorities,7 or to define the speaker's identity.8

What exactly is meant when a priest pronounces the phrase "Thisis my body" during the Gatholic mass, for example, or when a vil-lage eider invites a deity to "take part" of a sacrificial animal, is ofless import for the participants than the particular conditions in whichthese words are spoken: by whom, with what authority, when, inwhat manner and so forth. Thus, rather than treating ritual as anal-ogous to discursiva phenomena—as assertions in loco verbi? as enactedrecitations,10 as 'performative' statements" and so forth—we shouldattend to ritual as a mode of action whose distinctive communica-tive entailments are to be identified in their own right.l2

Now, the 'particular realities' people enact when they particípatein rituals are relationships: an ongoing reciprocal involvement betweensubjects implying, for all parties concerned, the attendant qualitiesof agency, interaction, intentionality, affect and accountability. Hereagain, two general remarks are in order.

First, because ritual relationships are acted out and not merelyreferred to, they are not, in the manner of myths for example,reducible to logical or metaphorical connections between abstractterms or categories. In other words, ritual relationships, like relationships

5 See Tambiah 1981.6 See Schieffelin 1985.7 See Bloch 1974.8 See Severi 1993.9 See Lévi-Strauss 1990.

10 See Staal 1979.11 See Tambiah 1985.12 One implication of such an approach is that communicative intention, that is,

perception of and pardcipation in interaction, is distinct from and instrumentallyprior to language using capacities (see G. Aírente, "Le role des représentations dansle développement de la capacité communicative", Intdleüica 32 (2001), 155-183, fora developmental argument along these Unes). To the degree that this is indeed thecase, questions regarding the relational forms governmg communicative intentionbecome extremely relevant. It should be noted in passing that one of the perni-cious results of treating linguistic communication as primary and basic, is a ten-dency to envisage emotion essentially in terms of intensity—as expressive frostingon the sernantic cake, as it were—rather than in terms of relational form.

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generally, are not merely, as some 'relationaP approaches mightsuggest,13 the expression of or vehicle for certain valúes or ideas;they constitute lived-through experiences sustained by intentionallyand emotionally laden events. Consider for instance the complex rit-ual relationship established during a marriage ceremony between thecouple, their respective families, the celebrating official and the wit-nesses. It is difficult, one might say impossible, to know exactly whataltitudes and feelings these different parties may have. However, itseems fair to assume that because it is they themselves who areactively involved in the ritual's performance, their participation cannever be entirely neutral. In other words, ritual relationships areimmediate, personally invested and, for lack of a better word, alive.

Second, while the relationships ritual participants enact are mainlywith each other, they may also involve various non-human entities:spirits, gods, ancestors, animáis, objects, places, liturgical formulaeand so forth. In the perspective outlined here, however, analyticalprecedence is given to ties between persons, whose quality as actualsubjects is, in principie, unproblematic. Links with non-persons, whileoften playing an essential role (think of rings and wedding vows inthe case of Western marriages for example), are thus envisaged asbeing dependan! upon ties between persons. Specifically, non-humanentities acquire the attributes of agency, becoming virtual subjectswith whom a 'relationship' may be possible, precisely to the degreethat the participants' encounter with them is causally embedded ina network of interpersonal ties. The establishment of an intímate,significan! connection with, say, a ceremonial song or image is insep-arable from and dependant upon the network of relationships betweenthose who recite or exhibit this song or image, those who revealedit to them, those who listen to or observe it, those who are know-ingly excluded from this recital or exhibition, those who are held tobe unaware that this recital or exhibition even exists and so forth.

The relationships which come into being in the course of ritualperformances, be they between persons or with non-persons, standout as exceptional in at least three respects. To begin with, ritualrelationships are notoriously polysemous14 or multiplex.15 The actions

13 E.g. Barraud and Platenkamp 1990; Strathern 1988.14 See V.W. Turner 1967.11 See M. Gluckman, "Les rites de passage", M. Gluckman (ed.), Essays on the

