INSIDE THE GURU'S GATE - Anpere

Humphrey & Laidlaw’s claim to present a general theory of ritual has met with
various and sometimes critical responses in the academic community. 71 Although one
should be precautious with a theory that makes this pretention, I do believe their
action-directed approach has several advantages. Humphrey & Laidlaw challenge a
common anthropological assumption that ritual is essentially a form of communication
which enables people to express religious beliefs, symbolic codes, theories about
societies, and other social messages. In their view, anthropologists have defined ritual
by contextual and discursive elements, rather than focusing on what constitutes the
marrow of rituals: human action. Their accomplishment is to deconstruct ritual to the
minimal unit of action, which then is analyzed in relation to other components, like
intentions and meanings, in the doing of action.
Linguistic actions, such as reading prayers, reciting religious texts, and singing
songs, appear to be clear-cut examples of communication. But according to Humphrey
& Laidlaw, this communication is not intrinsic to the ritualized nature of linguistic
acts because ritualization is a quality which action assumes and not a conveyance
of a set of ideas. Applying this idea to religious Sikh practices one can easily
discover communicative functions and meanings of reciting the Gurus’ words and
teaching in the Guru Granth Sahib. Many contemporary Sikhs would explain that
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Schieffelin (1998) argues that Humphrey & Laidlaw’s theory cannot lay claims on general
validity since it is empirically based on one type of ritual and excludes a large number of other
ritual activities (Schieffelin 1998: 196). Cavallin (2005) suggests that Humphrey & Laidlaw’s
theory presents a paradox between the ritual commitment and the non-intentional quality of
ritualized acts. In his reading, the ritual commitment is an “intentional suspension of individual
intentionality” (2005: 7), when ritualized acts are no longer constituted by intentional meaning
of the agent. As Cavallin argues, the ritual commitment can be interpreted to function as an
overarching intentional meaning of the whole ritual performance, but if intentional meaning (of
the ritual commitment) and intentions (of acts) should be regarded synonymous, then the theory
becomes contradictory. In other words, the individual intention cannot be separated from the
constitution of ritualized act since there is an intentional meaning behind the ritual commitment
(Cavallin 2005: 7 ff.). A significant aspect of Humphrey & Laidlaw’s theory, which Cavallin does
not attend, is stipulation of ritual acts. From my reading of Humphrey & Laidlaw’s theory, I
believe the subtle distinction between intentions which identify acts and “prior” intentions (or
motives and purposes) which spur people to engage in action, has created scholarly confusion of
ideas. In cases of ritualization the latter type of “intention” may still provide meaning to ritual
action, but none of the “intentions” identify ritual acts because they are perceived to be stipulated.
Stipulation accomplishes the divorce with the actor’s immediate intention and presents the
act as distinct and ready-made. What makes it possible to discern instances of ritualization is
how people describe the conduct of these stipulated acts (rather than theories about the reasons
and meanings of the acts) and, if possible, demonstrate them in bodily action. Through observations
of the formal properties of marked-out action and events we can identify stipulation and
discover processes of ritualization. People who take part in these stipulated acts may apprehend
the action with their bodies “without thinking”. By engaging in the act, which they perform
with their bodies, they make a ritual commitment more as a “performative thinking” rather than
a consciousness decision in the conceptual sense (Humphrey & Laidlaw 1994: 136).
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Published on www.anpere.net in May 2008