CEREMONY

CEREMONY is conventionally defined as a highly formalized observance or practice prescribed by custom and undertaken by a collective, or as customary observances and practices considered as a whole. In contrast to conventional usage, in which the term ceremony is interchanged indiscriminately with ritual, in theoretical discussion, the terms are increasingly distinguished; ceremony is identified as a genre or type of ritual that is distinguished from other genres by its object. A prevalent trend identifies ceremony with secular interests, that is, the symbolic representation of sociocultural arrangements as opposed to religious or sacred ones. In addition, ceremony is differentiated by its essentially conservative social role: the maintenance of existing sociocultural arrangements over against their transformation. Presidential inaugurations in the United States, for example, transfer power from one political party to another in order that the democratic political system remains intact. Key to transferal of power is legitimation of the new regime. This is achieved both by election and by securing God's blessing at the swearing in of the new president.

The question has been raised whether it is not more proper and useful to approach ceremony as a ritual attitude as opposed to a distinct ritual type. Ronald L. Grimes argues that standard analytic or classificatory distinctions among types of ritual—differentiation between "sacred" and "profane" activity, and so on—are insufficient in the analysis of ritual, since they fail to take into account a variety of "embodied attitudes" that emerge during the course of a ritual, such as ceremony, decorum, and ritualization. Ceremony is not so much an analytic type as it is a layer, attitude, sensibility, or "mode" of ritual, contends Grimes. He suggests that when one or another mode becomes dominant, it is proper to speak of a ritual of ceremony, and so forth (Grimes, 1982, pp. 223, 235, 241).

This entry gives an overview of the theoretical discussion, devoting special attention to the relationship between ceremony and political power, and that between ceremony and religion, both central concerns in the theories. In contrast to theorists who identify ceremony as a strictly secular ritual, this entry suggests that inasmuch as sociopolitical (or secular) and religious (or sacred) interests overlap and even converge, the relationship between ceremony and religion is problematic; they are not always distinct.

Theories of Ceremony

Theorists call attention to features of ceremony that are characteristic of such rituals. Formalization and stylization (i.e., specification of time and place, formulaic speech and gesture, etc.) are indicative of ceremony's scripted character as "intentional" (Grimes, 1982, p. 41) or self-conscious behavior. Ceremony is fundamentally self-reflective performance. As such, ceremony is essentially "self-symbolizing" (Goffman, 1974, p. 58); it has representational intent. Like all symbolic behavior, ceremony points to a larger framework of action. The public character of ceremony is an indication that its more general context is social and cultural life. According to Erving Goffman, ceremony provides a symbolic means whereby participants represent themselves in one of their central social roles (1974, p. 58). Through dramatization and other representational means ceremony presents those ideologies, values, and the social institutions to which they are bound, as well as other sociocultural constructs that constitute social and cultural life or group life, in the case of ceremonies undertaken on a smaller scale.

The underlying motivation in the ceremonial representation of the various social and cultural constructs is said to be the confirmation and reinforcement of those organizing frameworks that order sociocultural life in a normative way. Steven Lukes explains that:

the symbolism of political ritual represents … particular models or political paradigms of society and how it functions. In this sense, such ritual plays, as Durkheim argued, a cognitive role, rendering intelligible society and social relationships.… In other words, it helps to define as authoritative certain ways of seeing society: it serves to specify what in society is of special significance, it draws people's attention to certain forms of relationships and activity—and at the same time, therefore, it deflects their attention from other forms, since every way of seeing [is] also a way of not seeing. (Lukes, 1975, p. 301)