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which define them bring together a plurality of pre-existing ties, gen-erally drawn from a wide variety of domains: subsistence, life cycleevents, kinship, other ceremonial occasions and so forth. During thefunerary ritual among the Beti of Cameroon for instance, womenwho are not members of the deceased's lineage (i.e. potential wives),brandish spears made of branches of 'sweet' plants commonly usedfor blessing; a talking drum alternately beats out phrases of insultand praise while the women execute a warrior dance around thetomb. In this sequence, war and killing, affinal ties, sexual antago-nism and healing and sacrificial practices are inextricably combined.These disparate elements are drawn together as the interdependentcomponents of a new totality, namely, the ritual relationship that isacted out between the dancing women, the 'sweet' spears, the deadman's cadáver and the living members of his lineage. Ritual per-formances characteristically involve such an interplay of several com-municative modes (song, music, dance, speech, gesture, etc.).16 However,as such, they are not only richly evocative, bringing a broad rangeof social phenomena to mind, but exceptionally integrative as well.They reframe salient features drawn from different realms of expe-rience in such a way that these features may be appreciated as theinterconnected aspects of a novel, ordered whole, namely, the ritualperformance itself. Ritual action, by situating existing aspects of sociallife within a new, shared context, imbues them with further significance.

The context defined by ritual action, however, is a highly pecu-liar one, for the disparate features it brings together are often if notalways articulated in an apparently paradoxical fashion. Indeed, anadditional property which makes ritual relationships so exceptionalis that they typically entail a condensation of nominally incompati-ble modes of relationship.17 Thus, during the Beti funerary dance,blessing and warlike aggression, ordinarily antithetical, are dramati-cally fused, as are praise and mockery, and male/male and male/femalerelations. The culminating 'grooving' episode of the ñauen ceremony,undertaken among the latmul of Papua New Guinea by a (classificatory)mother's brother in celebration of a young person's accomplishment,

Ritual of Social Relations (Manchester, 1962), 1-52, here 27-31; V.W. Turner, "ThreeSymbois of Passage in Ndembu Circumcision Rites", Essays on the Ritual of SocialRelations, 124-173, here 125.

16 See Kapferer 1983.17 See Houseman and Severi 1998.

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provides another, particularly straightforward example of this.1S Thecelebrant, adorned as a laughingly dishevelled vvidow, wanders throughthe village looking for his "child"; upon finding him, following a rib-ald interchange with women (the young person's father's sisters)decked out as ludicrously vain warriors, he rubs his buttocks downhis sister's child's outstretched leg before presenting the latter withfood in return for shell valuables (recalling the bridewealth trans-ferred on the occasion of the sister's child's father's marriage). Inthis singular act, which may be held to evoke, at the very least, atonce childbirth (the mother's brother is identified as his sister's child'smother) and coitus (the sister's child is identified as his mother'sbrother's husband), parent-child ties and those between sexual part-ners, normally irreconcilable, are inextricably merged, as are cross-sex and same-sex relations.19 Such paradoxical situations, entailingthe simultaneólas occurrence of contrary relational patterns, may, ofcourse, take place in the course of everyday behaviour. In ritual,however, they represen! the norm. Indeed, rituals abound in seem-ingly anomalous episodes in which, for example, affirmations of iden-tity are at the same time testimonies of difference, displays of authorityare also demonstrations of subordination, the presence of persons orother beings is at once corroborated and denied, secrets are simul-taneously dissimulated and revealed, and so forth. To the degreethat ritual performances incorpórate such exceptional situations, theybecome readily recognizable as distinct from everyday interaction:they can not be fully accounted for in terms of ordinary intention-alities and patterns of relationship.

Finally, the various modifications of everyday behaviour that canbe accounted for in terms of ritual condensation are not put togethereither haphazardly or in a purely lineal manner. This is a still fur-ther feature of ritual relationships: the actions which define theserelationships are undertaken in accordance with an interactive scheme

18 See Bateson, Ñauen; M. Stanek, "Les travestís rituels des latmul", F. Lupu (ed.),Océanie: le masque au ¡ong cours (París, 1983), 163-182.

19 A methodological assumption underlying this approach in which ritual actionsare regarded first and foremost as ways of defining particular relationships betweenthe participants, is that one must always look beyond the meanings or functionsthat may be ascribed to any particular Ítem of ritual behaviour in order to iden-tify the relational conditíons for its appearance. A useful strategy in this respectconsists in discovering the ritual identifications that characterise these behaviours.

