The problem with Anthropologists is that they not only read too much but want to read too much about the normal life of the people about whom they study, who never tried to read or can read so much details about their own life. This book is the best example to demonstrate this. The author who is also the daughter of the renowned Indian Anthropologist late Sri M. N. Srinivas forget to remember his advice to the anthropologist:
…In the finest monographs there was a seamless fusion of theory and analytical ability but also a gift for stating the case with economy and clarity, using technical terms and concepts only when necessary. This needs to be emphasized for there is a widespread impression that the use of jargon is necessary to establish one’s scholarly credentials. [emphasis added]—M. N. Srinivas, ‘Social Anthropology and Literary Sensibility’,pp.594-605, in M. N. Srinivas, Collected Essays, New Delhi, Oxford University Press, (2002) Paperbacks 2004.
In this book one can read so many details which people cannot and do not want to read about their life. But Anthropologists several times cannot avoid this pitfall as they wanted to parade their scholarship more than actually presenting a clear monograph of the people among whom they conduct filed studies.
For example Tulasi writes:
In the classical literature on ritual and ritual acts, ritual has been understood as embedding itself in routine life but not becoming routinized (Durkheim [1915] 1995; Mauss [1923] 1967; Hertz 2006; Levi-Strauss 1963, 1966). Rituals are a part of everyday ordinary life, yet they allow practitioners to enter another extraordinary state, characterized by an internal, often magical logic. When practitioners step back into the everyday world, they and it are transformed. Anthropologists have understood that ritual as a structure allowed different temporalities to manifest themselves, always, in “another” time while having a narrative continuity with the routine world from which they emerged and returned (Biardeau 1976). For Levi-Strauss, what was surprising was that even though the outcome of ritual was known, yet it enabled a refraction of the world for participants (1966). How this refraction occurred for individuals within the society, and what happened to the structure of the ritual and the society as a result, was the concern of classical ritual studies. More recent schools of thought have rejected this focus on structure, the structure of ritual, or the enduring structure of society, pivoting toward a focus on ritual’s efficacy and functionality, its ability to do what it sets out as its objective, what Seligman et al. Term its “sincerity” (2008). But what if we are less concerned with structure of function, and more with the process of ritual refraction? (p.12)
A reoriented exploration of ritual process toward dynamism suggests that an understanding borne of what ritualists say they do and what they do over a period of time will move us beyond the pragmatic limitations of what ritual does in order to think through what ritual is. Or, to put in another way, a focus on what ritual practitioners say they do and what they do moves us from a consideration of efficacy to considerations of imagination, from the depredations of the present to the possibilities in the future. And, if we allow that the ritual practitioners—the Dandu Shastris of this world—have a philosophy of ritual, rather than explaining their mores away through philosophy, we require, at the very least, a re-placement of philosophy in anthropological theorizing.(italics original)—Tulasi Srinivas, The Cow in the Elevator: Anthropology of Wonder, London, Duke University Press, pp. 12-13
After reading all this unnecessary information punctuating with various references I wrote in the side of the book in Tamil: oru mannum puriyala (not a damn think I understood). For example in Chapter one: ADVENTURES IN MODERN DWELLING giving details about grihapravesham (Sanskrit: lit. House entering, a house-blessing ceremony) to which the author was invited by Dandu Shastri, after giving a dramatic picture about taking a cow through an elevator and describing about the building and locality of the “Golden Orchards” in Malleshwaram (in Bangalore) where the manager of the building even tried to sell an apartment to her about giving various details about the property and also the way he can arrange such house entering ceremony in absentia of the owner, Tulasi writes:
ARNOLD VAN GENNEP, in his pioneering work on ritual ([1909] 1960), focused on limens, or thresholds, as significant stopping spaces within rites of passage. He wrote that ritual subjects were luminal for the duration of the ritual, lodged “betwixt and between” positions assigned and arrayed by law, custom, convention, and ceremony (Turner 1967, 93-103; 1969a, 95, 1969b, 94-96, 102-6). F or Van Gennep limens were not only dangerous and difficult spaces but also magical. He differentiated three phases to ritual space based on their relationship to the limen: preliminal (separation or isolation, during which individuals are separated from their group), luminal (in between or transitional), and postliminal (reintegration into the social group). Half a century later, Victory Turner’s focus on the continuity of social structures led him to argue that liminality was limited both temporally and spatially, and was essentially a space of anti-structure, but he acknowledged that the limen was a profoundly creative and indeed transformative space for individual partaking in ritual, stating, “Liminality … [is] a realm of pure possibility whence novel configurations of ideas and relations may arise” (The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1967, 97)