"Ceremony," writes Victor Turner, "constitutes an impressive institutionalized performance of indicative, normatively structured social reality" (1982, p. 83). In his view, ceremony's indicative role gives it a conservative character that distinguishes it from ritual. "Ceremony indicates, ritual transforms," Turner emphasizes (1982, p. 80). Ritual is "a transformative self-immolation of order as presently constituted, even sometimes a voluntary sparagmos or self-dismemberment of order, in the subjunctive depths of liminality" (1982, p. 83). "Without taking liminality into account ritual becomes indistinguishable from 'ceremon'" (1982, p. 80). Ritual derives its liminal quality from separating participants from their everyday social-structural identity and, consequently, from creating an ambiguous social status as the ritual prepares participants to undergo a transition to a new social identity (1982, pp. 80–85). Turner contends that ritual exists in dialectical relation to everyday social structure; ritual is fundamentally "anti-structure" (Turner, 1974). By relaxing social structural requirements, ritual liminality makes possible experimentation with social structure, and with it, structural and cultural innovation. Thus, ritual enables sociocultural systems to change and grow as new demands, particularly for egalitarian and direct (or "communitarian") social interchange, challenge existing social-structural arrangements. Turner's conceptualization of ritual liminality helps explain why spontaneity and disorder seldom emerge during the course of ceremony, and then only during prescribed times or in established places: the intent to conserve the social-structural status quo requires that ceremony's liminal aspects be narrowly circumscribed or kept in check.

Ceremony's confirmatory or conservative role makes it especially suited to exploitation in times of social conflict or potential crisis, when existing norms are challenged or under threat. Since formalization conveys legitimacy, ceremony lends itself to portraying as indisputable and fixed those ideologies and social institutions that are most in doubt during times of social crisis. Sally F. Moore and Barbara G. Myerhoff note that ceremony's authoritative presentation of its material as axiomatic is paradoxical, since it is the most obviously contrived and hence arbitrary social interaction. They note that preoccupation with order by implication points to the possibility of disorder, chaos, and most importantly, open choice of other cultural configurations. While ceremony may be intended to mask contradiction, on a more subtle, less conscious level, it may give it expression (Moore and Myerhoff, 1977, pp. 16, 18; cf. Lukes, 1975, pp. 296–302).

A more fundamental motivation in the ceremonial representation of social and cultural constructs identified by Moore and Myerhoff is the cultural declaration of order over against indeterminacy. Ceremony is intended to proclaim "cultural order as against a cultural void," which exist in dialectical tension. It "banishes from consideration the basic questions raised by the made-upness of culture, its malleability and alterability." As formalized behavior, ceremony is essentially an attempt to assert order: "Through order, formality, and repetition it seeks to state that the cosmos and social world, or some particular small part of them are orderly and explicable and for the moment fixed" (Moore and Myerhoff, 1977, pp. 16–17). Formality thus allows ceremony to authenticate its message, conferring permanence and legitimacy on what is in fact a social construction. "Its medium is part of its message" (1977, p. 8).

While ceremony symbolizes or reflects the socially and culturally normative, it is not a mere mirror image. Ceremonies, notes Moore, are not simply dramatizations of social and moral norms: they are "performative acts." Ceremonies do not simply communicate information, nor are they merely analogies; "they do something," putting into action what they symbolize (Moore, 1977). Clifford Geertz explains that by presenting an ontology, a demonstration of being or existence, ceremony serves "to make it happen—make it actual" (1980).

Ceremony models or shapes sociocultural life in a twofold sense, Geertz observes. It offers idealized representations of normative social arrangements that are to be emulated; it also encourages participants to conform their behavior to these arrangements by showing that the way of life that is presented is adapted to the world as it actually exists. Hence ceremony is paradigmatic in a dual sense: it is both a model of and a model for social and cultural life (Geertz, 1980 and 1973).

Inextricably linked to ceremony's corroborative and legitimating functions is the assertion and securing of power. As Grimes observes, "ceremony consists of power negotiations in ritual form.… Ceremonial gestures are bids for authority, prestige, recognition, and control" (1982, p. 224). The underlying interest in asserting and securing power gives ceremony a serious tone, which remains dominant even when ceremony manifests festive aspects. Grimes observes that because ceremony implies a distinction between the group that is symbolically asserting its power and the "other side, it is manifestly competitive, sometimes conflict-laden" (1982, p. 42). The successful symbolization of power requires that the social contradiction inherent in the arbitrary assertion of power be masked and only righteous or legitimate properties be exposed. The potential for power to be a source of conflict and not solely a means of conflict resolution must also be concealed. Other theorists point out that ceremony is not simply a disguise for power; it is the assertion of power, or power in action. The fact that ceremony is imbued with the authority of groups that are already in a position of power or that are emerging as a dominant power explains in part why it is one of the predominant frames, or principles of organization, by which social arrangements are ordered (Goffman, 1974, pp. 10–11, 48).

