Course for international guest/part time students

Faculty

Faculty of Social Sciences

Organization

TÁTK Department of Cultural Anthropology

Code

EKAN126.1

Title

Preparations for field work

Usual semester

Spring

Published semester

2025/26/2

ECTS

3

Language

en

Learning outcomes

This course aims at providing conceptual and methodological tools for the analysis of the rituals and public events students may encounter during their fieldwork. After discussing the variety of rituals studied by anthropologists and some of their formal particularities, we will review the principal theoretical approaches in the scientific study of ritual. Through selected case studies, we will address the methodological interest of the anthropological study of ritual and the challenges it presents. If the restrictions related to the pandemic situation allow, students will observe and analyze rituals on their own and discuss their results in class.

Course content

The course’s goal is to provide students with essential concepts as well as theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of ritual. The topics discussed will contribute to a reasoned approach of questions related to rituals students may encounter during their fieldwork. Notably, they will learn how to take field notes and how to turn them into an ethnographic description. As a result, they will be able to recognize, describe and analyze how rituals are structured and how they shape social relationships.

Assessment method

Students will be required to actively participate in the seminar. Ideally, most of the course will be based on the discussion of firsthand observation of a given ritual event, preferably connected to the society students wish to carry out fieldwork in. Considering the limitations of life during the pandemic, the possibilities of doing so will be discussed collectively in the frame of the two first classes. In case firsthand observation is possible, students will be required to produce a 5-10 p. detailed description of the ritual/public event of their choice. These will be circulated to be read before class in order to allow a collective discussion. In case the possibility of firsthand observation is ruled out, in the second part of the course we will study selected empirical examples through oral presentations (30-45min) prepared by students. In this, teamwork will be essential: students will work in groups, discussing the texts beforehand and preparing their presentation together. The guidelines for the assignments will be given during the first two classes. Evaluation is based on attendance (10%), class participation (30%) and the assignment (60%). With any questions and queries concerning the course and the assignments, please contact me on the following e-mail address: viola_teis@yahoo.com

Bibliography

Myth and ritual; basic genres of ritual action Bell, C. (2009[1997]). “Theories: The History of Interpretation” in Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions. New York: Oxford University Press. 1-23. Bell, C. (2009[1997]). “Basic genres of ritual action” in Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions. New York: Oxford University Press. 93-137. Characteristics of ritual Bell, C. (2009[1997]). “Characteristics of ritual-like activities” in Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions. New York: Oxford University Press. 138-170. Rappaport, R.A. (1999) “The ritual form” in Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 23-68. Van Gennep, A. (1960[1909]). “The Classification of Rites,” in The Rites of Passage. London: Routledge. 1-14. Turner, Victor. (1969). “Liminality and Communitas” in The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. 94-130. Theories: functionalism, structuralism and the problems of meaning, symbols, language and performance Bell, C. (2009[1997]). “Ritual and Society: Questions of Social Function and Structure” in Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions. New York: Oxford University Press. 23-59. Humphrey, C. and Laidlaw, J. (1994). The Archetypal Actions of Ritual. A Theory of Ritual Illustrated by the Jain Rite of Worship. Oxford: Clarendon Press. A relational approach Humphrey, C. and Laidlaw, J. (1994). The Archetypal Actions of Ritual. A Theory of Ritual Illustrated by the Jain Rite of Worship. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Houseman, M. and Severi, C. (1998). Naven or the Other Self. A Relational Approach to Ritual Action. Leiden: Brill Publishers. Handelman, D. and Lindquist, G. (2004). Ritual in its Own Right. Exploring the Dynamics of Transformation. New York/Oxford: Berghahn Books. Discussion of students’ observations or Readings: Initiation La Fontaine, J. (1977). “The power of rights”. Man, 421-437. Houseman, M. (1993). “The Interactive Basis of Ritual Effectiveness in a Male Initiation Rite” in Pascal Boyer Cognitive Aspects of Religious Behaviour, Cambridge University Press. 207-224. Discussion of students’ observations or Readings: Healing Schieffelin, E. L. (1985). “Performance and the Cultural Construction of Reality”. American Ethnologist 12(4), 707–724. Tambiah, S. J. (1985[1979]). “A Performative Approach to Ritual” in Culture, Thought, and Social Action: An Anthropological Perspective. Cambridge & London: Harvard University Press. 123-166. Discussion of students’ observations or Readings: Death Conklin, B. A. (1995). “Thus are our bodies, thus was our custom”: mortuary cannibalism in an Amazonian society. American Ethnologist, 22(1), 75-101. Bolt, S. (2018). “In the absence of a corpse: Rituals for body donors in the Netherlands”. A companion to the anthropology of death, 371-381. Hertz, R. (2004[1960]). “A contribution to the study of the collective representation of death” in A.C.G.M. Robben Death, Mourning and Burial. A cross-cultural reader, 197-212 Discussion of students’ observations or Readings: Violence Eszter Novák & James C. Viloria Houseman, M. (2001). “Is this Play? Hazing in French Preparatory Schools”. Focaal. European Journal of Anthropology. 39-48. Ferrandiz, F. (2009). “Open veins: Spirits of violence and grief in Venezuela”. Ethnography, 10(1), 39–61. Discussion of students’ observations or Political/secular rituals Readings: Abélès, M. (1988). “Modern political ritual: Ethnography of an inauguration and a pilgrimage by President Mitterrand”. Current Anthropology, 29(3), 391-404. Handelman, D. (1998). Models and mirrors: towards an anthropology of public events. Oxford and New York, Berghahn Books.  Preface x-lii, Introduction 1-81. Discussion of students’ observations or “Classic” rituals vs New Age rituals Readings: Houseman, M. (2007). “Menstrual slaps and first blood celebrations. Inference, simulation and the learning of ritual”. Berliner, D. and R. Sarró Learning Religion: Anthropological Approaches. Oxford and New York: Berghahn Books, 31-48. Lindquist, G. (2004). “Bringing the soul back to the self. Soul retrieval in Neo-shamanism”. Social Analysis 48(2), 157-173.

Programmes of the course