Ritual

ritual: see ceremony.

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ritual

1. the prescribed or established form of a religious or other ceremony

2. such prescribed forms in general or collectively

3. Psychol any repetitive behaviour, such as hand-washing, performed by a person with a compulsive personality disorder

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Ritual 

(in Russian, obriad), a body of conventional, traditional acts which lack direct practical purpose but which serve as symbols for certain social relationships and for visually expressing and reinforcing those relationships. The concept of ritual should not be confused with the broader concept of custom, which designates not only symbolic acts but any action repeated and reinforced by tradition.

Preclass societies are characterized by a lack of differentiation between everyday, work, and religious rituals. With the rise of social classes, the state, and the church, rites that are peculiar to the church arise, along with rituals and ceremonials associated with social, state, and political life (such as ceremonies at court). At the same time, traditional rituals continue to exist, surviving for a particularly long time among peasants. These traditional rituals include work rituals associated with farming, such as the harvest rituals zazhinki and dozhinki and the stock-raising rituals for the spring putting out to pasture of livestock. Similarly, there are rituals associated with fishing, hunting, the building of new dwellings, and the digging of new wells. Traditional every day rituals also include family rituals, such as those associated with births, deaths, initiations, and weddings. Because of the cyclical nature of agricultural activity, which follows the calendar, work rituals in the first category are customarily called calendar rituals, to distinguish them from family rituals.

Rituals may be magical (including verbal magic), symbolically demonstrative, or in the form of games. Rituals of a later date are characterized by the development of symbolic and play elements and the loss or transformation of the magical elements, which originated in primitive agrarian, herding, and craft work and the stability of communal, tribal, and family (especially patriarchal) relationships.

Among many peoples, rituals performed individually (and often secretly) were accompanied by prosaic or poetic charms and sayings. Rituals performed collectively (by a tribe, commune, family, or work group) were also accompanied by songs. Rituals of divination (mantic rituals), which attempt to foretell the future of those involved, form another special group.

Significant changes in ritual tradition take place in the capitalist period. This process deepens during the period of socialist reconstruction of society. The traditional rituals, especially those of magic, are forgotten, become symbolic, or take the form of play. In the USSR and other socialist countries, a new, socialistic ritualism is forming.

REFERENCES

Chicherov, V. I. Zimnii period russkogo zemledel’cheskogo kalendaria XVI-XIX vv. Moscow, 1957.
Propp, V. Ia. Russkie agrarnye prazdniki. [Leningrad] 1963.
Anichkov, E. V. Vesenniaia obriadovaia pesnia na Zapade i u slavian, parts, 1–2. St. Petersburg, 1903–05.
Sartori, P. Sitte und Brauch, vols. 1–2. Leipzig, 1910–11.

K. V. CHISTOV

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Ritual 

a type of rite, a historically evolved form of complex symbolic behavior, a codified system of actions (including speech) that serve to express certain social and cultural interrelations, such as the recognition of certain values or authorities or the maintenance of a system of social norms.

In the most ancient religions ritual served as the chief expression of cult relations. (Compare Engels’ statement about the role of ceremonies in pre-Christian cults in K. Marx and F. Engels, Soch., 2nd ed., vol. 19, p. 313.) Subsequently, with the development of a mythological system and then a religiophilosophic system, mythological interpretations of rituals appeared, as well as ritual means for “dramatizing” a myth. Although such religions as Christianity, especially in its Protestant forms, proclaim the primacy of the “spiritual” side (dogma and feelings) over ritual, in practice the preservation of religious relations in the masses is assured to a large extent by the effect of traditional systems of rituals, which constitute the most conservative element of religion and the interpretation of which changes as social life becomes secularized. This necessitates viewing various types of rituals as they are linked with the society’s historically evolved systems of values and norms.

Rituals play an important role in the history of society as a traditionally developed method for socially educating individuals and for acquainting them with the collective norms of life. Rituals are forced into the periphery of social life by the development of legal norms, of a system of moral concepts, of elements of rational conduct for the individual, and of a scientific consciousness. Rituals then exist mainly in the domain of ceremonial forms of official conduct and everyday relations, such as civil ceremonies, etiquette, and diplomatic protocol.

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Ritual 

in biology, a standard signaling behavioral act used by animals in communicating with one another. A ritual usually consists of a series of characteristic body movements or actions, often accompanied by specific sounds or the discharge of odoriferous secretions. Animals use appropriate rituals at crucial moments of interaction, for example, when protecting territory against incursions of rivals, at the first meeting of a male and female, when selecting nesting sites, or when mating. There is a special ritual corresponding to each such situation. Rituals are often distinguished by their great complexity, as, for example, the courting behavior of the male stickleback and the dances of bees.

Rituals developed from movements associated with the everyday activities of animals, such as locomotion and feeding. Under the influence of natural selection, especially sexual selection, the initial movement changes in speed, amplitude, and degree of coordination with other movements, acquiring greater specificity and signaling expressiveness. In the course of this process—ritualization—the contours and coloring of the areas of the body most closely associated with the movement may change. Rituals play an important role in animal communication, both among invertebrates, including mollusks and arthropods, and vertebrates, from fish to mammals.

REFERENCES

Darwin, C. Vyrazhenie emotsii u cheloveka i zhivotnykh. Soch., vol. 5. Moscow, 1953.
Lorenz, K. “Evoliutsiia rituala v biologicheskoi i kul’turnoi sferakh.” Priroda, 1969, no. 11. Pages 42–51. (Translated from English.)
Hinde, R. Povedenie zhivotnykh: Sintez etologii i sravnitel’noi psikhologii. Moscow, 1975. (Translated from English.)
Hinde, R. “A Discussion on Ritualization of Behaviour in Animals and Man.” London, 1966. (Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, series B, vol. 251, no. 772.)

E. N. PANOV