Ceremony and Political Power

Political rituals are the most obvious examples of ceremony as it relates to power. Catherine Bell defines "political rites" as "ceremonial practices that specifically construct, display and promote the power of political institutions (such as king, state, the village elders) or the political interests of distinct constituencies and subgroups" (1997, p. 128). Bell draws from Geertz in her observation that political rituals create power by establishing a ruler or political institution's "iconicity" with the order of the cosmos (Bell, 1997, pp. 128–130; Geertz, 1980). Geertz observes that ceremony demonstrates that a political regime is an image of the cosmic order itself, and thus is congruent with the cosmic order. Showing the ruling political power to be part of the cosmic order, and hence part of the natural order of things, establishes its legitimacy.

Congruence between political power and cosmic order is demonstrated by way of an elaborate argument communicated in symbolic performance or display. Geertz offers the example of the display of vast wealth by the "theater state" of ancient Java or Bali, to which kings devoted most of their time. The continual display of the ruler's wealth through a variety of state rituals demonstrated that his rule was "a microcosm of the supernatural order … and the material embodiment of the political order" (Bell, 1997, p. 129, citing Geertz, 1980, p. 13). In his classic essay on religion as a cultural symbol system, Geertz (1973) observes that ritual performance goes beyond giving ideational veracity, via argument, to a particular view of the world and ethos or style of life. Ritual provides further validation by evoking specific emotions that give firsthand, experiential evidence that the world is actually constituted as claimed by intellectual argument, and consequently that the lifestyle the argument shows to be ideally fitted to the world is in fact suited to it. Intellectual argument and emotional experience are mutually reinforcing.

Geertz argues that ceremony as practiced by the Balinese kingship is more than a symbolic disguise of "real" power residing in physical force or the threat of violence; it is more than artifice (Bell, 1992, pp. 192–193; Geertz, 1980, pp. 122–136 passim). Bell issues the caveat that some political rituals, as in the case of China, do disguise the source and exercise of power while also serving overt political purposes (Bell, 1992, p. 194). Geertz's insight runs counter to the once prevailing view of sacred kingship developed by James G. Frazer and A. M. Hocart, namely, that ritual legitimates real political power (Bell, 1992, p. 193). In Geertz's view, ritual legitimation is not distinct from political power, but is itself an expression of power that is used to achieve political ends. For Geertz, the ability to perceive that the ritual performances of the Balinese state are real political power depends upon not opposing the symbolic and the real or aesthetic performance to action. Power must be seen as not existing outside the mechanisms through which it works (i.e., ritual). Bell notes that Michel Foucault makes the same observation regarding the mechanisms and dynamics through which ritual works (Bell, 1997, p. 132; and 1992, chap. 9). David Cannadine's and Maurice Bloch's analyses of ritual develop Geertz's understanding of ritual as legitimation of power and, hence, as real and efficacious power (Bell, 1992, pp. 194–195; Cannadine, 1987; Bloch, 1987).

"In other words," Bell writes, "political rituals do not refer to politics, as Geertz has strained to express, they are politics. Ritual is the thing itself. It is power; it acts and it actuates" (Bell, 1992, p. 195). "In sum, it is a major reversal of traditional theory [for Geertz and others] to hypothesize that ritual activity is not the 'instrument' of more basic purposes, such as power, politics, or social control, which are usually seen as existing before or outside the activities of the rite. It puts interpretive analysis on a new footing to suggest that ritual practices are themselves the very production and negotiation of power relations" (1992, p. 196). Viewing ritual legitimation as an expression of power that is more efficacious than "brute force," as Geertz, Cannadine, Bloch, and others have done, makes ritual an important tool in the analysis of politics (Bell, 1992, p. 195).

Drawing on Foucault, Bell argues more specifically that political rituals construct power by creating a "power relationship" of domination and submission (Bell, 1997, p. 132; 1992, chap. 9). Political rituals are not simply "secondary reflections" of relationships of domination and submission that guide exchanges between ruler and subject; "They create these relations [dominance and submission]; they create power in the very tangible exercise of it" (1997, p. 136). According to Bell, ritual's effectiveness as a form of power lies in its capacity to create nuanced relationships of power in which those who dominate and those who submit negotiate power (1992, pp. 196–218). Nuanced relationships involve both acceptance of and opposition or resistance to those whom ritual empowers.

