Ritual in Industrial Society

A Sociological Analysis of Ritualism in Modern England

Robert Bocock

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9780367436100
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000026894
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

Originally published in 1974, Ritual in Industrial Society is based on several years' research including interviews and observations into the importance of ritual in industrial society within modern Britain. The book addresses how identity and meaning for people of all occupations and social classes can be derived through rituals and provides an expansive and diverse examination of how rituals are used in society, including in birth, marriage and death. The book offers an examination into the use of symbolic action in the body to articulate experiences which words cannot adequately handle and suggests that this enables modern men and women to overcome the mind-body splits which characterise modern technological society. In addition to this, the book examines ritual as a tool for articulating and sharing religious experiences, a point often overlooked by more intellectual approaches to religion in sociology. In addition to this, the book covers an exploration into ritual in social groups and how this is used to develop a sense of belonging among members. The book will be of interest to sociologists as well as academics of religion and theology, social workers and psychotherapists.

Chapter One

‘Man Shall Not Live By Bread Alone’

Views of Man in the Sociological Analysis of Ritual

There is within sociology, and certainly outside that discipline, some scepticism about the importance of the study of sociology of religion and of ritual. This view rests on a hard-headed political and economic view of human societies, which sees religion as important only when it has political, or economic, consequences for a given society. For example, C. Wright Mills, writing about what he calls the ‘master symbols of legitimation’ says, ‘Such symbols, however, do not form some autonomous realm within a society; their social relevance lies in their use to justify or oppose the arrangement of power and the positions within this arrangement of the powerful.’¹

This approach to the place of symbols, which would in many societies be religious, is of relevance for sociology, especially a sociology geared to the relevant political issues of our era. But is it all sociology should be concerned with, in its analysis of religion? There are a number of reasons for answering ‘No’ to this question. Firstly, it fails to do justice to the fact that large numbers of people in the modern world’s societies are influenced in their lives by religious beliefs, symbols, rituals and values in ways which have little to do, at first sight, with politics or economics. Religion is for many a crucial dimension of life, but one which is best conceptualised by the sociologist at the outset of analysis as being sui generis, a dimension not reducible to any other. The meaning of life to many people is interfused with religion. Such a statement may appear to be improvable, but there is some empirical evidence for it from surveys of religious opinions in advanced industrial societies.²

Secondly, from the point of view of major social change, changes in religion have been of some importance not just for political elites and ruling classes, but for other groups in societies. This is not to assert that religion is the only cause of change, but to call attention to the role religion can play in change in a way similar to that of Max Weber. This would seem to be especially true of change in relation to the ‘quality of life’ in given periods and in specific societies.³ Such change is not necessarily in either a desirable or undesirable direction; the influence of positivism still tends to operate uncritically in this area, however, among those who seem to assume that the decline of religion is to be welcomed. An alternative view is equally possible; to say that the quality of life would improve for many people by a recovery of the sacred, of the ‘holy’, dimension in their lives. This view could be held by clergy, and even by social scientists, especially those in the Jungian tradition.⁴ Initially, however, a sociology of religion would be neutral on this issue. However, in the long run such value judgements will emerge in a sociologist’s work. This is because the study of Sociology of Religion raises the central issue about the role of theories of the nature of man in sociology more than any other area within sociology. The crux of any analysis of religion comes when religion is treated as the independent variable, if this is even done. Much sociology has shown very well the ways in which social stratification, politics, economics, influence religion, but often the analyses miss out the role played by religious consciousness itself.⁵ The problem is not simple, for how one conducts an analysis in sociology of religion will reflect a judgement about the role of religious consciousness in human beings; either that it is basically illusory and masks the real problems of life in society, or that it is the only way in which men can make their lives basically meaningful and satisfying. People tend to be drawn to one or other of these perspectives; it is exceptionally difficult to remain neutral on such a central issue.

Sociologists, nevertheless, have to come to some working judgement on this issue. Religion is to be treated here as a basic non-reducible dimension in human experience. The symbolic, the sacred, the holy, the mythic, the poetic, whatever it is called, it is difficult to operate with a view of man which leaves this area out, as of no significance to modern man.⁶ This is not to say everyone has such experiences, or even that a majority do. Rather it is to say that religious consciousness is significant in human societies as we know them, and that it therefore must have some place in any view about man-in-society.

People seek some dimension to existence in addition to the utilitarian basis of everyday living, once the economy is capable of yielding an acceptable standard of living for them. Religions, and some ideologies, provide this for many groups in industrial societies, especially through the ritual actions of the group, not primarily through the intellectual level. The arts, ‘pop’, and sports also provide this dimension, by providing drama through identification with ‘stars’ in the entertainment world and in sport, and through identification with a group wider than the normal membership groups of the people concerned. Spectacle and excitement are provided by these means, as well as by political and military ceremonials.

