vienna

ebirth of spring are examples of such rites of passage. 78 These
rites have been very important in agrarian societies, which
depend on the rebirth of vegetation in spring. The physical
inevitabilities have thus been transformed into cultural
regularities. 79 The people whose lives were dependent on the
rebirth of vegetation have handled their fear successfully by
enacting the rites of passage every year. Has the fashion industry
in our consumer culture taken on the function of performing the
seasonal rites of passage? In our example of the show windows,
we have already described the immanent potential of a crisis,
which is caused when the past collection is declared as no longer
fashionable through the inauguration of the new collection and
the dramatic change of value caused by the drop in price from
one day to the next. Ritualised action has often been used to deal
with crisis. 80 We could assume that the dramatisation of the ritual
of the sale prepares the path for dealing with this crisis. After the
sales, the rites of passage stablise the new reality of what is new
and what is old and outdated. The ancient fear of the periodical
return of vegetation with renewed strenth has been replaced by
the fear of the periodical return of the new fashion trend in our
consumer society. 81 The way rituals communicate is essentially
symbolic in nature. Umberto Eco described humans as symbolic
beings and rituals as symbolic forms. 82 In ritual theory, we
can find numerous definitions that refer to the symbolic nature
of rituals:
“Rituals are the active forms of symbols. Although these are
social actions, they are oriented to others, or beyond that even
aimed at these: oriented to others that basically cannot be
immediately experienced and belong to a different area of
reality than the one inhabited by the everyday, by the agent.” 83
This means that a world outside our everyday world exists.
Symbolic communication is directed into this other world, but
it is not a communication between different realities. Both worlds
unite during ritual practice. Clifford Geertz argued that during
a ritual the world we live in and the world we imagine are one
78 Ibid., p. 172.
79 Bell (1997:94).
80 Turner (1982:92).
81 This does not mean that the trend is a ritual. This only means that there is the need for a ritual in dealing with the seasonal
change of fashion trends.
82 Eco (1977:108).
83 Luckmann (1999:12)*.
Ritualisation
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