Some of the Understudied Dimensions of Ritual
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/jcsr.24990Keywords:
ritual, evolution, cognition, ethnographyAbstract
Ritual: How Seemingly Senseless Acts Make Life Worth Living by Dimitris Xygalatas offers a popularized accounting of an adaptationist view of ritual. By highlighting the author’s own work on the topic, the text itself primarily addresses questions of public rituals’ often extreme costs and its relationship to cooperation. This emphasis, though, comes at the expense of other interesting and/or downstream aspects of ritual that, in my view, deserve more attention. In this commentary, I address a handful of the most relevant to the target text, namely: 1) religious vs. secular rituals; 2) the spatio-temporal distribution of ritual; 3) ritual frequency and timing; 4) the demographic structuring of ritual; 5) ritual’s complicated relationship to control and chance; and 6) ritual as a significant generator of meaningful models about the world.
References
Barrett, J. L., Shaw, R. D., Pfeiffer, J., & Grimes, J. (2019). Where the gods dwell: A research report. Journal of Cognition and Culture, 19(1–2), 131–146. https://doi.org/10.1163/15685373-12340051
Basso, K. H. (1996). Wisdom sits in places: Landscape and language among the Western Apache. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.
Bendixen, T., Apicella, C. L., Atkinson, Q., Cohen, E., Henrich, J., McNamara, R. A., Norenzayan, A., Willard, A. K., Xygalatas, D., & Purzycki, B. G. (2024). Appealing to the minds of gods: Religious beliefs and appeals correspond to features of local social ecologies. Religion, Brain and Behavior, 14(2), 183–205. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/tjn3e
Bendixen, T., & Purzycki, B. G. (2020). Peering into the minds of gods: What cross-cultural variation in gods’ concerns can tell us about the evolution of religion. Journal for the Cognitive Science of Religion, 5(2), 142–165. https://doi.org/10.1558/jcsr.40951
Bering, J. (2012). The belief instinct: The psychology of souls, destiny, and the meaning of life. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
Boyer, P. (1994). Cognitive constraints on cultural representations: Natural ontologies and religious ideas. In L. A. Hirschfeld & S. A. Gelman (Eds.), Mapping the mind: Domain Specificity in Cognition and Culture (pp. 391–411). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bulbulia, J. (2004). Religious costs as adaptations that signal altruistic intention. Evolution and Cognition, 10(1), 19–42.
———. (2008). Meme infection or religious niche construction? An adaptationist alternative to the cultural maladaptationist hypothesis. Method & Theory in the Study of Religion, 20(1), 67–107. https://doi.org/10.1163/157006808X260241
Chvaja, R., Horský, J., Lang, M., & Kundt, R. (2023). Positive association between ritual performance and perceived objectivity of moral norms. The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 33(2), 115–135. https://doi.org/10.1080/10508619.2022.2121454
Cronk, L. (1994). Evolutionary theories of morality and the manipulative use of signals. Zygon, 29(1), 81–101. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9744.1994.tb00651.x
Davalos, K. M. (1996). “La Quinceanera”: Making gender and ethnic identities. Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, 16(2/3), 101–127.
Eason, P. K., Cobbs, G. A., & Trinca, K. G. (1999). The use of landmarks to define territorial boundaries. Animal Behaviour, 58(1), 85–91. https://doi.org/10.1006/anbe.1999.1133
Feraca, S. E. (2001). Wakinyan: Lakota religion in the twentieth century. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
Hieb, L. (2008). The Hopi Clown Ceremony (Tsukulalwa). American Indian Culture and Research Journal, 32(4), 107–124.
Hill, K. R., Wood, B. M., Baggio, J., Hurtado, A. M., & Boyd, R. T. (2014). Hunter-gatherer inter-band interaction rates: Implications for cumulative culture. PLoS ONE, 9(7), e102806. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0102806
Hirsch, E., & O’Hanlon, M. (1995). The anthropology of landscape: Perspectives on place and space. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hynes, W. J., & Doty, W. G. (1997). Mythical trickster figures: Contours, contexts, and criticisms (Revised edition). Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press.
