Abstract
Obrovská debunks the conception of ethnicity as composed of stable cultural characteristics that could be ascribed to seemingly homogeneous ethnic groups and argues for the more processual and emergent character of ethnic meanings and identities. She introduces the concept of everyday interaction rituals as a powerful analytical tool enabling research on everyday ethnicity. Interaction rituals are distinguished from the rituals studied mainly by anthropologists in traditional societies as well as from those “big” or “intense” ritual events and performances identified by some theorists in modern societies. The chapter presents different perspectives on everyday rituals and integrates them into an original multi-dimensional analytical frame that represents bodily, emotional, and dramaturgical, as well as conversational, aspects of interactions.
This chapter is based on the article previously published by Social Studies: Obrovská, J. (2014). Rituály s “těmi druhými.” Perspektiva interakčních rituálů ve školní etnografii etnicky různorodých třídních kolektivů. Sociální studia, 11(2), 51–74. ISSN 1214-813X.
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Notes
- 1.
Brubaker (2004) sees analytical groupism as the tendency to consider groups as basic units representing social reality and simultaneously as basic analytical units. Instead of working with groups, analysis should start with the ways reality is produced, created, and maintained through acts of classification, categorization, and identification.
- 2.
Taylor (1994) argues that the lack of political recognition of the ethnocultural status of minorities represents a crucial problem for their social status. In contrast, Andersson (2000), using examples from the lives of young migrants, finds that orientation toward situational identities and their legitimacy is often more fundamental for their work on identity than recognition and confirmation of their ethnicity by others. We talk about ethnicized forms of “situated politics of recognition” (Andersson 2000), and legitimate participation in a situation in which ethnicity can (but need not) relate to situational moral frameworks.
- 3.
Brubaker and Cooper (2000) follow Calhoun and distinguish between relational and categorical identities. I prefer the distinction between situational and categorical identities, as I regard both types as relational in principle.
- 4.
The only formal information that indicated the class position of individual students was their parents’ occupation, which was stated by the students in the brief questionnaires I asked them to complete. Even if this information was not sufficient in itself, it showed that most Roma students came from families situated at the very bottom of the working class (often labeled as the “underclass”), which can be characterized by long-term unemployment, seasonal jobs, precarious work conditions, dependence on welfare benefits, and so on. I acquired some complementary information about the social backgrounds of students from my interviews with teachers. However, I never visited the families or conducted interviews with their parents. One of the reasons for this strategy was the threat of terrain overload; over the period of my fieldwork, the parents of Roma students were interviewed by two other research groups.
- 5.
The “color-blind” approach stands in contrast to considering individuals’ race when evaluating their participation in certain activities and their access to resources in the context of public policies (entitlement to social benefits, access to education, etc.). Its critics (Bonilla-Silva 2003) argue that color-blindness helps to reproduce white supremacy by making the disadvantages that people of color face invisible.
- 6.
I do not intend to claim that researcher-induced reflexivity on this topic would not make sense in the context of research or activism. However, it would require a different research design or type of researched situation. If I tried to bring it up in my interviews with students, it might have resulted in symbolic violence against minority students and in strengthening the notion of privileged whiteness with majority students. Whiteness is often produced by silence in everyday situations and it takes the active effort of informants to understand its social sources and impact on their own experience.
- 7.
A desired “connection” is reached when the gestures symbolizing certain cultural messages are effective. The fundamental features of a ritual performance, which include symbols and scripts, actors, audience, the means of symbolic production, the mise-en-scéne and social power, interact. Alexander follows a historical framework of the mutual de-fusion of the partial elements of performances: during its development, cultural texts become disconnected from collective representations, the means of symbolic production are alienated from social actors and elites producing prime symbolic acts are dis-attached from mass audiences (Alexander 2006, p. 45). It is his emphasis on the correspondence between the individual elements of a ritual that prevents him from seeing rituals as part of everyday life.
- 8.
I want to thank Petr Kubala for this metaphor.
- 9.
This theoretical conception of identity contradicts the Enlightenment and Romantic notions of identity as a timeless essence. Goffman’s conception of identity, on the contrary, belongs to the tradition of authors who claim that the consciousness of one’s self always exists in dependence on a certain context, on a relationship with others who confirm its existence (Benwell and Stokoe 2010). It is a notion of identity as fragmented and multiple in relation to the context in which the individual finds herself. Such a conception has been later fully expressed in post-structuralism. This concept of identity has been disputed, for instance, by Giddens (1991), who proposes the dichotomy between the “real” versus the “false” self, and the reflexive projection of identity in the conditions of late modernity, which, according to him, results in the formation of an “authentic” self.
- 10.
Many authors study the performative aspects of language. According to Austin (2000: 22), “[T]he uttering of a sentence can mean doing a certain act.” Such sentences are called performatives. By saying them, we act rather than inform about something. As is postulated by Butler (1993), a performative utterance enacts and produces, rather than names and describes. In a similar way, Doubek (1998) links communication to performing successful gestures and uttering successful performatives that fundamentally depend on the cultural competencies of an individual.
- 11.
Collins’ point of departure, unlike Goffman’s, is not symbolic interactionism, and in academic circles, he is often presented as a theorist of conflict. The combination of an emphasis on microsocial processes and the influence of Durkheim, Goffman, and Garfinkel make him an inspiration for the analysis of microconflicts.
- 12.
Durkheim called this state collective effervescence, for Goffman, it was euphoria, while Collins himself uses the expression flow.
- 13.
This ritual quality has been described by others through the concept of mimesis (cf. Wulf 2010).
- 14.
Collins’ interest in situational rhythm and emotions lead him to seek inspiration in the works of ethnomethodologists, who focus on the everyday methods of maintaining the self-evidence of the social order. The proponents of conversation analysis (Sacks et al. 1974 quoted in Collins 2004) identify, for example, the turn-taking rules in conversation, which, when subconsciously maintained, help to carry out non-threatening conversations devoid of any improper overlaps, awkward silences, or feelings of inadequate space for self-expression. Highly tuned conversation rhythm refers to its ritual character. As Goffman might put it, speech pauses indicate that the speakers have failed to agree on whose words would become the shared focus and the object that demands ritual attention and support.
- 15.
This interpretation is found, for example, in the work of Giddens (as cited in Hausmann et al. 2011), who believes Goffman is interested in routine behavior instrumental in the reproduction of institutions. I would argue, however, that Goffman is interested in the (secular) sacred, not in the routine. If this was not the case, the metaphor of ritual would be an empty one. In his other works, Giddens (1991) sees Goffman’s ritual as a way of society coping with anxiety. Despite the certain explanatory potential of this interpretation, it remains problematic, because in relation to Goffman’s analysis of interaction, Giddens does not distinguish between ritual and routine, using them as equivalents.
- 16.
As Turner puts it, “Communitas breaks in through the interstices of structure, in liminality; at the edges of structure, in marginality; and from beneath structure, in inferiority” (Turner, V. 1969, p. 128).
- 17.
The author identifies in his work two more states (the home state and the sacred state), but they are not relevant for the argument of this text.
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Obrovská, J. (2018). Everyday Ethnicity and Ritual. In: Roma Identity and Ritual in the Classroom. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94514-9_2
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