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that provides the ritual episode as a whole with a particular rela-tional form. The Beti funerary dance, for example, seems to befounded upon a pattern which we might cali embedded comple-mentarity, in which an asymmetrical, antagonistic relationship betweenthe dancing affinal women and the dead person's immobile kin onthe one hand, and between these two living parties together and thedeceased individual on the other hand, are conjoined in a singleepisode. The noven ceremony, during which expressions of ascen-dancy and subservience are conflated and male and female partici-pants compete in the caricatured portrayal of their opposing genderroles, appears to be grounded in a pattern of dual schismogenesis:symmetrical and complementary differentiation are pursued simulta-neously.20 Thus, the overall relational dynamic governing ritual con-densation will vary from one case to the next. Among the configurationsthat have been proposed for other ritual events are "cumulative inclu-sión" for Kuna shamanism,21 the systemic interplay of avowed andconcealed secrecy for male initiation rites,22 the embedding of playwithin itseF for scholastic hazing,23 rebounding or reversing identificarionfor Amerindian homicide24 and torture,25 and cumulative symmetryfor Jívaro face-painting.26

According to this view, then, a ritual performance's quality as adistinct, structured totality derives less from a pre-established sequenceof behaviours (i.e. a script), than from the relational configurationof which these behaviours form a part. This higher-order, interactive

20 See Houseman and Severi 1998. Bateson, who introduced the neologism 'schis-mogenesis' meaning literally "birth of a separation", defined it as "a process ofdifferentiation [. . .] resulting from cumulative interaction" (Naven, 75). He distin-guishes between two basic types: 'symmetrical' in which the relational responsesthat comprise the interaction are idéntica! (e.g. rivalry), and 'complementary' inwhich these responses are different (e.g. dominance/submission).. 21 See Severi 2002.

22 See Houseman 1993; Houseman 2000.23 See M. Houseman, "Is this play? Hazing in French Preparatory Schools",

Focaal 37 (2001), 39-47.24 See E. Viveiros De Castro, From the Enemy's Point of Vieui. Humanity and Diviniiy

in an Amazonian Society (Chicago, 1992).25 See M. Houseman, "Quelques configurations relationnelles de la douleur",

F. Héritier (ed.), De la oiolmce U (París, 1999), 77-112.25 See A.-C. Taylor, "Les masques de la mémoire. Essai sur la function des pem-

tures corporelles jívaro", L'Homme 165 (2003), 223-247. See also Handelman 1990,138-156, for what might be termed cumulative inversión in the case of Newfoundlandmumming practices.

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integration, whereby the participation of different parties is system-ically orchestrated in a mutually reinforcing fashion, provides theexperiential scaffolding by means of which ritual relationships areprogressively put into place. Such underlying relational form allowsa given ceremonial event to be readily recognized as such; at thesame time, by virtue of its systemic qualities, it overrides, and therebyaccommodates the personal and historical variations that inevitablyoccur. Similarly, by accentuating the participants attunement to theaffective rhythms and scenic effects their coordinated activities bringabout, this form accounts for both the overall emotional tone or'style' of the ritual performance and the appearance of certain emer-gent, expressive features in the course of its enactment.

Unusually Meaningfiíl Experiences

Ritual performance, as an enactment of exceptional relationships,imposes itself upon the participants as an incontestable personal andsocial experience, numerous features of which contribute to its pre-sumed meaningfulness. The interactive coordination such perfor-mances imply, the affective qualities and bodily altitudes they afford,the perceptual irregularities and unusual modes of expression theycali for, their ostensibly mandatory nature as well as their observ-able, pragmatic outcomes, all attest to the fact that more than mereplay-acting is involved. However, because the actions whereby rit-ual relationships are realized involve the condensation of ordinarilyantithetical modes of relationship bringing together a diversity of pre-existing ties, they are difncult to conceptualize in terms other thantheir own enactment. From this point of view, the distinctive evoca-tive qualities of ritual acts (including ritual speech) and their inher-ent conceptual uncertainty are two sides of the same coin. Ritualparticipants are thus engaged in concrete, prescribed performanceswhose exact meaning, in terms of everyday intentionalities and pat-terns of intercourse, remains nonetheless unclear. One important con-sequence of this is that the intelligibility of these performances requiresthe supposition of some other, extra-ordinary significance, instanti-ated in the ritual events themselves. In other words, the meaning-fulness of ritual performances involves a degree of self-reference: thespecial relationships acted out in them and the integrative contextsthese relationships imply are upheld by circuits of recursive allusion

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which confer a measure of indisputable authority upon them. Theyappear as necessary, appropriate repetitions rather than as arbitraryinventions.

