Ritual Textuality : Pattern and Motion in Performance - Matt Tomlinson

Ritual Textuality

Pattern and Motion in Performance

By: Matt Tomlinson

Paperback | 8 May 2014

At a Glance

Paperback


RRP $99.95

$64.50

35%OFF

or 4 interest-free payments of $16.13 with

 or 

Aims to ship in 5 to 10 business days

A classic question in studies of ritual is how ritual performances achieve-or fail to achieve-their effects. In this pathbreaking book, Matt Tomlinson argues that participants condition their own expectations of ritual success by interactively creating distinct textual patterns of sequence, conjunction, contrast, and substitution. Drawing on long-term research in Fiji, Ritual Textuality presents in-depth studies of each of these patterns, taken from a wide range of settings: a fiery, soul-saving Pentecostal crusade; relaxed gatherings at which people drink the narcotic beverage kava; deathbeds at which missionaries eagerly await the signs of good Christians' "happy deaths"; and the monologic pronouncements of a military-led government determined to make the nation speak in a single voice. In each of these cases, Tomlinson also examines the broad ideologies of motion which frame participants' ritual actions, such as Pentecostals' beliefs that effective worship requires ecstatic
movement like jumping, dancing, and clapping, and nineteenth-century missionaries' insistence that the journeys of the soul in the afterlife should follow a new path. By approaching ritual as an act of "entextualization"-in which the flow of discourse is turned into object-like texts-while analyzing the ways people expect words, things, and selves to move in performance, this book presents a new and compelling way to understand the efficacy of ritual action.
Industry Reviews
"The product of long experience with Fijian life, closely observed, this volume brings together an impressively diverse range of phenomena. With clear and direct prose, Tomlinson sorts through the complexities of religion and politics to offer us a compelling and original theory of ritual." --Webb Keane, George Herbert Mead Collegiate Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of Michigan "In Ritual Textuality, Matt Tomlinson presents a provocative study of varieties of ritual performance in contemporary Fiji, one that resonates with seminal anthropological works that have explored how ritual patterns establish and reproduce religious authority... His insightful analysis reveals a method of locating language ideology in several contexts, and demonstrates for the Fijian case how ritual performance articulates with structures of power." --Pacific Affairs

Other Editions and Formats

Hardcover

Published: 24th April 2014

More in Anthropology

Homo Deus : A Brief History of Tomorrow - Yuval Noah Harari

RRP $24.99

$23.75

The Way We Are : Lessons from a lifetime of listening - Hugh Mackay
The Dawn of Everything : A New History of Humanity - David Graeber
Collapse : How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive - Jared Diamond
Bullshit Jobs : A Theory - David Graeber

RRP $24.99

$23.75

Sapiens : A Brief History of Humankind - Yuval Noah Harari

RRP $27.99

$19.95

29%
OFF
The Human Bone Manual - Tim D. White

RRP $54.95

$46.75

15%
OFF
Three Women - Lisa Taddeo

Paperback

RRP $22.99

$21.90

Our World in Pictures : Countries, Cultures, People & Places - DK
Sapiens A Graphic History, Volume 2 : The Pillars of Civilization - Yuval Noah Harari
Sapiens : A Graphic History: Volume 1 - Yuval Noah Harari

RRP $39.99

$35.35

12%
OFF