Reactions to the Pace of Change

More documents

Recommendations

Info

Rituals – the World Upside DownRebirthing the WorldRituals may be defined as staged and consciouslyregular behaviour with symbolic content. The individualis rewarded for observing rituals and punishedfor breaking the rules. Ritual behaviour is clearlystructured and performed according to specialrules. Rituals are motivated, repeated behaviour.Mythically, their contents are symbolic and theirpurpose is to stabilize and maintain balance in oureveryday lives. Rituals always refer to a “myth” atindividual and company level: A dream, a mission,a world view serving a purpose.As INSPIRATION for the staging of companyculture and products, the formula for ritualcelebration is given here:Primitive peoples begin and end work periods andessential phases of the year with magical celebrationswhich are in fact identical with the work itself. Thisis the reason why the oldest work calendars were alsoautomatically calendars of festivities, and why runestaffs were marked with seasonal holidays accordingto the rhythm of work, festivities and passages. 43)“Traditionally, what separates days of celebrationfrom normal life is that they are in fact different.Shrovetide is a time of celebration, of eating, drinkingand speaking our mind in contrast to the followingLent which is a period of fasting and sober, modestbehaviour. Lent is also a rite of passage by which thebody is emptied of all content from everyday life, andin a state of clean susceptibility prepares itself for ahigher life while being cleansed waiting for the celebrationof Easter. Ritual ablution and changes of dressshare the same meaning… Former “saint’s days” demandcertain changes in one’s way of life: Duringcelebration, people must abstain from many actionswhich are natural in daily life, such as sexual intercoursebetween man and woman; bickering and disagreementthat in daily life are only considered irregularitiesbecome deathly sins during the time of celebration…Thelocation for the festivities is isolated fromthe daily place of sojourn, or it has been cleansedand isolated by way of various ritual actions…”The Holy PlaceIn heathen times, people had a holy place where theycould go when in need of advice in a difficult situation,or needed new strength for necessary undertakings,and at this holy place some of the ceremonies meantto strengthen kinship were performed. Such a holyplace might be a tree or a well, a hill or a mountainwhere people had gone for generations.Christianity prohibited sacrificial worship of natureand in nature. One was supposed to go to churchand find strength there. 43) Today we no longer go tochurch. Then where do we go?According to cultural anthropologist Eva Brendstrup,shopping at malls is a ritually performed element ofeveryday life for many people. Eva Brendstrup, whohas just finished a report on everyday life in shoppingmalls, thinks that our traditions and ritual behaviourfor a large part have been transferred to the role ofconsumer. 44)“All-day stays and family excursions to shoppingmalls provide opportunities for self-expression whichcompare with many modern people’s ideas of whattheir needs are…A life of consumption has becomethe dominating form of life…a norm and matter ofcourse…We stage ourselves and our lifestyles…ouridentities are constantly changing and undergoingtransformation. We may use shopping, and the productswe choose, to signal lifestyle and identity…Today’s shopping mall functions as a forum or a stagewhere we may show and reflect our lifestyle in comparisonwith others.” The malls provide temperateclimates, an occasion for leaving home, seeingsomething else, relaxing, drinking, eating and sharingexperiences with those one may happen to be with.Furthermore, they are stable (location, opening hoursas well as indoor climate can be predicted so that onecan make plans accordingly). Sources of irritationfor the participants of mall culture are: Long queues,lack of parking space, and the absence of special offers.Ritual behaviour in this connection is: Shoppingfor necessities, having a drink in the bar, creating ashared experience, breaking out of the confinementof one’s home. Shopping may also be seen as a riteof passage between work and spare time, home andlife away from home.Compared to the amount of active pursuit andconscious, symbolic content, one might think thatthis mall culture tends to lack vitality and flavour.The basic formula for parties and seasonalholidaysThe anthropologist E. R. Leach has examined whattakes place during the performance of rites and rituals,and what the basic elements of customs and rites are. 45)First and foremost, in order to celebrate and stagea day of celebration, it must be made to differ fromeveryday life. Rules and limits must be turned upside-down.In times of material need, lots of light,expensive fabrics, scents, and plenty of food create a43) Vilhelm Grønbech, Kampen om mennesket [The Struggle for Man] (Copenhagen, 1930)44) Quoted from article entitled “Storcentre er populære udflugtsmål” [Shopping Malls are Popular Destinations for Excursions]Danish newspaper Berlingske Tidende, Section 4, February 9, 200045) Illustration and description from Carsten Bregenhøj, Helligtrekongersløb på Agersø: socialt, statistisk og strukturelt [Twelfth Night Mummingon the Island of Agersø, socially, statistically and structurally) (with an English summary) (Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag, 1974)20 R E A C T I O N S T O T H E P A C E O F C H A N G E