Consideration of a space of liminality thus provides the ground for a strategic consideration of the possibility of creativity and wonder. Ritual process in transformatory, creative, and generative, for it allows its participants to remain in the dangerous and productive space in between—the luminal space—constantly. Shifts in the discourse of wonder create and sustain a way of contesting received limits while simultaneously reconfiguring and reimagining ontological possibilities—what we might term a simultaneous “rupture-capture.” I argue that this engages a dual process of rupture-capture that allows ritual participants to occupy and engage two seemingly contradictory forces at the same time. Michael Pett insightfully theorizes that ritual allows for subjunctive spaces—wishful emotive spaces oriented to the future—that encourage both the appreciation of perspective and the imagination of horizons (2008, 18). This recognition of the space between what is now and what is possible is but a condition of subjunction, which simultaneously allows for (p.36) “recovering the moments of wonder that make the ordinary extraordinary; for seeding new initiatives that cultivate fresh vocabularies and trajectories” (Mathur and da Cunha 2006, 7).
In Malleshwaram, the rituals of space and dwelling such as the grihapravesham work in three primary ways: to organize and categorize space as sacred and nonsacred, the ecological to the built; to sanctify and domesticate space by purifying it to be occupied; and to remedy mistakes made in the material articulation of the space itself. Rituals are not limited to temple publics but flow unchecked into the spaces of the city. The actions of loos and change ensured that the city was no longer merely fixed and material but was instead in a process of world making. When seen thus—as world-crafting events—the city’s rituals basically devolved into two types—the prophylactic and the remedial. Through the recording of these ritual acts, I explore the architecture of this wonderment. (italics original)—ibid. pp. 36-37
I wonder Dandu Shastri who ‘unusually quiet as he issued orders to his assistants. No one joked or laughed. Once the homa kunda (Vedic fire pit) was prepared, he lit it with little enthusiasm and performed the invocations in a mechanical manner….’ (p. 35) and when the cow which was taken to various rooms in the house when ‘stoically left a heap of dung on the marble floor of the kitchen, much to the delight of the participants for whom the cow-pat was an added blessing’ were ever analyzing the ritual in the way Tulasi takes pain to explain to us!
Being a scholar Tulasi knows more than me about various aspects of ritual. But being an Anthropologist I think she might also know the difference in ritual in various cultures and societies. Though the term ‘ritual’ in English could be the same to translate various religious functions everywhere in the world when we consider the local or native words, forms and meaning there would be lots of difference. Of course nothing wrong in comparing ritual of one society with another—particularly in anthropology, as it is part of the nature of anthropology, still the way she help us to understand the ritual at Malleshwarm by using some technical terms like ‘Liminality’ (I don’t know what it actually means) from African context with that of India won’t help a lay person like me to understand the anthropological perspective of our tradition. For example though outsiders would think the Holy Communion that is conducted by Christians in their churches is the same as any other ritual that we perform in our Hindu tradition with prasad. Note that:
…In essence, the difference between a ritual and a sacrament is not of form but that of content. This difference of content, however, is of a subjective nature and is attached to a particular ritual by the Church and the believer. It is only when this content of grace is attached to a form that a ritual becomes a sacrament and then implies a symbolic meaning or implication to the believer….(italics original)— Khiyalie Vinod, ‘Rituals and Sacraments in Christianity: A Sociological Perspective’, in Clarence O. McMullen, (ed.), RITUALS and SAC RAMENTS in Indian religions, Delhi, ISPCK, 1979. . p.82
… The term “ritual” signifies the words of a liturgical service and, therefore, is to be contrasted with “ceremonial”. The “ritual” is something good, but the “ceremonial” is something bad. It is a task of Christian theology to see that Christian rituals and sacraments do not become the “ceremonial”…. — Nirmal, Arvind. ‘Rituals and sacraments in Christianity: A Theological perspective’, in Clarence, ibid. p.66.
