Society: A Set of Symbols

Abstract

In the last chapter we talked of examining ritual to help our understanding of systems of classification. We referred to the scheme identified by Arnold van Gennep which seems to recur throughout the world in rites of passage, and we discussed various examples which would appear to illustrate it. This scheme makes sense of a wide variety of behaviour in an overall way, but let us turn now to see how we interpret these rituals in practice. What we can most easily look at when examining ritual behaviour are the material objects involved, the fixed elements of human behaviour, and the way the humans dress themselves. We divide the whole performance into small units — the clothes, the cards, the gifts, the food — all of which may be seen and interpreted as symbols. Symbols may be regarded as the smallest units of ritual and we can learn a lot by examining them in their own right.