Bell notes that Foucault argues that power does not exist in a simplistic dominant-dominated relationship (Bell, 1992, chap. 9). Power, of necessity, requires choice. Distinct from force or coercion, power depends upon freedom or resistance, which provokes it and legitimates its use. Those who submit are free to act in contrary ways. Thus, those who dominate only indirectly shape the field of actions of others. Bell points out that Geertz's rejection of the distinction between ritual (or symbol) and real power dismisses the simplistic view of power as the assertion of the ruler's or political power's will upon the dominated (Bell, 1992, p. 194). Power depends upon the dominant and the dominated choosing various courses of action to maintain the relationship as one of power. Individuals submit to political domination while recognizing that they are still free to create their own personal path of freedom, especially in the form of dissenting private thoughts, as in the case of mental dissent from a totalitarian regime. Calling attention to the fact that Foucault has been criticized for eliminating coercion, Bell argues that his analysis of power discloses an important aspect of power that has been minimized—reciprocity (Bell, 1992, p. 204).

Elaborating on the process by which ritual allows society to create itself in the image of power relations, Bell adds that ritual participants project, and thereby objectify, relationships of power that are drawn from society (Bell, 1992, 204–218). Participants do not view themselves as projecting these relationships; they view themselves as responding instinctively to the natural social order instead. Participants then re-embody these projected or objectified schemes. Through objectification and embodiment, ritual creates a society that actually consists of these relationships of power. The process of objectification, embodiment, and resistance empowers those who submit, even as it empowers those who dominate. Thus, negotiating and giving nuance to power relations actually empowers those who appear to be controlled by them.

Bell offers the example of the Japanese enthronement ceremony (1997, pp. 130–133). Overseen by the imperial state and supported by state Shintō, the enthronement ceremony heightens the relationship between the emperor and the cosmic order by giving him semidivine status. Through a series of elaborate associated rituals, enthronement appeals to "a sense of cosmological fit" between the emperor and divine beings (Bell, 1997, p. 132). The rituals include food offerings to Amaterasu, the sun goddess, who is ancestor of the royal clan, according to tradition. The emperor is considered to be her "grandson." The offerings symbolize sexual relations between the emperor as "bridegroom" and Amaterasu that result in his ritual rebirth prior to the swearing in. Thus, the goddess's divine grandson is reborn in the form of a human emperor. Hirohito, who was emperor of Japan from 1926 to 1989, undertook symbolic sexual relations with the sun goddess during his formal enthronement in 1928, when Japan was ruled by the imperial government, which gained support from state Shintō, the national religion. (Hirohito was forced to renounce his divine status under the post–World War II constitutional government.) According to Bell, the ritual decorum or etiquette governing the behavior of those granted a royal audience creates relationships that empower the emperor. Etiquette and ceremony are not merely symbolic or "empty"; rather they create relationships of power involving political dominance and submission. Political rituals "create political reality." Furthermore, the symbolic action that constitutes such rituals makes political forces visible, and makes it possible for participants to identify with and to understand these forces, which are otherwise too complex to comprehend (Bell, 1997, p. 133; Kertzer, 1988, pp. 1–2). Bell points out that although political leaders in modern societies are elected, ceremonial display nevertheless makes an appeal to the cosmic order. She notes that an important function of the inaugural address of a newly elected American president is establishing the president's moral leadership, whereby his election is transmuted into an event that is not an accident of history.

