Cultural Anthropology

Virtual Issue: Ritual

This Cultural Anthropology Virtual Issue presents five cases of ritual for readers’ consideration and reflection. We hope that these examples, which combine careful attention to the common features and unique social circumstances of each, might encourage a reconsideration of the locus of this “old-fashioned” category of anthropological inquiry within contemporary scholarly work. Toward this goal, we aim to raise a number of questions for reflection and discussion: What, in fact, is ritual? Where does ritual originate? What forms does ritual take, and how do these various forms constitute “ritual”? What are ritual’s effects, and how are they achieved? How does ritual frame our social experiences, and how does actors’ input in turn re-frame ritual? What are the relationships between ritual symbols across social fields (religious, political, sexual)? Who exercises control in rituals; or do rituals exercise control upon their actors? And how, in the end, does the study of ritual processes contribute to an understanding of contemporary sociocultural processes?

Editor's Introduction


The Songs of the Siren: Engineering National Time on Israeli Radio
Danny Kaplan

Supplemental Page



Queer Pilgrimage: The San Francisco Homeland and Identity Tourism
Alyssa Cymene Howe

Supplemental Page



The Maoist Shaman and the Madman: Ritual Bricolage, Failed Ritual, and Failed Ritual Theory
Emily Chao

Supplemental Page



The Theft of Carnaval: National Spectacle and Racial Politics in Rio de Janeiro
Robin E. Sheriff

Supplemental Page



Discipline and the Arts of Domination: Rituals of Respect in Chimborazo, Ecuador
Barry J. Lyons

Supplemental Page