BBfestive atmosphere. Being off-duty and not having tochop time up into small intervals makes the holiday differfrom everyday life, and constitutes its special time.At New Year’s in medieval times, the bishops letall the parish clerks wear bishops’ hats, stick out theirtongues and make fun of everything holy, even inthe choir, as a kind of restoration gesture. Lettingeverything die in order that it may be born and ableto stand once again. There is a deeply-rooted beliefin balance through counterbalance and quid pro quoin many of our traditions and ritual rules.A good reason for drinking to Christmas was to avoidscarcity. By giving thanks to the gods, i.e. the naturalforces, for this year’s abundance (even if more wouldhave been welcomed), one shows symbolically thatthere is plenty, and that one will gratefully acceptthis again next year.In Norway it was every man’s duty to celebrateChristmas night with an ale-feast thanking Christand Mary, and in harvest, at the latest around Halloween,the village was supposed to gather for a collectivedrinking feast for Christ and Our Lady. Thisfeast was to consist of a company of at least threepeople, one for each peasant and one for his wives.For anyone who lived alone, this company was necessarilysubstituted by drinking beer for three. 43)Any person ignoring Christmas and the Christmasfeast had to pay a fine of three marks, and if he missedthe blessing of the ale-feast three years in a row,he was bound to stay beyond the King’s jurisdiction,and the King had to see to it that such a heathen didnot stay in Norway.The pietistic modesty of being frugal even at timesof celebration means – seen in this perspective – thatone paves the road for continued scarcity, and thatone does not know how to administer abundance!Rites of passageBetween everyday life and celebration – the normalcondition and the exception – there is a passage whichmust proceed as a shift between the two opposites.Masking is an obvious way of signalling these shiftsand helping them along, and traditionally it has thereforebeen used for this purpose. Masks are wornduring celebrations, for instance at Shrovetide, NewYear, Christmas and Twelfth Night mumming etc.,and being disguised, people are free to do festivethings – here festive in the sense of reversed affairs,unusual actions, where everything is turned up-sidedown– and at the end of the celebration, the unmaskingand identification takes place. The masks ensurethat the participants do not have to be their usual selvesand are allowed to behave differently than usual.In return, disguise demands someone and somethingto disguise oneself for. If one’s behaviour is thesame irrespective of the mask, the masking serves no purpose.Then wearing a mask becomes boring and drab.ACelebrationCTimeEveryday life that is never reversed also becomesdull, cf. Enzensberger’s rule about the excitement of“what is contrary to the principle of reality.” What isa weekend to someone who is bored, mountain climbingto someone who always climbs mountains, orpork roast to someone who eats it every day?The basic formula for rituals are A: Preparing the “party,”the exception, the rite, intensifying the formal aspect– making a caricature of or stressing one’s fake identity.The culmination B equals the occasions when theparticipants appear as the exact opposite of what theyare in reality: Men performing as women, women asmen, children as adults, gentle personalities as witches,kings as beggars, waiters as masters, parish clerks asbishops. In the course of regular orgies like these,normal social life is acted in reverse, and all kinds ofsins such as incest, adultery, transvestism, sacrilege,and lese-majesty are considered the natural order ofthe day (an exchange of roles).And C, which is the opposite of A, is the phase ofunmasking when the formal and exceptional fadesinto the usual condition of normality.In customs of disguise, masking provides the individualswith opportunities to act other roles than thosewhich society expects from them. Their symbolic deathbecomes their rebirth. By having passed through aperiod as a different person, it is possible to returnto one’s everyday role as a “new” human being.We may choose to regard the search for holidaydestinations so different from everyday life as thewilderness, or the search for high-risk sports as Bphases where everyday life is turned up-side-down,and life is radically pushed to extremes.In life forms with opaque or complex structures,it is not possible to set up the binary opposition ofcelebration vs. everyday life unless we view theexception as a primarily “set structure.” That wouldmake basically any kind of ritual behaviour, set ofrules or clear strategy attractive and festive.In this sense it becomes natural for a modern,Western and individually free and tolerant society toadopt customs and festival traditions from all partsof the world irrespective of their symbolic contents.At this level, it is the only the form – the presenceof rules and a clear structure – that is attractive.So what is it that rituals and traditions can do thatwe need? TheyStructure and put everyday life into perspectiveAre a means of uniting and creating communitiesAre occasions for a renewed staging of selfFree us from dull, inflexible patterns of behaviourKeep the focus on constants during changes• Maintain areas of competence and thus create abasis for developmentAEveryday LifeCelebrationCC O P E N H A G E N I N S T I T U T E F O R F U T U R E S S T U D I E SM E M B E R S R E P O R T 1 / 2 0 0 021
Page 1 and 2: 12 0 0 0Members ReportCOPENHAGENINS
Page 3 and 4: PrefaceReactions tothe Pace of Chan
Page 5 and 6: There are hundreds of processes bet
Page 7 and 8: 1086420BillionsWorld UrbanizationUr
Page 9 and 10: Seeing the foundationNobel Prize wi
Page 11 and 12: Wanting What’s Been LostWhen some
Page 13 and 14: An interviewed test person at an Ir
Page 15 and 16: Seeing Zeus on occasionAs a psychol
Page 17 and 18: Traditions in the workplace and in
Page 19: The bakery has undergone a “flexi
Page 23 and 24: Unambiguousness - a scarce benefitB
Page 25 and 26: Time Magazine ties this in with the
Page 27 and 28: Annexe 1:Invented TraditionsIn the
Page 29 and 30: Annexe 3:Judgement StalledGlobal tr
Page 31: C O P E N H A G E N I N S T I T U T

Reactions to the Pace of Change

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?