The link between the ceremonial confirmation and maintenance of social and cultural norms and the negotiation of power is clearly evident in national or civic ceremonies, as well as in mass political rallies. Illustrative examples are found in the parades, processions, pageants, theatrical performances, and other ceremonious events that are associated with independence day celebrations in the United States (Bellah, 1967), Mexico (Vogt and Abel, 1977), and Indonesia (Peacock, 1968). Other examples are May Day, the anniversary of the October Revolution, and Victory Day in the former Soviet Union (Lane, 1981). On a smaller scale, examples are found in "political ceremonials," such as ritualized town or public meetings among the Indians and mestizos of Mexico (Hunt, 1977) and the villagers of Kilimanjaro in Tanzania (Moore, 1977). The Native American powwow has been interpreted as a public arena of power and politics in which participants negotiate conflicts regarding the participation of women and girls in the powwow, spiritual versus secular uses of powwow (e.g., turning the powwow into political protest), and relations with non-Indian participants (Mattern, 1996).

Other political rituals challenge the political status quo (Bell, 1997, p. 134). Bell points out that "rites of rebellion," as analyzed by Max Gluckman, and other rituals engage symbolic interaction in a different way; they must mobilize people as a political movement or force in opposition to the ruling regime. Bell gives as examples the cargo cults of New Guinea and Melanesia, which fused religious and political interests, and the Mau-Mau rebellion against British colonial power in Kenya. Another example is the reconstructed May Day demonstrations in Hungary under Soviet domination (Kurti, 1990). Originally observing the Soviet revolution, May Day in Hungary acquired new nationalist meaning in the hands of opponents of Soviet rule in the late 1980s, when opposition leaders incorporated images of leaders of the October 23, 1956, uprising against Soviet occupation.

On a much smaller scale, institutional ceremonies offer constituents an opportunity to resist official state ideology, as well as forms of authoritative ideology at the local level. An example was the awards ceremony at a girls' public primary school in Mombasa, Kenya (Porter, 1998). The ceremony had unintended consequences regarding the enactment of power and cultural identity as different participants used it simultaneously to produce cultural meanings that sustain the state as well as local authorities, and to produce alternative interpretations of national and local culture that challenged power at both levels. The postcolonial state has used the secular public schools, their curricula, and their ceremonies to develop a homogeneous national identity and national unity to advance its nation-building efforts. The awards ceremony offered the school's Muslim female students, who are Swahili, an opportunity to resist state efforts as representatives of an ethnic minority who lost political and economic power to the postcolonial state. At the ceremony, the girls performed Swahili poems and expressed their devotion to their religion. Public expressions of religion, performances of poetry, and pursuit of education are typically activities of Swahili men, and not women. By reciting poetry in this public and educational setting, the schoolgirls challenged the traditional gender expectations for adolescent Swahili girls. This in itself was a challenge to the normative relationship between adolescent Swahili females and their male elders. The girls presented an additional challenge to their traditional Muslim culture and the state when the headmistress declared the new school uniform to be the old cotton dress uniform refitted to wear more loosely, with the addition of the traditional Muslim ḥijāb, a large headscarf, and suruali, long pants. While the adolescent girls proclaimed their devotion to their religion by wearing the traditional dress, about which they sang in their performance, they reinterpreted the meaning of wearing it. In their performance, the girls declared wearing the dress to be a sign of their being modern girls. For these Swahili adolescents, the wearing of traditional dress and experimentation with colors and textured or beaded fabrics were efforts to be fashionable in their youth culture.

The novel Ceremony by the Native American author Leslie Marmon Silko (1977) has been viewed as a kind of rite of rebellion against the dominant white social and political order that reconstructs power relations between Native Americans and whites. James Ruppert characterizes Ceremony as "a protest novel" that calls attention to the oppression of Laguna peoples by "an indifferent and often hostile dominant culture" (Ruppert, 2002, p. 177). Silko's novel presents the healing of an interracial Native American war veteran who despairs over his treatment by white society and the loss of meaning that has resulted from his loss of connection to his Native American community and its traditional ways. Allan Chavkin notes that the novel's protagonist is restored by a traditional curing ritual, which is based on the Navajo Antway, a purification ritual performed for returning veterans; the ritual uses chant to reenact myth and through it impart meaning or a spiritual understanding of events (Chavkin, 2002). The novel concludes with the protagonist's vision quest. He undergoes a visionary experience that restores meaning by reaffirming the Native American view that the spiritual world that is disclosed in myth is reality.

