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From emotional expression to cultural inheritance: How does ritualization help us connect the past and the future?
Ritualization is the process of giving cultural, social or religious significance to otherwise incommunicable actions or events. This means that actions in our daily lives can be transformed into rituals, which in turn acquire deeper meaning within a cultural or religious context. Rituals are often symbolic, repetitive, and sometimes prescribed activities that carry religious or cultural weight for a group of people.
Rituals provide people with an outlet for emotional expression, allowing them to find a structured way to regulate and express emotions when facing important moments in life such as sadness, joy or gratitude.
Ritualized History
The concept of ritualization was first proposed by Edmund Sellos in 1901 and named ritualization by Julian Huxley in 1914. The concept has since been studied in a variety of fields including animal behavior, anthropology, psychology, sociology, and even cognitive science. Particularly in animal behavior, ritualization refers to the evolutionary process of transforming non-communicative behaviors into communicable behaviors.
Nicol Tinbergen expanded on the concept of ritualization in his 1951 paper, proposing how certain animal behaviors, such as courtship and aggression, become more communicative through a process of selection and refinement. In the social sciences, the study of ritualization can be traced back to the 19th century, when Emile Durkheim believed that ritual was an important means of strengthening social cohesion and promoting a sense of shared identity among community members.
Ritualization in non-human animals
Ritualized behaviors are often highly stereotyped within a particular species and are not associated with any direct physiological significance. The behavior of animals that have been studied, such as the greylag geese, shows the importance of ritualization in their development.
When greylag geese see eggs, they display compulsive movement patterns that resemble obsessive-compulsive disorder in humans.
Ritualization in Humans
Ritualized Functions
Research shows that there are several main functions of ritualization:
Social cohesionRitualization promotes social cohesion, strengthens social bonds and creates a sense of common identity among participants by uniting people's emotions and beliefs.
Cultural inheritance
Ritualization helps pass on cultural knowledge, values and traditions between generations. By participating in rituals, individuals not only learn about culture, but also internalize these cultural concepts and pass them on to future generations.
Emotional expression and adjustment
Rituals provide a structured way to express and regulate emotions, supporting people as they navigate major life transitions and challenges.
Historical Document Links
Emile Durkheim's theory of social cohesion, in his book The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, discussed the significance of ritualization. He points to the mechanical cohesion in traditional societies, and this distinction between structure and function highlights the importance of ritualization.
Future Insights
Ritualization is a critical process that transforms ordinary behaviors into rituals rich with cultural, social, or religious meaning. Understanding ritualization and its multiple functions helps us to explore the connotation of human social and cultural practices in depth. Future research may explore in more depth people’s psychological and physiological responses during ritualization, as well as the interactions between these responses, thereby expanding the scope of ritualization research.
Ritualization plays an important role in our lives. How much influence do you think it has on the connection and future development of modern society?
