Abstract
Theories of ritual over time have revolved around a succession of themes, for example, the place of ritual in religion and magic, the social functions of ritual, the concept of ritualization, the efficacy of ritual, ritual in dance or performance, and the embodiment of values in ritual. There is an obvious link between ritual and embodiment because ritual practices are themselves embodied performances in which meanings and purposes are enacted by persons playing special parts that are added to, or replace, their everyday roles and identities (see Stewart and Strathern in Ritual: Key Concepts in Religion. Case Studies. London and Bloomsbury: Continuum Publishing, 2014; Stewart and Strathern in Ritual. London: Routledge Publishing, 2016).
In this chapter, we aim to explore arenas of ritual and cognition. We do this first by elaborating on the basic importance of embodiment in ritual processes, via the concept of performance. Language enters into our discussion from the beginning, and theories of the workings of language in relation to specific cognitive practices also run through the later parts of this study (see Strathern and Stewart in Language and Culture in Dialogue. London, UK: Bloomsbury Academic Publishing, 2019).
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Berlin, Brent and Paul Kay 1969. Basic Color Terms: Their Universality and Evolution. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Bloch, Maurice. 1977. “The Past and the Present in the Present.” Man, New Series 12 (2): 278–292.
Bull, Mitchell and Jon P. Mitchell (eds.). 2015. Ritual, Performance and the Senses. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
Douven, Igor. 2017. Abduction: Peirce on Abduction. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, s.v.
Downey, Greg. 2015. “The Importance of Repetition: Ritual as a Support to Mind.” In Ritual, Performance, and the Senses, edited by Bull and Mitchell, 45–61. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
Ellen, Roy. 1993. The Cultural Relations of Classification: An Analysis of Nuaulu Animal Categories from Central Seram. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gell, Alfred. 1998. Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Lucy, John A. 1992. Language Diversity and Thought: A Reformulation of the Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Peirce, Charles. 1977. Semiotics and Significs. Edited by Charles Hardwick. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Stewart, Pamela J. and Andrew J. Strathern. 1999. “Female Spirit Cults as a Window on Gender Relations in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea.” The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute [September 1999] 5 (3): 345–360.
Stewart, Pamela J. and A. Strathern 2002. Gender, Song, and Sensibility: Folktales and Folksongs in the Highlands of New Guinea. Westport, CT and London: Praeger Publishers.
Stewart, Pamela J. and Andrew Strathern (eds.). 2009. Religious and Ritual Change: Cosmologies and Histories. For, Ritual Studies Monograph Series, Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press.
Stewart, Pamela J. and Andrew J. Strathern. 2014. Ritual: Key Concepts in Religion. Case Studies. London and Bloomsbury: Continuum Publishing.
Stewart, Pamela J. and Andrew Strathern (eds.). 2016 (originally published 2010). Ritual (The International Library of Essays in Anthropology). London: Routledge Publishing.
Stewart, Pamela J. And Andrew Strathern (eds.). 2017 (originally published 2005). Expressive Genres and Historical Change: Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and Taiwan. For, Anthropology and Cultural History in Asia and the Indo-Pacific Series, London, UK.
Stewart, Pamela J., Andrew Strathern and J. Trantow. 2011. Melpa–German–English Dictionary. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Library System [Online at: http://www.stewartstrathern.pitt.edu/papua_new_guinea/melpa_language.html].
Strathern, Andrew. 2007 (first ed. 1971). The Rope of Moka Big-Men and Ceremonial Exchange in Mount Hagen, New Guinea. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Strathern, A. and Pamela J. Stewart. 1999. The Spirit Is Coming! A Photographic-Textual Exposition of the Female Spirit Cult Performance in Mt. Hagen. Ritual Studies Monograph Series, Monograph No. 1. Pittsburgh [Online at: https://www.stewartstrathern.pitt.edu/papua_new_guinea/ritual_and_social_life.html].
Strathern, A. and Pamela J. Stewart. 2000. Arrow Talk: Transaction, Transition, and Contradiction in New Guinea Highlands History. Kent, OH and London: Kent State University Press.
Strathern, Andrew and Pamela J. Stewart. 2008. “Exchange and Sacrifice: Examples from Papua New Guinea.” In Exchange and Sacrifice, edited by Pamela J. Stewart and Andrew Strathern, 229–245. For, Ritual Studies Monograph Series, Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press.
Strathern, Andrew and Pamela J. Stewart. 2010 (first ed. 1999). Curing and Healing: Medical Anthropology in Global Perspective. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press.
Strathern, Andrew and Pamela J. Stewart. 2019. Language and Culture in Dialogue. London, UK: Bloomsbury Academic Publishing.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2021 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Strathern, A.J., Stewart, P.J. (2021). Ritual, Performance, and Cognition. In: Stewart, P.J., Strathern, A.J. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Anthropological Ritual Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-76825-6_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-76825-6_8
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-76824-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-76825-6
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)