Drawing on Elaine Jahner, Ruppert views the structure of Silko's novel as a ritual chant or prayer that engages Native American and white implied readers as ritual performers who become part of the telling of the mythic story at the center of the novel through the act of reading. Readers assume the position of priests who sing and pray. Reading the novel "becomes a new ceremony in itself" as readers undergo new experiences that alter their perspectives (Ruppert, 2002, p. 184). The novel engages Native American and white readers in learning about the other's worldview as the text translates each group's discourse. In the process, the text mediates each group's experiences of the other. Mediation validates each group's perspective while calling attention to its strengths and limitations. In addition, mediation encourages each group to fuse both perspectives, thus creating a new point of view. White readers learn the mythic view of Native Americans, and Native American readers learn the sociological view of white Americans. The mythic outlook of Native Americans encourages white readers to adopt a spiritual vision of reality in order to restore meaning and avoid self-destruction through unbridled power, particularly war and atomic weapons. In this view, all living things, including the earth, are connected and shown to be part of a larger, inclusive reality. White society's sociological analysis may give Native Americans insight into how they have internalized the view that Native Americans are inferior. In Ruppert's view, Silko attempts to join Native Americans and whites in fighting against common enemies—Silko's "Destroyers," or forces of evil—who threaten to annihilate both. Silko does so by creating a new ceremony that erases all boundaries between peoples by fusing the perspectives and experiences of Native Americans and whites.

As a group, scholars of Native American religions have traditionally used the term ceremony to refer to Native American ritual. They do not make the distinction between ceremony and ritual found in the theoretical literature; hence they use the terms ceremony and ritual interchangeably.

Ceremony and Religion

Two distinct tendencies in identifying the object of ceremony can be found in the theoretical literature. Ceremony is either identified with secular interests exclusively, or it is associated with both secular and religious concerns, which sometimes converge. Jack Goody and Max Gluckman represent the first trend. They contend that although conventionalized nonreligious and religious activities are the same analytic type of behavior (i.e., formalization that has nonrational ends or is of a nontechnical nature) and play similar roles, they entail disparate beliefs and therefore should be differentiated. Conventional action that is addressed to spiritual beings or concerned with the ultimate is designated "religious." Objecting to the tendency to identify formalized collective activity with religious ritual, established as a precedent by Durkheim, Goody distinguishes activity of an "exclusively secular significance." He identifies conventional activity of a nonreligious nature, such as the anniversary of the October Revolution, as "ceremonial." Goody treats ceremony, like formalized "religious" activity, as a subcategory of ritual, the term by which he designates the most general category of conventional behavior (1961, p. 159). Gluckman prefers ceremony as the inclusive term for conventional and stylized, or "ceremonial," behavior. He uses the term ceremonious to distinguish nonreligious formal activity, and reserves the term ritual for the subcategory of ceremonial activity referring to "mystical notions" (1962, pp. 22–23).

Goody avoids the terms sacred and profane in his distinction between religious and ceremonial rituals. Because the dichotomy they represent is a foreign concept within many cultures, he believes these terms have limited application as rubrics for analytic categories. The fact that the sacred-profane polarity is not universally recognized suggests, as Goody notes, that these are external categories, imposed by an outside observer, rather than categories held by participants themselves.

As recognized by ceremony theorists who associate ceremony with both secular and religious interests, a strict distinction between secular and religious activity is problematic. Historical phenomena do not exhibit the discrete boundaries that are found in precise theoretical categories. Although they are not sponsored by institutionalized religion, many secular ceremonies make reference to and even depend upon religious belief or religious symbols. The appeal to religious belief and the use of religious symbols in such ceremonies is an indication and expression of the convergence of religious and political interests, even when religion and the state are legally separated. Their convergence is critical when the political order seeks to legitimate its authority through divine sanction, thus giving religion a central place within the public sphere, even where church and state are separate.

Ceremonies associated with civil religion are noteworthy examples. Civil religion is Robert Bellah's term designating a form of religion that is characteristic of highly secularized and technologically oriented modern nation states; civil religion is said to exist independently of institutionalized religion, although it is dependent on organized religion for many of its symbols (Bellah, 1967). Invoking God in presidential inaugurations in the United States, and swearing to uphold the Constitution on the Bible (Bellah, 1967; Wilson, 1979), and in Memorial Day observances (Warner, 1959), for example, is intended to secure the continuation of divine blessing on the social and political order (Bellah, 1967; Cherry, 1970; Warner, 1959; and Wilson, 1979). Appealing to God and scripture during coronations in Great Britain is intended to accomplish the same effect (Bocock, 1974).