I always interested in anthropology as its widens our knowledge particularly when the anthropologists take time to do the field work and writes a monograph later by remaining both subjective (while doing filed study) and ‘objective’ while writing about it. But I wish they also take the advice of scholars like Srinivas who are more down to earth in both doing their filed work and presenting their studies as we found in his book ‘Collected Essays’ from which I quoted in the beginning. I haven’t completed the reading of Tulasi’s book. But as I read, I get lost as she uses words uneconomically and without clarity, ‘using technical terms and concepts’ (Srinivas op. Cit) unnecessarily. And the book remains a typical case study and a telling rebuke to this scholarly remark by her father: ‘This needs to be emphasized for there is a widespread impression that the use of jargon is necessary to establish one’s scholarly credentials.’ (op.cit).
For example when Dandu Shastri conducted that grihapravesham, he was doing it as part of his profession. He might be more thinking about the time that he needs to finish (quickly in case if he has another engagement) and the dakshina (honorarium) and the missing feast which generally follows such function (as here doing is it for the absent landlord). And rest of the participants satisfied with the function as it will remove the inauspicious things from the new house before it could be occupied and they never think any ‘rupture-capture’ forces. Of course anthropologists like Tulasi helps us to learn so many technical terms to understand about life, but common people never think in these lines. Of course we need scholars to articulate properly about our behaviour in so many areas in life, but thankfully we never live with such understanding.
15-07-2019
The problem with Anthropologists is that they not only read too much but want to read too much about the normal life of the people about whom they study, who never tried to read or can read so much details about their own life. This book is the best example to demonstrate this. The author who is also the daughter of the renowned Indian Anthropologist late Sri M. N. Srinivas forget to remember his advice to the anthropologist:
…In the finest monographs there was a seamless fusion of theory and analytical ability but also a gift for stating the case with economy and clarity, using technical terms and concepts only when necessary. This needs to be emphasized for there is a widespread impression that the use of jargon is necessary to establish one’s scholarly credentials. [emphasis added]—M. N. Srinivas, ‘Social Anthropology and Literary Sensibility’,pp.594-605, in M. N. Srinivas, Collected Essays, New Delhi, Oxford University Press, (2002) Paperbacks 2004.
In this book one can read so many details which people cannot and do not want to read about their life. But Anthropologists several times cannot avoid this pitfall as they wanted to parade their scholarship more than actually presenting a clear monograph of the people among whom they conduct filed studies.