According to this view, the participants' commitment to the sup-posed eñectiveness of the ceremonial performances they undertake,that is, to the reality of the relationships these performances actual-ize, derives less from the optional and partially idiosyncratic, sub-stantive interpretations they may ascribe to them, than from thewell-defined pragmatic conditions of their execution. It is the per-formances themselves—the fact of doing them—that serve as theexperiential grounds for the irrefutable yet difficult-to-define 'truths'they are held to enact.27 This is not to say that participants gothrough ritual actions in an unthinking fashion. As exegetical tradi-tions suggest, ritual performances often incorpórate a significant degreeof conceptual speculation and reflexivity. However, the relationalconfigurations and perceptual circumstances that constrain the par-ticipants' experience of ritual events, while acting to structure andsustain their supposed significance, at the same time preclude theparticipants from forming definite, shared, non self-referential ideasof these episodes.28

This self-validating character of ritual performances is furtherupheld by the distinctive pragmatic premises that, intuitively, under-lie people's participation in such events. Everyday interaction pro-ceeds in large part from the tacit presupposition that, in principie,behaviours express or notify dispositions: if I get angry it's becauseFm irritated, if I apologize it's because I'm sorry and so forth.However, because a person has no direct access to another's motivesand feelings, this equation is often uncertain: the relationship betweenpersonal dispositions and outward behaviour may be deliberatelymodified or concealed. As a result, everyday interaction inevitablyentails a process of negotiation in which the participants' positionswith respect to each other are being continually worked out. On thebasis of their own immediately experienced feelings and intentions

-1 See Rappaport 1979, 173-221.28 See Houseman 2002 for an Ulustration of this with regard to two recurrent

forras of ritual reflexivity: 'dissimulation', centred upon a perceptual divergence withinthe context of interactive complementarily, and 'simulación', founded upon a recur-sive circularity mediated by the manipulation of material (or discursive) artefacts.

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and on the basis of inferences regarding the feelings and intentionsof others, people are involved in co-constructing a mutually accom-modating social reality. In a ritual situation, however, the connec-tion between personal dispositions and overt actions scems to beoriented in the opposite direction. The patterning of behaviour, ratherthan being continually negotiated, is sharply constrained: it is theparticipants' actions, rather than their prívate motives and emotions,which are presumed to be stipulated and clearly defined. In short,dispositions proceed from behaviour rather than the other way around.This does not mean that real feelings and intentions are not involved,but rather that these are as much ¡nformed by the conventionalactions participants undertake as they may be said to provide thebasis for these actions. Gonsider, for example, the case of wailers infunerary ceremonies. They are rarely, if ever, those persons nearestto the deceased. Indeed, their unrestrained outpourings often standin sharp contrast to the silent stoicism exhibited by the dead per-son's closest kin. In many societies, it is, among other things, thereciprocal patterning of these two parties' behaviour that furnishesthe basis for the participants' distinctive, shared experience of ritu-alized mourning.

The problem, however, is that, as has been stressed, ritual actionsare generally highly ambiguous, such that the feelings and motiveswhich may be said to be appropriate to them are difficult to deter-mine. We might indeed say that while for ordinary interaction, theoverriding question is "given what I feel (and what I can infer aboutothers' feelings), what should I be doing?", in the case of ritual it is"given what I am doing (and what I perceive others doing), whatshould I be feeling?". Whereas in the case of everyday intercourse,the presumption of individual dispositions provides the definite start-ing point from which negotiated social behaviour proceeds, in diecase of ritual, it is, on the contrary, well-defined patterns of socialbehaviour that are taken to furnish the tangible basis for the par-tially idiosyncratic construction of individual participants' dispositions.Thus, for example, it is not because the women are upset and angrythat they scream and cry when young men are snatched from thevillage to be brought to the initiation camp where a monstrous beingis said to devour them. Certain of these women may indeed be moreor less angry or upset; others will be proud, anxious or even bemused.Chances are that they experience a mixture of contradictory feelings,all the more so because—unlike what young men themselves, who

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hear the women's desperate wailing, might well assume—a fair num-ber of these women, who have participated in this episode any num-ber of times, are well aware that the reality of the monster in questionis far from certain. On the other hand, the women's prescribedscreaming and crying imposes upon them a common performativecrucible within which their individual experiences of this movingepisode are constructed. Their stipulated behaviour provides a sharedwellspring from which the prívate emotions and intentions of eachof these women are drawn.