The convergence of religious and political interests in ceremony is most evident in religio-political systems. There ceremony occupies a central public place by virtue of its legitimating role. State ceremonies that are associated with divine kingship, long established as a state cult in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and elsewhere, are illustrative. The "state ceremonials" of nineteenth-century Bali (royal dedications of palace temples, royal ordinations, royal cremations, and other "state ritual") appropriated Hindu cosmology in order to depict the king as a manifestation of divine power and thereby secure power by the state (Geertz, 1980). Ceremonies drawing attention to "divine election" and divinization in imperial Rome provide instructive premodern examples of securing state power by ritually cosmologizing a political office (MacCormack, 1981).

The blurring of boundaries between religious and political interests is found on a smaller scale in numerous civic ceremonies. Fiesta, a citywide celebration of the establishment of Santa Fe, New Mexico, as a Spanish city, is an illustrative example (Grimes, 1976). Religious symbols play a central role in the ceremonial negotiation of power among Native American, Hispanic-American, and other Euro-American members of the community not simply because they help to establish group identity, but because they help to legitimate sociopolitical interests. Links between Roman Catholicism and the historic domination of Native Americans by the Spanish are exploited in the Fiesta Mass, the procession of La Conquistadora (the Virgin), and other church-sponsored events, as Hispanic Americans assert their power over Native Americans.

It has been suggested that if societies do in fact tend to look to the cosmic order as their ideal for the social order, then secular ritual would always manifest sacred aspects. "If this is the case it may not be possible to speak of purely religious ritual or of purely secular ceremonial," argues Eva Hunt. Furthermore, if the secular and religious orders are interdependent, so that the secular models and shapes the religious, which in turn models secular behavior, then "secular and sacred may not be different behaviors but different analytic aspects of the same behaviors" (Hunt, 1977, p. 143).

Moore and Myerhoff define the sacred in broader terms by which they distinguish it from religion. By sacred they mean unquestionability or being inviolable and traditionalizing. According to their definition, secular rituals exhibit a sacred dimension when they present ideology, doctrine, and so on as authoritative and incontrovertible, and in so doing secular rituals serve as a tradition-making force. Moore and Myerhoff distinguish ceremony from religious ritual by the absence of otherworldly or ultimate explanations, which are said to be the distinct province and function of religious ritual. The scope of ceremony is restricted to specialized aspects of social and cultural life and to its immediate concerns. In their view, ceremony, unlike religious ritual, does not act on the other world in order to influence this world; it acts solely on this world. Ceremony is distinguished by its "meaning and effect," which are sacred but not religious (Moore and Myerhoff, 1977, p. 8).

Moore and Myerhoff propose and oppose the analytic categories religious and nonreligious, sacred and nonsacred in order to take account of secular rituals that manifest a sacred dimension and those that do not, rituals that make use of religious symbols, and other possible combinations, including the presence of secular concerns within religious life (Moore and Myerhoff, 1977, pp. 3, 10–15, 20–22). Insofar as religious and sociopolitical interests intersect and even converge, distinguishing ceremony from religion will remain problematic, however.

Returning to Grimes' argument, if ceremony is treated as a mode of ritual rather than a type of ritual, then distinguishing ceremony from religion becomes even more problematic. He argues that rituals that are explicitly religious can demonstrate ceremonious aspects and do so when they are placed in the service of social and political interests (Grimes, 1982, p. 42). Timely examples are found in the rituals associated with the convergence of theology and political ideology in contemporary fundamentalist Christianity in the United States and fundamentalist Islam in the Middle East and elsewhere. Use of the pulpit by fundamentalist Christians to promote rightist interests during national and state elections in the United States has received much attention in political and scholarly circles as well as in the media. Although the role of fundamentalist Islam in the revitalization of conservative and even extremist Muslim and Arab ideology has received equal attention, less attention has been given the role of religious ritual. An example is the use of ʿĀshūrāʾ, the ritual dramatization and commemoration of the martyrdom of Muḥammad's grandson, Ḥusayn ibn ʿAlī, to legitimate Shīʿī ideology and rule in Iran (Hegland, 1983). Reinterpreting Ḥusayn's death as the final outcome in the struggle of a righteous man against the corruption of true religion by political rulers, the Shīʿah found in ʿĀshūrāʾ a powerful symbol in the service of the revolution of 1979. By giving the ritual new ideological content, identifying the monarchy and allied power structures as forces hostile to Islam and themselves as preservers of true faith, the Shīʿah in Iran made use of ʿĀshūrāʾ in their ascendancy to power.