For example Tulasi writes:
In the classical literature on ritual and ritual acts, ritual has been understood as embedding itself in routine life but not becoming routinized (Durkheim [1915] 1995; Mauss [1923] 1967; Hertz 2006; Levi-Strauss 1963, 1966). Rituals are a part of everyday ordinary life, yet they allow practitioners to enter another extraordinary state, characterized by an internal, often magical logic. When practitioners step back into the everyday world, they and it are transformed. Anthropologists have understood that ritual as a structure allowed different temporalities to manifest themselves, always, in “another” time while having a narrative continuity with the routine world from which they emerged and returned (Biardeau 1976). For Levi-Strauss, what was surprising was that even though the outcome of ritual was known, yet it enabled a refraction of the world for participants (1966). How this refraction occurred for individuals within the society, and what happened to the structure of the ritual and the society as a result, was the concern of classical ritual studies. More recent schools of thought have rejected this focus on structure, the structure of ritual, or the enduring structure of society, pivoting toward a focus on ritual’s efficacy and functionality, its ability to do what it sets out as its objective, what Seligman et al. Term its “sincerity” (2008). But what if we are less concerned with structure of function, and more with the process of ritual refraction? (p.12)
A reoriented exploration of ritual process toward dynamism suggests that an understanding borne of what ritualists say they do and what they do over a period of time will move us beyond the pragmatic limitations of what ritual does in order to think through what ritual is. Or, to put in another way, a focus on what ritual practitioners say they do and what they do moves us from a consideration of efficacy to considerations of imagination, from the depredations of the present to the possibilities in the future. And, if we allow that the ritual practitioners—the Dandu Shastris of this world—have a philosophy of ritual, rather than explaining their mores away through philosophy, we require, at the very least, a re-placement of philosophy in anthropological theorizing.(italics original)—Tulasi Srinivas, The Cow in the Elevator: Anthropology of Wonder, London, Duke University Press, pp. 12-13
After reading all this unnecessary information punctuating with various references I wrote in the side of the book in Tamil: oru mannum puriyala (not a damn think I understood). For example in Chapter one: ADVENTURES IN MODERN DWELLING giving details about grihapravesham (Sanskrit: lit. House entering, a house-blessing ceremony) to which the author was invited by Dandu Shastri, after giving a dramatic picture about taking a cow through an elevator and describing about the building and locality of the “Golden Orchards” in Malleshwaram (in Bangalore) where the manager of the building even tried to sell an apartment to her about giving various details about the property and also the way he can arrange such house entering ceremony in absentia of the owner, Tulasi writes:
ARNOLD VAN GENNEP, in his pioneering work on ritual ([1909] 1960), focused on limens, or thresholds, as significant stopping spaces within rites of passage. He wrote that ritual subjects were luminal for the duration of the ritual, lodged “betwixt and between” positions assigned and arrayed by law, custom, convention, and ceremony (Turner 1967, 93-103; 1969a, 95, 1969b, 94-96, 102-6). F or Van Gennep limens were not only dangerous and difficult spaces but also magical. He differentiated three phases to ritual space based on their relationship to the limen: preliminal (separation or isolation, during which individuals are separated from their group), luminal (in between or transitional), and postliminal (reintegration into the social group). Half a century later, Victory Turner’s focus on the continuity of social structures led him to argue that liminality was limited both temporally and spatially, and was essentially a space of anti-structure, but he acknowledged that the limen was a profoundly creative and indeed transformative space for individual partaking in ritual, stating, “Liminality … [is] a realm of pure possibility whence novel configurations of ideas and relations may arise” (The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1967, 97)
Consideration of a space of liminality thus provides the ground for a strategic consideration of the possibility of creativity and wonder. Ritual process in transformatory, creative, and generative, for it allows its participants to remain in the dangerous and productive space in between—the luminal space—constantly. Shifts in the discourse of wonder create and sustain a way of contesting received limits while simultaneously reconfiguring and reimagining ontological possibilities—what we might term a simultaneous “rupture-capture.” I argue that this engages a dual process of rupture-capture that allows ritual participants to occupy and engage two seemingly contradictory forces at the same time. Michael Pett insightfully theorizes that ritual allows for subjunctive spaces—wishful emotive spaces oriented to the future—that encourage both the appreciation of perspective and the imagination of horizons (2008, 18). This recognition of the space between what is now and what is possible is but a condition of subjunction, which simultaneously allows for (p.36) “recovering the moments of wonder that make the ordinary extraordinary; for seeding new initiatives that cultivate fresh vocabularies and trajectories” (Mathur and da Cunha 2006, 7).