Jensen, J. S. (2019). What is religion? (2nd edition). New York: Routledge.
Johnson, D. (2015). God is watching you: How the fear of God makes us human. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Jordan, P. (2003). Material culture and sacred landscape: The anthropology of the Siberian Khanty. Lanham: Altamira Press.
LaManna, J. R., & Eason, P. K. (2003). Effects of landmarks on territorial establishment. Animal Behaviour, 65(3), 471–478. https://doi.org/10.1006/anbe.2003.2095
Lang, M., Chvaja, R., Purzycki, B. G., Václavík, D., & Stanek, R. (2022). Advertising cooperative phenotype through costly signals facilitates collective action. Royal Society Open Science, 9(5), 202202. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.202202
Lansing, J. S. (2007). Priests and programmers: Technologies of power in the engineered landscape of Bali. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Lansing, J. S., & Kremer, J. N. (1993). Emergent properties of Balinese Water Temple networks: Coadaptation on a rugged fitness landscape. American Anthropologist, 95(1), 97–114. https://doi.org/10.1525/aa.1993.95.1.02a00050
Lewis, T. H. (1992). The medicine men: Oglala Sioux ceremony and healing. Norman: University of Nebraska Press.
Lightner, A. D., Heckelsmiller, C., & Hagen, E. H. (2021). Ethnomedical specialists and their supernatural theories of disease. Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 14, 611–646. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-021-00589-8
Lojewski, J. A., & Switzer, P. V. (2015). The role of landmarks in territory maintenance by the black saddlebags dragonfly, Tramea lacerata. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, 69(3), 347–355. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-014-1847-z
Malinowski, B. (1954). Magic, science and religion. Garden City: Doubleday Anchor Books.
Moore, O. K. (1957). Divination – A new perspective. American Anthropologist, 59(1), 69–74.
Pelton, R. D. (1980). The trickster in West Africa: A study of mythic irony and sacred delight. Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Plant, J. (1994). Heyoka: Die Contraries und Clowns der Plainsindianer. Wyk auf Föhr: Verlag für Amerikanistik.
Power, C. (2015). Hadza gender rituals – epeme and maitoko – considered as counterparts. Hunter Gatherer Research, 1(3), 333–358. https://doi.org/10.3828/hgr.2015.18
Purzycki, B. G., & Arakchaa, T. (2013). Ritual behavior and trust in the Tyva Republic. Current Anthropology, 54(3), 381–388. https://doi.org/10.1086/670526
Purzycki, B. G., Finkel, D. N., Shaver, J., Wales, N., Cohen, A. B., & Sosis, R. (2012). What does God know? Supernatural agents’ access to socially strategic and non-strategic information. Cognitive Science, 36(5), 846–869. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1551-6709.2012.01242.x
Purzycki, B. G., & Sosis, R. (2022). Religion evolving: The dynamics of culture, cognition, and ecology. Sheffield: Equinox.
Rappaport, R. A. (1979). Ecology, meaning, and religion. Berkeley: North Atlantic Books.
———. (1999). Ritual and religion in the making of humanity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Reynolds, V., & Tanner, R. (1995). The social ecology of religion (2nd ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Rossano, M. J. (2023). The minds behind the ritual: How “ordering gods” reinforced human cooperation. In B. G. Purzycki & T. Bendixen (Eds.), The minds of gods: New horizons in the naturalistic study of religion (pp. 77–88). London: Bloomsbury.
Rossano, M., & LeBlanc, A. (2017). Why add the supernatural? Religion, Brain & Behavior, 7(4), 375–377. https://doi.org/10.1080/2153599X.2016.1249932
Searle, J. R. (1997). The construction of social reality. New York: Free Press.