How are such spectacles and entertainments to be regarded? There is an attitude held by some liberal rationalists towards nearly all rituals and ceremonials which sees them as unnecessary and unfortunate. They are unnecessary for mature, adult people, and they are unfortunate in that the basis of their appeal is emotional, and not intellectual. This assessment of ritual derives from a view of human beings which is not adequate in the light of what social scientists know of people in many different cultures and historical periods, and it is a view which is to be challenged here. The alternative view of man is summed up in the well-known biblical phrase ‘Man shall not live by bread alone’ (Matthew 4:4). Man is a symbol-producing animal; he can set up systems of meaning in terms of which to experience his life. Susanne Langer has shown this more clearly, and her view is expressed in the following: ‘This basic need, which certainly is obvious only in man, is the need of symbolisation. The symbol-making function is one of man’s primary activities, like eating, looking, or moving about.’⁷ Models of man which do not take this capacity seriously into account will be seen to be faulty, especially in the way they handle, or fail to handle, the part played by ritual action in human society, including modern, industrial societies.

Man is more than a ‘naked ape’, more than a complex computer on legs, more than a behavioural organism of an elaborate type.⁸ These views of man are held by many people because they are thought to be scientific, but an adequate scientific theory of man must include his unique capacity for producing symbols, for making his life meaningful, and even dramatic, in the sense that he sees himself as part of a larger story, a larger drama. It is not that the hard-headed views of man are wholly mistaken, it is that they are too limited to cope with all that we know about men living in societies.

We do not know scientifically that all culture and all religion is a defence against ‘reality’; nor that matter is more ‘real’ than human consciousness. What is called ‘matter’ has produced man, his consciousness and its products. It is not possible to single out one element as more basic and ‘real’ and then analyse everything to do with consciousness in terms of this ‘matter’. Perhaps so many do this as a reaction against the alternative error of analysing everything from the assumption that the ‘spirit’ or consciousness is more real than matter. We need a more monistic view of man-in-the-world than either of these. Both ‘matter’ and ‘consciousness’ exist, and are interrelated. Neither is reducible to the other.⁹

Ritual raises problems also of the relation of the rational scientific mode of understanding to the non-rational mode of perception which lies at the root of religion and art, and their associated rituals. Is the aim of such a scientific understanding to increase man’s rational control over his non-rational parts? Is it to further the goals of the Enlightenment, to enable reason to control the passions? Or is it rather to seek to understand ritual action, and its role in social life, to aid integration of body and mind, intellect and unconscious symbols?

A sociological understanding of ritual action can aid the development of a more integrated view of man as a being with an intellect, but also with a body, and a capacity for producing symbols. The intellectual activity of developing such understanding of ritual action is therefore conceived of as itself part of this process. It must never become a substitute for actual lived participation in ritual action; but it may be that some of the ‘ritual specialists’, both performers and ‘audiences’, may be aided by a sociological perspective on their life’s work.

Methodological and Philosophical Presuppositions

Although sociologists and other social scientists are usually very careful to distinguish their analytical and empirical work from value judgements, which in this case includes ontological as well as ethical value judgements, some believers may be right in thinking many social scientists really think there is little point in any sort of judgement other than their scientific ones. They are seen to be committed to ‘science’, their belief system may be called ‘Positivism’.

For non-positivistic social scientists, there is then a special problem—what is to be the relation between social science and commitments in the rest of life? It is possible to subordinate sociology to these extra-commitments, as do some dogmatic Marxists and some Christian sociologists. This, however, seems unsatisfactory when judged as knowledge which can be useful to attain the very ends and values posited by the belief system and value system itself. This style of sociology can become a closed belief system; one which comes close to being based on wish-fulfilment, for the beliefs and assertions are not checked against what can only be called ‘real life’.

In sociology, which is removed from any real value commitments, we are left with research which is in fact implicitly informed by the values of powerful status groups in the society; it is not really neutral. Its neutrality leads to triviality, in that any really interesting and important issues will be ones in which values are inextricably involved. This is the case with some sociology of religion. Either the subject is seen as one in which religion is exposed as false consciousness (dogmatic Marxism) or as a subject useful to élites in the Churches (Christian sociology).¹⁰ Alternatively, it becomes devoted to counting who goes to church, how often, and with what beliefs, using material gathered from opinion polls. In all these cases no analytical or theoretical questions are really posed, for either the answers are known in advance, or they are seen as non-questions.

