Rituals/spectacles

Journal/Book: Int Soc Sci J. 1997; 49: 108 Cowley Rd, Oxford, Oxon, England OX4 1JF. Blackwell Publ Ltd. 387.

Abstract: Ritual and spectacle are informed by radically different metalogics, called here respectively, transformation and presentation. Ritual in traditional social orders is perhaps the sole cultural form designed to deliberately make predictive, directed, controlled change through its own internal operations. These changes have direct effects on the social orders that encompass such rituals. The metalogic of transformation through ritual that is used here is one of systemic organization that controls the production of its effects. Ritual manipulates taxonomies, but these are immutable, and integral to the 'natural' order of things. In contrast to rituals, modern spectacles, as we use the term, are public masks of the bureaucratic ethos. Bureaucracy is perhaps the paradigmatic form of organization in the modern state. Bureaucracy deliberately invents taxonomies and operates them systemically. These taxonomies are under the control of human volition. Bureaucracy makes planned, predictive changes and tries to control their effects on modern social orders. In the modern state, spectacles have developed in profusion together with the growth of bureaucratic infrastructures. Spectacles are mirrors that present and reflect impressive statist visions of social order. These visions mask the formative power of statist bureaucracies to shape, discipline, and control social order.

Note: Article Handelman D, Hebrew Univ Jerusalem, Dept Sociol & Anthropol, IL-91905 Jerusalem, ISRAEL

Keyword(s): CIRCUS

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