In Malleshwaram, the rituals of space and dwelling such as the grihapravesham work in three primary ways: to organize and categorize space as sacred and nonsacred, the ecological to the built; to sanctify and domesticate space by purifying it to be occupied; and to remedy mistakes made in the material articulation of the space itself. Rituals are not limited to temple publics but flow unchecked into the spaces of the city. The actions of loos and change ensured that the city was no longer merely fixed and material but was instead in a process of world making. When seen thus—as world-crafting events—the city’s rituals basically devolved into two types—the prophylactic and the remedial. Through the recording of these ritual acts, I explore the architecture of this wonderment. (italics original)—ibid. pp. 36-37
I wonder Dandu Shastri who ‘unusually quiet as he issued orders to his assistants. No one joked or laughed. Once the homa kunda (Vedic fire pit) was prepared, he lit it with little enthusiasm and performed the invocations in a mechanical manner….’ (p. 35) and when the cow which was taken to various rooms in the house when ‘stoically left a heap of dung on the marble floor of the kitchen, much to the delight of the participants for whom the cow-pat was an added blessing’ were ever analyzing the ritual in the way Tulasi takes pain to explain to us!
Being a scholar Tulasi knows more than me about various aspects of ritual. But being an Anthropologist I think she might also know the difference in ritual in various cultures and societies. Though the term ‘ritual’ in English could be the same to translate various religious functions everywhere in the world when we consider the local or native words, forms and meaning there would be lots of difference. Of course nothing wrong in comparing ritual of one society with another—particularly in anthropology, as it is part of the nature of anthropology, still the way she help us to understand the ritual at Malleshwarm by using some technical terms like ‘Liminality’ (I don’t know what it actually means) from African context with that of India won’t help a lay person like me to understand the anthropological perspective of our tradition. For example though outsiders would think the Holy Communion that is conducted by Christians in their churches is the same as any other ritual that we perform in our Hindu tradition with prasad. Note that:
…In essence, the difference between a ritual and a sacrament is not of form but that of content. This difference of content, however, is of a subjective nature and is attached to a particular ritual by the Church and the believer. It is only when this content of grace is attached to a form that a ritual becomes a sacrament and then implies a symbolic meaning or implication to the believer….(italics original)— Khiyalie Vinod, ‘Rituals and Sacraments in Christianity: A Sociological Perspective’, in Clarence O. McMullen, (ed.), RITUALS and SAC RAMENTS in Indian religions, Delhi, ISPCK, 1979. . p.82
… The term “ritual” signifies the words of a liturgical service and, therefore, is to be contrasted with “ceremonial”. The “ritual” is something good, but the “ceremonial” is something bad. It is a task of Christian theology to see that Christian rituals and sacraments do not become the “ceremonial”…. — Nirmal, Arvind. ‘Rituals and sacraments in Christianity: A Theological perspective’, in Clarence, ibid. p.66.
I always interested in anthropology as its widens our knowledge particularly when the anthropologists take time to do the field work and writes a monograph later by remaining both subjective (while doing filed study) and ‘objective’ while writing about it. But I wish they also take the advice of scholars like Srinivas who are more down to earth in both doing their filed work and presenting their studies as we found in his book ‘Collected Essays’ from which I quoted in the beginning. I haven’t completed the reading of Tulasi’s book. But as I read, I get lost as she uses words uneconomically and without clarity, ‘using technical terms and concepts’ (Srinivas op. Cit) unnecessarily. And the book remains a typical case study and a telling rebuke to this scholarly remark by her father: ‘This needs to be emphasized for there is a widespread impression that the use of jargon is necessary to establish one’s scholarly credentials.’ (op.cit).
For example when Dandu Shastri conducted that grihapravesham, he was doing it as part of his profession. He might be more thinking about the time that he needs to finish (quickly in case if he has another engagement) and the dakshina (honorarium) and the missing feast which generally follows such function (as here doing is it for the absent landlord). And rest of the participants satisfied with the function as it will remove the inauspicious things from the new house before it could be occupied and they never think any ‘rupture-capture’ forces. Of course anthropologists like Tulasi helps us to learn so many technical terms to understand about life, but common people never think in these lines. Of course we need scholars to articulate properly about our behaviour in so many areas in life, but thankfully we never live with such understanding.
15-07-2019
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