The currently popular approach to conceptualizing feasting practices in the archaeological record leaves little room for diversity in motivation or identity. At the moment, the only social actor given attention in the literature concerning feasting events is hypothesized to be a self-aggrandizing, elite-aspiring male. The narrow conception of who was responsible for feasts, and the reasons for holding them, shuts out the multitude of other standpoints and motivations which have the potential to broaden our understanding of these important social events. Through the intersection of the ancient Maya ritual ballgame, associated feasting, and gendered participation, I demonstrate the necessity of accounting for, and incorporating, a variety of perspectives and motivations when considering the feast as an important form of social interaction. / text

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Uppsalas studentnationer grundades på 1600-talet och har sedan dess blivit en central del i Uppsalasstudentliv. I föreliggande studie undersöks Uppsala studentnationers roll i främjandet avstudenternas välbefinnande och skapande av gemenskap mellan medlemmarna. Särskilt fokus istudien ligger på de så kallade sittningarna – middagar med mat, dryck, sång och tal. Sittningarna ären del av nationslivet som är särskilt viktig för produktion och reproduktion av gemensammasymboler inom ramen för de ritualer som äger rum på sittningarna. En historisk bakgrund ochbeskrivning av studentnationerna idag tjänar som bakgrundsavsnitt för att visa hur nationernakommit att bli som de är idag och förklara framväxten av den sittningskultur som idag råder pånationerna. När studentnationerna studeras görs det vanligtvis med ett organisationsteoretisktperspektiv. Här görs en ansats att förklara nationerna ur andra teoretiska perspektiv då detorganisationsteoretiska begränsar möjligheterna till att förstå nationerna som socialt fenomen.Utifrån ett symboliskt interaktionistiskt perspektiv används teorier kring interaktion, institution ochritual för att förklara var som händer på sittningarna. Material från en observationsstudie på ennationssittning, åtta intervjuer med nationsaktiva studenter samt nationernas sångböcker haranalyserats utifrån det teoretiska perspektivet. Analysen av materialet visar att ritualer påsittningarna är viktiga för att skapa välbefinnande och gemenskap, och där står sången ut somsärskilt central. När sittningsdeltagarna sjunger tillsammans går de in i en gemensam roll och bliraktörer snarare än observatörer. Analysen visar också att det inte är tillräckligt att betraktastudentnationerna som moderna organisationer. Istället är institutionsbegreppet centralt för attbeskriva de ständigt pågående processerna där nya medlemmar integreras i institutionen, hurmedlemmarna tillsammans utgör nationen och hur sittningarna – när ritualerna är förståeliga och harmening – bidrar till studenternas välbefinnande och utgör nationslivets själva kärna.

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Scale of time William Empson writes that the length of a human life and the conscious moment are the two main scales by which the human mind measures time. With one too large to sense and the other too difficult to identify, my project instead uses the length of individual daily activities as units - eating breakfast is a time unit, cooking a lunch is another time unit – to help make time perceptible, to be aware of the present, and to experience the ritual in daily life. Not every daily activity possesses its own specific time span and therefore I chose basic everyday activities that do (eating, cooking, sleeping, etc.) and defined them as specific activities.   Activity modules Based on informal surveys and my own everyday routine at home, I have defined 7 specific activities. Each specific activity has been given a customized moveable activity module to provide a place for that activity. The negative space created between activity modules within the project's spatial framework I called generic space and is used for interstitial unintentional activities.   Spatialframework Sarah Wigglesworth’s Straw Bale House and Go Hasegawa’s House in Sakuradairepresent two approaches to organizing space based on activities – combining and breaking down. My project takes a third approach by providing a spatial framework within which functional layouts can be rearranged.Each activity module can easily change location inside the spatial framework based on which activity is taking place.

Stonehenge is a place of mystery and wonder, where it stands as a last witness to long forgotten religious practices and rituals, and its sophisticated stone structure still makes a huge impression after over 4000 years. And it raises questions as to how it was built, and why? Stonehenge is today one of the world`s most famous megalithic monument in the world, and in its right. But Stonehenge is more than just big stones;it has a much longer and richer history than that. Stonehenge also has many surrounding monuments, from the same time period, and thought of as today, to coexist and fill different, specific functions, as a ritual landscape. The more archaeologists learn about Stonehenge, the more complex the picture gets. Today, the understanding of Stonehenge lies just as much in the surrounding landscape, as in the monument itself.