In order for ritual performances to be effective, that is, for theparticipants to acquire a measure of commitment to the realities theyenact, it is necessary that they be personally involved in the actionsthey undertake. In other words, it is important that they experienceemotional and intentional states in connection with these actions.However, the exact natura of these states, while informed by theprescribed behaviour they pursue and regulated by (at time conflicting)cues provided by the actions and discourse of others, remains under-determined. Each participant is involved in fashioning his or herown inner experiences in an individual, and therefore, partially idio-syncratic fashion. In much the same way that what seems to countis less the precise interpretations participants may make of theirbehaviour than their presumption that this behaviour is meaningful,what is crucial is not the particular prívate dispositions the partici-pants' acts may give rise to but the fact that their acts are investedwith personal feeling and intentionality.

Emergent Effects

As an unusually meaningful acting out of special types of relation-ship, a ritual event is perhaps best viewed neither as producing pre-cise messages to be deciphered, ñor as buttressing existing socialstructures directly, but as a particular process of recontextualization.On one level, this recontextualization derives from the polysemousor multiplex character of ritual action and concerns the unitary inte-gration of the disparate elements it brings together. The Beti women'sfunerary dance, for instance, does not orient participants towardsany particular understanding of the connection between, say, a man'sdeath and his affinal relations; ñor does it guarantee lineage-groupsolidarity or a resolution of conflictual relations between the sexes.

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Rather, it provides experiential grounds for the participants' com-mitment to the presumption that these various aspects of their sociallife are related to each other in a circular fashion. In other words,this ritual event acts as an emotionally and intentionally investedtouchstone for representations to the effect that blessing and warlikeaggression, marriage alliance and descent, the living and the deadand so forth, are not joined in a theoretically contingent, externa!or causal relationship, but in an internal or constitutive one. In short,it makes these diverse phenomena easier to communicate about asmutually reinforcing, inescapable features of the participants' socialworld.

The recontexualisation conferred by ritual action, however, relatesnot only to such comprehensiva, conceptual concerns, but to par-ticular, concrete situations as well. This second level of recontextu-alization is founded upon the two complementary, tangible operationsritual enactments invariably entail. To begin with, because ritualactions involve the condensation of nominally contrary modes of rela-tionship drawing upon a plurality of domains, they give rise to com-plex, highly evocative behaviours: distinctive acts, utterances andartefacts. In other words, they entail the definition of a specific sym-bolism. The main symbolic features of a given ritual are thus sim-ply that which the participants are given to experience in the courseof its execution: the golden rings exchanged during a Western mar-riage ceremony for example, the words that are solemnly pronounced,the spatial placing of the participants, their dress, the order of eventsand so forth. As has already been mentioned, the particular mean-ings that can be attributed to such features (e.g. gold's precious,untarnishable character bearing witness to the treasured and pre-sumable permanence of the matrimonial tie), are generally foundedupon cultural ideas and valúes which are current beyond the ritualenactment itself. However, what makes these features instances of aritual symbolism, deriving specifically from the ceremonial enactmentitself, is pointedly not such precise interpretations, but the fact thatthey serve as the auto-referential vehicles for designating the systemof relationships acted out in the course of the rite (e.g. gold weddingrings 'stand for' matrimony). In this respect, the particular actions,utterances and objects that emerge as the symbolic expression of agiven ritual performance constitute less a definite code signifying par-ticular messages than a special idiom indexing a privileged context.

At the same time, to the extent that ritual behaviour consists inthe acting out of relationships, it presupposes the designation of par-ticular agents, namely those between whom these relationships areacted out: persons occupying particular positions (e.g. the bride, thegroom, the in-laws, the officiants, the witnesses, etc.), but also, causallyembedded in a network of interpersonal ties, other, non-human enti-ties such as spirits, gods, ancestors and other 'powers' (e.g. govern-ment, the law, 'society', etc.) as well as animáis, objects, texts, formulaeor locations.

The designation of particular agencies on the one hand, and theemergence of a specific idiom whereby the relationships betweenthese agencies may be expressed on the other, comprise what C. Severiand I have called the "work" of ritual.29 This two-fold work consti-tutes the instrumental grounds for the characteristic efficacy of cere-monial performance: the provisión of indisputable, highly integrativecontexts in the light of which the myriad relationships that make upthe participants' social world may be conventionally reappraised andredefined.

