Program
Day 1: Tuesday 10.12.13
09.00-09:15 Welcome and introduction: Why the topic of the workshop and aims. (Sidsel Roalkvam)
Session 1
Chair: Sidsel Roalkvam
09:15 - 09:35: REDO Paper presentation: Graham Harvey on the dynamic interplay between ritual and performance at Riddu Riddu and at the Origins festival.
09.35 – 09:50: Response: Associate Professor Jan Kjetil Simonsen, Department of Social Anthropology, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU)
09:50 – 10:15: Discussion (all)
10:15 – 10:35: Coffee break
10:35 - 10:55: REDO Paper presentation: Sarah Pike on social movements
10:55 - 11:10: Response: Benedikte Lindskog (TBC), postdoc, Social Anthropology, University of Oslo
11:10-11:35: Discussion (all)
11:35-11:50: Coffee break
11:50 – 12:10: REDO Paper presentation: Jens Kreinath on “The Antakya Choir of Civilizations: Interreligious Dynamics, Power Struggle, and the Politics of Inclusion and Exclusion”
12:10 - 12:25: Response: Kjetil Fosshagen, Department of Social Anthropology, University of Bergen.
12:25 – 12:50: Discussion (all)
-------------------------
12:50 – 14:20: Lunch
--------------------------
14:20 – 14:50: Discussion: What are the connections? Discussion of the presentations and responses, and how they relate. (all) Chair: Sidsel Roalkvam
Session 2
Chair: Morny Joy
14:50 – 15:10: Revisiting ‘democracy’ and ‘ritual’: Jone Salomonsen
15:10 – 15:25: Coffee break
15:25 – 16:15: Discussion (all).
16:15 – 17:30: Go for a walk and talk
18:30: Dinner
Day 2: Wednesday 11.11.13
Relating concepts and empirical fields
Chair: Michael Houseman
09:00 – 09:20: Some initial thoughts and suggestions for a framework (Sidsel Roalkvam/ Lotte Danielsen)
09:20 – 09:50: Members of project group Ritual, democracy and new social movements present their 5-minute presentations. Presenters: Sidsel Roalkvam, Paul-François Tremlett, Jens Kreinath, Sarah M. Pike, Lotte Danielsen (5)
09:45 – 10:25: Discussion (all)
10:25 – 10:40: Coffee break
10:40 – 11:15: Members of project group Ritual, environment and performative renewal of individual identity present their 5-minute presentations.Presenters: Michael Houseman, Marion Grau, Donna L. Seamone, Tony Balcomb, Samuel Etikpah, Morny Joy (6)
11:15 – 12:10: Discussion (all)
-----------------------------------------
12:10 – 13:40: Lunch
-----------------------------------------
13:40 – 14:30: Members of project group Inflating ritual, minimizing religion, renewing collective identity present their 5-minute presentations.Presenters: Ida Marie Høeg, Jone Salomonsen, Cora Alexa Døving, Kjetil Hafstad, Gitte Buch-Hansen, Marlene Ringgaard Lorensen, Grzegorz Brzozowski, Graham Harvey (8)
14:30 – 15:10: Discussion
15:10 – 15:25: Coffee break
15:25 – 16:00: Revisiting the conceptual framework
16:00 – 17:00: Outstanding issues.
18:00: Dinner
The social effects of ritual
In REDO we ask if ritual can influence how societies change, and specifically, whether rituals can enhance democracy. This workshop will focus on how ritual may transform or maintain social relations on various scales. This may relate to how the individual self experiences her or himself in relation to community, or to community-wide perceptions, experiences and material relations. The workshop’s focus is thus less ritual’s constitutive components in themselves than the ways it contributes to social dynamics. This shall help us approach REDO’s main task which is to understand how ritual may impact societal change.
Boundaries are often seen as fundamental to community-making. Anthropology has for long shown how 'the other' is constitutive of social integration. The notion of an inside rests on the experience of an outside and an ‘other’ which one defines oneself in relation to, either as an individual self or as a communal self. Hence, there will always be limits to social integration manifest through the boundary between inside and outside. Inherent to the very notion of social integration is paradoxically social disintegration and exclusion.
This, however, assumes that the notions of "inside" and "outside" are more or less unproblematic. It also assumes that "social integration" follows more or less directly from such boundary-making. The idea of inside/outside and its connection with social integration could be explored (especially if the "social integration one has in mind is "democratic" social integration) with respect to ritual practice.
Might it be that rituals do not only draw social boundaries, but also define what social boundaries are and therefore, indirectly, what kind of thing "usness" (and social integration) is? What relations are there between ritual process, social change and materiality/space? An additional question is whether this boundary-drawing dynamic is necessarily present: might there be alternative models of community that don't entail such excluded straw men? Or perhaps more relevant to REDO: are there other, radically inclusive forms of ritual action that do not establish or express inside/outside discriminations (or even work against them)?