This social anthropological thesis reports on fieldwork in a coenobitic Orthodox monastery on Mount Athos. In Part I the thesis is concerned with metanoia - repentance from sins. Penthos, mourning, is a personal condition of extreme sobriety in which both laughter and anger are avoided, and repentance must be expressed in word and posture if ever anger is shown. But tacitly, there can be a competitive element in seeking pardon. If a monk weeps, this is seen as a gift - charisma - from God, and this is most likely to be conferred on senior and notably devout monks. Part II is concerned with the transition from the newcomer status through to three higher degrees of spiritual maturity. This progress is marked both by transitional rituals, such as tonsure, and the formal donning of robes which signify higher stages. The insights of Van Gennep are helpftil in appreciating the general transition from the secular to a more spiritual condition, and in appreciating particular rituals. But the condition of spiritual vulnerability is not captured by either a particular rite, or practices in a particular place. The fuller understanding of passage requires Seremetakis' wider and more flexible approach, expressed in the concept of "ritualization". She directs our attention away from the specificity of any particular rite, to the wider context of fragmented social experiences, and understandings which are precipitates of an unstable flow of ordinary social events. Part ifi deals with the problems presented by parastaseis - representations - or, more simply, memories of secular life. Monks should have utterly renounced their secular affections to their consanguineal kin. Nor should they be proud of their previous communities of origin, or educational attainments. In principle, the value of humility - tapeinosis - should reign. But here is a further context for inequality to occur. For the minority of monks who have been previously married, no matter how they struggle to obliterate memories of their attachments to wives or children - are deemed to be in an inherently inferior condition to those whose purity has never been compromised by sexual congress, or procreative pride. The thesis concludes with the observation that Turner's concept of an inherently egalitarian communitas is not supported by the monastery. Rather, Dumont's proposal that in all religious value commitments, there are inevitably implicit rank differences, fmds support. Just as the monks in their own eyes are spiritually superior to the laity, so within the community of monks, the nevermarried are ranked in their own eyes above the pandremenoi, the "married" monks. In a substantial Appendix, the monastic naming system is examined within the framework of suggestions from Levi-Strauss, and against the contrast medium of previous Greek ethnography.

In 2010, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts accessioned a ritual gourd from Mambila peoples of Nigeria and Cameroon into their collection. Although ritual containers with similar configurations abound in different parts of the Cameroon Grasslands in Central Africa, the VMFA gourd presents particular difficulties due to the nature of its accumulation and the lack of scholarship on the Mambila peoples. Therefore, in this thesis, all the aspects of its accumulation have been considered in relation to the culture and belief system of the Mambila and their neighbors. Special attention has been paid to the interconnectedness of form, function, and meaning throughout the thesis in order to shed some light on the social, cosmic, and ritual significance of the gourd and its attachments.

This comparative study focuses on ritual aspects of Western and Asian performance. We may say that ritual in contemporary theater production has limitation to become realization. The limitation arises from contemporary period’s nature. We know that these days we do not have common or collective psyche. However, some theatre artists are trying to get back ritual function and process to recover real communion between spectator and performer throughout performance.

This thesis is an interpretation of the ritualistic and storied behaviour of two Christian congregations of the Charismatic ‘house-church’ or ‘New Church’ genre, established within the last thirty years in Glasgow, West of Scotland. The exercise is framed by the field of research and commentary on the global rise and impact of the Neo-Pentecostal or Charismatic Movement in the latter part of the twentieth century, from which the ‘house-churches’ derive motivation and ritual, and by the growing field of Congregational Studies pioneered by James F. Hopewell (1988) in Congregation: Stories and Structures. The congregations which form the locus for the fieldwork are Bishopbriggs Charismatic Church (BCC – a pseudonym) in the northern suburbs of Glasgow and Bridgeton Charismatic Fellowship (BCF - a pseudonym), an inner-city congregation in the East End of Glasgow. PART ONE: Charismatic Renewal, Congregational Studies & Two Churches provides the background in terms of general history, methodology, and interpretation of the two congregations. Chapter One charts the history of the Charismatic Movement and the rise of the ‘house-churches’, with particular focus on its history in Scotland. Chapter Two explores the literature relating to the ethnographic axis of ritual and narrative as used in this thesis. Chapter Three explains the rationale for the ethnographic methodology practiced, and its relationship to the theological interpretative schema in which it is framed. Chapter Four is a description of the fieldwork sites and a full picture of the two congregations. Chapter Five is a primary parabolic interpretation of the two congregations. PART TWO: Rituals that Live is a series of themed essays that explore and interpret the essential habitus of the two congregations. Chapter Six argues that music acts to catalyse the Divine-human encounter, turning ‘secular’ space into ‘sacred’ space. In Chapter Seven I observe and interpret the somatic nature of the ritual field. Chapter Eight explores an imaginal process which weaves its revelatory efficacy. Chapter Nine explores the symbiotic relationship of ritual to narrative and Chapter Ten turns ethnographic observation from the central ritual matrix of Sunday morning to the missional activity of the congregations. Chapter Eleven argues for a particular missiology based on motifs and themes arising from the previous six chapters. PART THREE: Beyond the Written Word concludes the thesis by arguing that the Charismatic habitus of the house-churches indicates a surprising turn of Protestant congregations to semiotics and orality. Following Catherine Pickstock (1998) and Walter J. Ong (1969) I contend that this turn is a pursuit of presence against the distancing effects of the written and propositional dogmas of Protestant ancestry.