Ritual action, aimed at transforming social and material reality, is found in all cultures (Bell, 1997). Ritual is used to create marriages or systems of authority in the social domain and to eradicate illness or ensure good crops in the material domains. Two theoretical strands explain the universal structure of ritual: That it is marked by a unique universal grammar with intuitive, internal logic (Rappaport, 1999) and that it rests on intuitive inferences about causal power (Boyer, 2001; Lawson & McCauley, 2002). Ritual grammar serves to instantiate social realities. Ritual causality follows the logic of agents, actions, and patients that are marked for special powers. This study with children (5- to 6-years and 8- to 9-years) experimentally examined how participants of different ages understand ritual for transforming social and material reality. Interviews with children were comprised of three tasks to examine childrens recognition, their causal understanding of ritual grammar, and what connections they made to their prior experience. Childrens explanations were examined. A parent rating of childrens prior experience was also included. An adult sample provided a comparison. In general, ritual grammar understanding emerged in the age period studied and was unrelated to parent rating of childrens prior experience. Some ritual grammar elements were understood earlier than others. There were few differences between the social and material conditions; children (and adults) seemed to have a general understanding of ritual grammar regardless of domain. Children (and adults) showed little evidence of connections to their prior experience, suggesting a weak explicit framework for ritual grammar. Results are discussed in terms of the possible cognitive underpinnings of ritual grammar understanding. Childrens understanding of ritual is grounded in socio-cultural, cognitive, and developmental theory and considered to be an important part of childrens developing participation in cultural construction.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:PITT/oai:PITTETD:etd-05062005-154010 |
| Date | 10 May 2005 |
| Creators | Jacobs, Melanie Gail |
| Contributors | Mark Strauss, Kevin Crowley, Raymond Hummel, Keith Brown, Carl Johnson |
| Publisher | University of Pittsburgh |
| Source Sets | University of Pittsburgh |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.pitt.edu/ETD/available/etd-05062005-154010/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University of Pittsburgh or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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