In this perspective, ritual efficacy may be understood as the emer-gence, subsequent to and beyond the ritual performance itself, ofdiscourse and behaviour which, drawing upon the idiom this per-formance gives rise to and implicating the agencies designated in it,are predicated upon the relationships realized in the course of theritual's execution. The occurrence of such speech and action tellsthe tale of the participants' commitment less to abstract 'beliefs', thanto the ongoing reality of the relationships they ritually enact. Accordingto this view, as a result of people's (central or peripheral) participa-tion in ritual activities, the relationships acted out in the course ofthese activities—undying faithfulness, mutual responsibility, socialrecognition of change of status, subordination to legal authority andso forth in the case of marriage—are more easily entertained, inspeech and conduct, as unquestionable references for the evaluationof particular persons and situations in the world at large. Indeed,once said and done, such evaluative Ítems of discourse and action,while anchored in ritual experience, take on a life of their own,acquiring the distinctively naturalized, self-evident quality which is

See Houseman and Severi 1998, 254, 263.

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the hallmark of everyday interaction. Ritual action, if it is efficacious,thus irreversibly affects ordinary intercourse in perceptible ways: theparticipants' overt behaviour attests to the fact that 'before' and'after' are not the same. From this point of view, ritual is seriousbusiness: its efficacy is quite different from the gratification that resultsfrom playing (or observing) a game or from observing (or partici-pating in) a spectacle.

According to this view, then, rituals do rather less than more.Specifically, they do not créate anything ex nihilo. The presumedfaithfulness of cohabitating couples, their joint responsibility towardseach other and towards any children they may have, the distinctiveties with parents, friends and the government authorities this cohab-itation implies, are, for example, as much premises as they are resultsof the modern Western marriage ceremony. However, what ritualdoes do is lend new life to such principies of relationship by ground-ing them in the largely irrefutable yet difficult-to-defme experienceafforded by the ritual performance itself. From this standpoint, rit-ual appears as a distinctive mode of cultural transmission geared tothe organisation of action: it facilitates the ongoing relevance of cer-tain cultural valúes and ideas by packaging them in the form ofhighly memorable relational enactments the experience of which pro-vides participants with self-referential contexts in whose light thesevalúes and ideas may be justifiably put into effect.

Finally, it is worth remarking that in the perspective outlined here,it seems hardly accidental that ritual activities inlervene, for the mostpart, in connection wilh situations in which a conventional revalu-ation of existing social connections is most vital, that is, in thoserelating to change and, notably, to relational change. In everydaycircumstances, change generally takes place by means of incremen-tal adjustments governed by linear feedback processes taking placebetween particular individuáis or collectivities: as a person (or a col-lectivity) adopts new altitudes and patterns of behaviour, othersrespond by altering their own altitudes and behaviour towards himor her, alterations which, in turn, may prompt the person concernedto introduce still further modifications and so forth. The type ofchange or relational reappraisal mediated by ritual events is of amore holistic nature: when a youth undergoes initiation or when twopeople become married or when a sacrifica or a healing ritual isperformed, it is an entire complex of interrelated relationships thatare simultaneously affected and, in many cases, transformed. Whole

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sets of new, interdependent social redefinitions are brought into play.On the one hand, change brought about through ritual entails adefmite break: as has been mentioned, one of the hallmarks of rit-ual actions is that, for those who perform them, before and afterare not the same. At the same time, however, in so far as suchchange implies a confirmation of a prior set of interconnectionsbetween the various persons (and other entities) involved, it corrobó-rales the pre-existing order it presupposes. In short, in the type ofrecontextualization favoured by rilual action, local disconlinuilies (e.g.ihe change of social slatus entailed by becoming husband and wife)are systemically embedded within the predication of wider continuities(e.g. ihe system of social staluses as defined ihrough connections withand between family members, friends, governmenl represenlatives,etc.). This is not to say that such systemic revalualions can not takeplace in the absence of ritual, but only that ritual is particularly well-suited to bringing them aboul.

