Sorority Rituals - Reflections On Rites of ... - Mari Ann Callais

theorist/researcher in the area of ritual, presents several different viewpoints concerning ritual.
His findings will be used to explain various aspects of ritual, specifically as performance. Turner,
throughout his career, investigated ritual in general, and ritual from the performance perspective:
ways:
Performance is central to Turner’s thinking because the performative genres are living
examples of ritual in/as action. And not only when performance is overtly ‘ritualistic’-- as
in a Catholic Mass, a healing ceremony, a shamanic journey, or a Grotoskian poor theater
or paratheatrical event: all performance has at its core a ritual action, a ‘restoration of
behavior' (Schechner, 1986, p. 7).
Schechner (1986) presents Turner's theory that ritual can be looked at in five different
1. As part of the evolutionary development of organisms - including, but not limited to
the development of the brain;
2. As a structure, connecting with formal qualities and relationships;
3. As a performance process, a dynamic system or action, with both diachronic and
synchronic rhythms and/or scenarios;
4. As experience, as what a person individually or as part of a collective feels;
5. As a set of operations in human social and religious life (p. 10).
Most national sororities have rituals that have been developed as rites of passage that mark the
transition of a person through various phases in the sorority experience. Most rituals begin with a
formal pinning ceremony where new members to the sorority receive a pin that symbolizes that
they are pledging and are new members of that group. They then go through some type of big
sister/little sister ceremony that places them with an older member who is to be a role model to
them within the sorority. The next ceremony that they participate in is the initiation ceremony
where they learn the secrets of the sorority and become a member of the sorority.
The sorority structure includes a variety of other rituals as well. Many of the sororities
include ritual in chapter meetings either at every meeting, or on a schedule, such as once a
month. Other ritual ceremonies of the sorority include recognition for someone moving to
alumnae status, leaving college such as a senior farewell, founders' day ceremonies, as well as a
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