The 1993 state funeral of Turkey's President Turgut Ozal offered an example of three competing versions of the convergence of religious and political interests in ceremony. Gunter Seufert and Petra Weyland (1994) report that three rival groups symbolically expressed three divergent views of the sacred cosmic order and of the place and power of religion within the state. President Ozal's funeral was the first high-level state ceremony in which secular and official religious representatives of the secular state and representatives of nonstate-sponsored religion appeared together since the founding of the Republic of Turkey in 1923 by President Mustafa Kemal. Representatives of the state, both secularists and those representing the official version of Islam, gave Islam an ambiguous place within the cosmos, a modified version of the Kemalist secular cosmos. They had appropriated Islamic symbolism increasingly in order to regain support of average Muslims and had tolerated the existence of the Islamic brotherhoods and their participation in state institutions. The state representatives allowed the brotherhoods, especially the Naksibendiyye, to take part in the state funeral and even to perform some of the rituals associated with it, in spite of an official ban against public appearances by members of the brotherhoods. The brotherhoods had been banned under President Kemal's regime, which reconstructed Turkey as a secular state in which the state government tightly regulated religion. President Ozal, a pious Muslim who had found Islam and the secular state compatible, restored Islam to public life. The Naksibendiyye gave Islam a central place within the cosmos but accommodated it to the state. Hostile political factions opposing the state, who were not permitted an official role in President Ozal's funeral but who demonstrated outside the mosque where his funeral was held, gave Islam a supreme place.

Seufert and Weyland interpret the inclusion of the Naksibendiyye by the state as an effort by the state to co-opt, within certain limits, this particular religious group and its traditional version of Islam in order to give the state legitimacy in the eyes of Muslims as part of the state's effort to maintain its version of the sacred cosmos and its power within it. Historically, the Naksibendiyye had alternately supported or opposed the state, and had won popular support for the ruling power. More important, Seufert and Weyland view the inclusion of the Naksibendiyye as an effort by the state to use this group's popularity among the masses to control popular Islam, especially fundamentalist male youths. Their sympathies lay with opponents of the state, especially Kurdish and fundamentalist parties, and their alternative versions of Islam. Seufert and Weyland also interpret the inclusion of the Naksibendiyye as an attempt by the state to gain greater acceptance within the wider Muslim world. The authors argue that the Naksibendiyye were willing to cooperate with the state in order to regain influence, to promote internationalism among Muslims, and to strengthen religious orthodoxy in response to alternative religious views. The authors conclude that while the political elite used President Ozal's funeral to retain their legitimacy and power by enacting the official version of the sacred cosmos, they could not control how the Naksibendiyye Muslims or Muslim opponents would promote their own versions, or how average Muslims would consume the various versions that were available to them. Thus Ozal's state funeral reflected the existence of multiple views of the cosmic order among members of the Turkish state.

Conclusion

Any attempt to define ceremony must take into account the interpenetration of traditional ritual categories: sacred and secular, religious and political, and the like. As demonstrated in the examples presented above, historical phenomena cannot be compartmentalized as neatly as a number of theoretical treatments of ceremony suggest. Any effort to analyze ceremony also must take note that formalization, corroborative tendencies, and other aspects of ceremoniousness are inherent to ritual. As suggested in the examples offered above, the ceremonious mode can be expected to dominate when ritual has been placed in the service of tradition or the legitimation of power. In this instance, as Turner observes, ritual's liminal features have been circumscribed in order to contain the threat to the established social order.

See Also

Ritual.

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Bobby C. Alexander (1987 and 2005)