Analytically based sociology, tackling alive issues, is not value neutral in any simplistic sense. It is not a question of espousing one set of values and beliefs against another, but of choosing problems and tackling them in ways which are very much influenced by values.

Ritual action, the problem chosen for this book, is related to value concerns. Rituals are undervalued in advanced industrial society by technological and managerial élites, although in such societies many sub-groups are dedicated to ritual action. Technological, rationalist, ideology is nevertheless anti-ritual. This book is conceived as redressing the balance somewhat, towards more positive approaches to ritual.

Rituals relate to key areas of our lives—to our sense of community or lack of it; to social cohesion or social conflict; to the human body, death, birth, illness, health, sexuality; and to symbols of beauty and holiness.

Some groups are, however, reaching a new awareness of the importance of ritual for human beings to relate to one another in the heights and depths of experience. Some parts of the youth culture, some religious groups, some in the theatre and other arts are aware of this.¹¹ Serious sociological study and analysis of ritual action is worthwhile to enable us to see what can be done, under what conditions, to deepen our experience of ourselves, our bodies, and of one another.

As used in this book, ‘religion’ has a limited meaning, namely social action which relates to symbols which express the ‘holy’, or the ‘numinous’ as Rudolf Otto calls it.¹² Some people operating with other definitions could see all the rituals, of all types to be examined here, as religious.¹³ If it is said religion means to bind together, then much of the civic and political ritual action could be called religious. The beautiful and the holy, as categories, overlap at some points, and thus some would claim that much artistic expression is really religious.

One can ask what are the consequences of religious ritual as defined here. This will have to be examined in more detail in the chapter on religious ritual, but it is worth pointing out that one of the most important ideas is that experience of the holy, the sacred, can lead to the introduction of novelty, freshness, into our existence. This point is worth stressing because in our culture at the present time, the holy as a concept does not suggest this to many people. It seems a highly tradition-bound area of human experience, and is even somewhat drab; it is certainly not often perceived as being the bearer of newness and freshness into our lives. It is for this reason that Otto’s concept of the ‘numinous’ is so useful for sociology, because it has no such connotations. It is possible to see what is meant by saying that people who have had experience of the ‘numinous’, for instance from drugs, or from more traditional methods of devotion, find their whole life-experiences reinvigorated and refreshed, at least for a while.

A central assumption in the analysis in this book is that religious experience must be allowed, analytically, by the sociologist as a possible type of experience, and not always analysed as basically or ‘really’ about something else.

A distinction is necessary between the phenomenology and the ontology of religion. A phenomenological analysis of religious experience would show the type of experiences which people in particular cultures call experience of ‘the holy’, or numinous, but would ‘bracket off’ to use Husserl’s term, questions of ontology.¹⁴ It is relevant to ask what people themselves believe ontologically, for instance what they would count as an experience of a supernatural reality ‘God’. But just as the sociologist is not called upon, qua sociologist, to accept this belief as ontologically valid, nor is it part of his task to develop his own ontology about the ‘reality’ underlying religious experiences. Indeed, the point can be put more strongly—it is impossible for the sociologist to do any ontological speculation within his frame of reference. The point can be made with relation to the sociology of art, and it is worth doing this to show the logic of the position being maintained here, in an area which many people find less problematic than that of religion. Phenomenology could attempt to describe types of aesthetic experience—what it is to listen and to play music, or to watch dancing, or to paint, read a novel, see a film or play. A sociologist could ask people who do these things frequently, what they think they are doing and experiencing. People might or might not be able to give coherent statements about their beliefs in respect of aesthetic experience; some might think they communicate with the basic structure of the universe, others that they contact their psyches, or the collective unconscious, or even God, or gods. These beliefs are analytically and empirically separate from the aesthetic experience itself. There are fewer ontologies in sociology surrounding aesthetic experience, and fewer reductionist perspectives—that art is really about the ‘society’. ‘Aesthetic experience’ is an analytical category of experience in its own right, although types of aesthetic experience can be examined in relation to different social, political, economic structures without reductionism.¹⁵ The same is possible with religious experience; it is distinct as an analytical type from aesthetic, political, sexual, experiences, and yet equally necessary to have a complete range of types of human experience as a basis for sociology, anthropology and psychology.

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Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Preface for 2019
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Front Matter
• Preface
• Table of Contents
• Illustrations
• Introduction
• 1 ‘Man Shall Not Live by Bread Alone’
• 2 Towards a Sociology of Ritual Action
• 3 Ritual: Civic and Religious
• 4 Religious Ritual in the Church of England
• 5 Nationalism and Civic Ritual
• 6 Life-cycle Rituals
• 7 Aesthetic Ritual
• 8 Ritual, Social Change and Counter-Culture
• References
• Index