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The Art of Manliness Continued JOBS for TEAMS | 18 www.jobsfor teams.com Today we'll provide a little context as to the nature of ritual and why it has largely disappeared from modern societies. What Is Ritual? According to Catherine Bell, profes- sor of ritual studies and author of the preeminent textbook on the subject, ritual has been traditionally defined as an action that lacks a "practical relationship between the means one chooses to achieve certain ends." For example, shaking hands when you meet someone can be considered a ritual as there is no real reason why grabbing another's hand and shaking for a second or two should lead to acquain- tanceship. It is a culturally-relative gesture; we might very well greet each other with a pat on the shoulder or even no physical contact at all. As another example, washing your hands to clean them is not a ritual since there exists a clear practical relation- ship between your action and the desired result. But if a priest splashes water on his hands to "purify" them, that's a ritual, since the water is largely symbolic and not really meant to rid the hands of bacteria. Bell lists six attributes of rituals: • Formalism: This is a quality rooted in contrast and how restrictive or expres- sive the accepted code of behavior is for a given event/situation. For example a backyard picnic is very casual and will not feel like a ritual because there are few guidelines for how one may express oneself. A very formal dinner, on the other hand, has a more limited range of accepted behaviors and thus can feel quite ritual-like. Bell argues that while we sometimes see formality as stuffy, since it curbs more spontaneous expression, formalized activities are not "necessarily empty or trivial" and "can be aesthetically as well as politically compelling, invoking what one analyst describes as 'a metaphoric range of con- siderable power, a simplicity and direct- ness, a vitality and rhythm.' The restric- tion of gestures and phrases to a small number that are practiced, perfected, and soon quite evocatively familiar can endow these formalized activities with great beauty and grace." • Traditionalism. Rituals are often framed as activities that carry on values and behaviors that have been in place since an institution's creation. This link to the past gives the ritual power and author- ity and provides the participant with a sense of continuity. The ritual may sim- ply harken to those who came before, as when university graduates don the gowns that were once typical everyday classroom wear for scholars, or it may actually seek to recreate a founding event – as in the American celebration of Thanksgiving. • Disciplined invariance. Often seen as one of the most defining features of ritual, this attribute involves "a disci- plined set of actions marked by precise repetition and physical control." Think of soldiers marching in drill step or the sit/stand/kneel pattern followed by Catholics during the course of a Mass. Disciplined invariance suppresses "the significance of the personal and particular moment in favor of the time- less authority of the group, its doctrines, or its practices," and "subordinates the individual and the contingent to a sense of the encompassing and the enduring." • Rule-governance. Rituals are often governed by a set of rules. Both war and athletics are examples of activities that can be quite ritual-like when their rules regulate what is and is not acceptable. Rules can both check and channel cer- tain tensions; for example, the game of football channels masculine aggression into a form of ritualized and controlled violence. On occasion the rules fail to sufficiently check the tension that is always bubbling right at the surface, JobsForTeams0214_manliness.indd 2 1/6/14 1:33 PM