Shariff, A. F., & Norenzayan, A. (2007). God is watching you: Priming God concepts increases prosocial behavior in an anonymous economic game. Psychological Science, 18(9), 803–809. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2007.01983.x
Shaver, J. H. (2015). The evolution of stratification in Fijian ritual participation. Religion, Brain & Behavior, 5(2), 101–117. https://doi.org/10.1080/2153599X.2014.893253
Shaver, J. H., & Sosis, R. (2014). How does male ritual behavior vary across the lifespan? Human Nature, 25(1), 136–160. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-014-9191-6
Sierksma, F. (1963). Sacred cairns in pastoral cultures. History of Religions, 2(2), 227-241. https://doi.org/10.1086/462462
Singh, M. (2018). The cultural evolution of shamanism. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 41. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X17001893
Skaanes, T. (2015). Notes on Hadza cosmology: Epeme, objects and rituals. Hunter Gatherer Research, 1(2), 247–267. https://doi.org/10.3828/hgr.2015.13
Sosis, R. (2003). Why aren’t we all Hutterites? Human Nature, 14(2), 91–127. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-003-1000-6
———. (2009). The adaptationist-byproduct debate on the evolution of religion: Five misunderstandings of the adaptationist program. Journal of Cognition and Culture, 9(3), 315–332. https://doi.org/10.1163/156770909X12518536414411
Sosis, R., & Bressler, E. R. (2003). Cooperation and commune longevity: A test of the costly signaling theory of religion. Cross-Cultural Research, 37(2), 211–239. https://doi.org/10.1177/1069397103037002003
Sosis, R., & Handwerker, W. P. (2011). Psalms and coping with uncertainty: Religious Israeli women’s responses to the 2006 Lebanon War. American Anthropologist, 113(1), 40–55. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1548-1433.2010.01305.x
Sosis, R., & Kiper, J. (2022). Sport as a meaning-making system: Insights from the study of religion. Religions, 13(10). https://doi.org/10.3390/rel13100915
Sørensen, J. (2023). Why cultures persist: Toward a cultural immunology. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press.
Strassmann, B. I. (1992). The function of menstrual taboos among the Dogon. Human Nature, 3(2), 89–131. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02692249
Tedlock, B. (1992). The clown’s way. In D. Tedlock & B. Tedlock (Eds.), Teachings from the American earth: Indian religion and philosophy (pp. 105–118). New York: Liveright.
Tuzin, D. F. (1997). The cassowary’s revenge: The life and death of masculinity in a New Guinea Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Tylor, E. B. (1871). Primitive culture: Researches into the development of mythology, philosophy, religion, art, and custom. London: John Murray.
Watanabe, H. (1972). The Ainu. In M. G. Bicchieri (Ed.), Hunters and gatherers today: A socioeconomic study of eleven such cultures in the twentieth century (pp. 448–484). Prospect Heights: Waveland Press.
Watts, J., Hamerslag, E. M., Sprules, C., Shaver, J. H., & Dunbar, R. I. M. (2022). Food storage facilitates professional religious specialization in hunter-gatherer societies. Evolutionary Human Sciences, 4, e17. https://doi.org/10.1017/ehs.2022.17
Whitehouse, H. (2000). Arguments and icons: Divergent modes of religiosity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
———. (2004). Modes of religiosity: A cognitive theory of religious transmission. Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press.
Willard, A. K. (2018). Religion and prosocial behavior among the Indo-Fijians. Religion, Brain & Behavior, 8(2), 227–242. https://doi.org/10.1080/2153599X.2016.1267032
Winkelman, M. J. (2021). A cross-cultural study of the elementary forms of religious life: Shamanistic healers, priests, and witches. Religion, Brain & Behavior, 11(1), 27–45. https://doi.org/10.1080/2153599X.2020.1770845
Xygalatas, Dimitris. 2022. Ritual: How seemingly senseless acts make life worth living. Boston: Little Brown.
Published
Issue
Section
License
Equinox Publishing Ltd.