Conclusión

To sum up: by means of stipulated behaviour enacting highly evoca-tive and fundamentally ambiguous relationships (entailing the con-densation of opposites), struclured by inleraclive patterning (overallform) and implying an inversión of certain pragmatic suppositionsgoverning ordinary interaction (actions tend to inform dispositionsralher ihan ihe other way around), ritual performances afford par-ticipants with the immediate, personal experience of highly inlegra-tive, extra-ordinary realilies, suslained by self-reference and by theintroduction of designaled agencies and of special idioms (symbol-ism); in doing so, ihese performances provide ihe participants withlargely unassailable contexis for ihe conventional reappraisal of ihecoordínale relationships that make up their social world.

Ritual has been envisaged here as a distinctive way of enactingrelationships. As such, it is neither a slraighl-forward, objective fea-lure of the world (a given ilem of behaviour is rilual regardless ofhow il is perceived), ñor a purely subjeclive phenomena (anythingcan equally well be appreciated as rilual), bul somelhing in belween.Specifically, rilual is one of whal musí surely be several basic organi-salional poles or attractors governing the perception and palterningof embodied social action.

í428 MICHA£L HOUSEMAN

According to this view, ritual is less a particular category of behav-iour per se than it is an interrelated a set of interactive premises per-taining to intentionality, degree of systemic closure, the link betweenfeeling and action, the constitutive attributes of relational condensa-tion and so forth. Within the framework of any particular enact-ment, these pragmatic presuppositions may be intuitively entertainedby individual participants to a greater or lesser degree: what is res-olutely a ritual for some may, for example, be more of a spectaclefor others. At the same time, however, the exigencies of ongoingcoordinated action will tend to minimize such disparities, orientingparticipants' perceptual and performative expectations along similarlines. The closer these lines match those implied by the premises ofritual, the more their interaction gives rise to events having the qual-ities described above. Indeed, because ritual consists in a particularexperience of relationships, its identification hinges essentially uponpersonal participation. It is impossible, for example, when witness-ing an heretofore unknown sequence of behaviour from a totallydetached standpoint, to determine whether this sequence is a ritualrather than, say, a game, a spectacle or a simply a peculiar instanceof ordinary interaction. On the other hand, even the slightest activeinvolvement in such an episode is often sufficient to allow one tocorrectly evalúate it in ternas of these different interactive modes.Finally, it should be stressed that if ritual is indeed an elementarymode of communicative intention, it is hardly alone in this respect.Play and spectacle, for example, represent other, equally distinctivemeans of enacting relationships which, in many concrete situations,are associated with ritual and with each other in complex ways.30

Recognition of this plurality is required if we are to go beyond thesacred/profane dichotomy (and its contemporary avatars) that con-tinúes to hold sway in the study of ritual.

30 See M. Houseman, "Vers un modele anthropologique de la pratique psycho-thérapeutique", Thérapie Familiale 24 (2003), 309-332.

SEMIOTICS

Jens Kreinath

Preliminaiy Consideratwns

If one conceives of rituals as sign processes, as semiotics docs, thequestions arise (1) what concepts of signs can be used to analyze rit-uals, (2) what is characteristic of rituals, and (3) how do rituals differfrom other forms of social action. It is necessary to specify what kindof sign processes rituals are and how they can be distinguished fromother forms of action by their particular use of signs. The signs inritual have to show by their usage that they follow their own logicand composition and thereby unfold their own dynamic and efficacy,which can be ascribed to them based on characteristics such assequentiality, regularity, referentiality, or formality. Furthermore, itwill be necessary to determine the extent to which rituals consist ofan arrangement of sign processes that are related to one another insuch a way that, through their interplay, they are unique and forma unity in their own right.

It has long been and continúes to be common for semioticapproaches to ritual to use language as the primary model for ana-lyzing and determining rituals as systems of signs; this is rooted inthe fact that semiotics is usually identified with linguistics. Eventhough it seems evident that rituals differ from language, the vari-ous concepts of signs tliat are developed in modern linguistics haveoften been uncritically applied to the analysis of rituals. Justice can-not be done to the difference between language and ritual as longas linguistic concepts are used. This also accounts for the assump-tion that the use of signs in ritual performances is coded or that themeaning communicated in rituals follows a particular set of con-ventional rules (comparable to the rules of syntax). Even if ritualsare instead compared with other forms of social action—say, to takethe most prominent examples, with performing arts such as music,dance, and theater—one still has to guard against analyzing theseforms within the restricted borders of linguistic parameters, becauseeven here the very selection of linguistic concepts makes it impossible