Dear Sally,

This is an interesting inquiry. I’m responding on the list because others pursuing related question may find the materials you use valuable.

There is a larger contextual question about ritual, the evolution, and the design of ritual that is worth considering as background to the specific purpose for which one might design any ritual.

Ronald Grimes is one of the world’s pre-eminent experts on ritual. He is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Religion and Culture at Wilfrid Laurier University, and he edits an important series of books on ritual for Oxford University Press. His web site provides a great deal of material at URL:

http://ronaldlgrimes.twohornedbull.ca 

Ritual has been a central theme of inquiry for anthropologists. Victor Turner and Clifford Geertz have written notable studies on different aspects of ritual. One of the central themes of the experience economy is necessarily related to the question of ritual — if you examine the experience economy literature, you’ll find some useful material. In addition, anyone designing experiences also considers these issues — for example, people who plan restaurant experiences, sometimes linked to gourmet dining, other times linked to new ways of understanding fast food. You’ll find a lot of relevant material in journals such as Gastronomica — it’s the award-winning food journal founded by Prof. Darra Goldstein, but it is more than food. (She is now about to launch a new journal called Cured that focuses only on pickled, smoked, and preserved foods.)

Much ritual is embedded in the specific practices of religions or cultures, so you might want to examine some of the different kinds of work from those angles. The rituals that emerged with the world’s great religions are often lost in time, so it is difficult to know how they were designed or instituted. In contrast, it is relatively easy to know how rituals are conducted today — or at least, to know the basic ritual instructions preserved in religious texts, catechisms, hymn books, festival manuals, and the like. Much of this involves layers of history — or the myths and accounts that believers of different faiths accept as their history.

Consider, for example, the story of Abraham and the sacrifice of Isaac recounted in Genesis 22. This likely date of this even is around 2,200 BCE. This story recurs in countless rituals. God orders Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac. Abraham obeys. When Isaac asks where the lamb is for the sacrifice, Abraham replies, “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering.” At the last moment, an angel tells Abraham not to complete the sacrifice. This event is also commemorated in the Muslim Feast of Sacrifice, Eid al-Adha. This takes place to mark the end of the hajj as well as to commemorate Abraham’s obedience to God. 

This sacrifice recurs in Exodus (11:4-12:40), an account of events that would have taken place around 1500 BCE. Abraham’s sacrifice and the covenants between God, Abraham, and Isaac for the background to the captivity narrative, Exodus, and the Passover ritual. It recurs again significantly in the Gospels where God provides Christ as the sacrificial lamb around 30 CE (Matthew 26:17-29, Mark 14-25). The Last Supper of the Gospels is the Passover dinner commemorating the Exodus. This meal and the crucifixion look back to the sacrifice and covenant with Abraham. But it also looks forward. At this meal, Jesus instituted the ritual of communion. Earlier in Matthew (18:20), Jesus addresses the importance of prayer and ritual in the community of believers, telling his followers that he will be with them wherever two or three gather in his name. Everyone today who celebrates communion or mass takes part in this chain of ritual events dating back 4,000 years. 

We can debate theology or the historical facticity of these issues — I’m not suggesting that anyone believe. I am suggesting that those who believe participate in rituals for many reasons, and that these reasons are the core issues of cultures and of faith. In 2005, over 2,000,000,000 people witnessed this ritual at the funeral mass for John Paul II, some live, most on television. 

Rituals unite and divide people in many ways. For example, Eid al-Adha recounts the command of God that Abraham should sacrifice his first son, Ishmael, the father of what would become the Islamic people, rather than the sacrifice stories told by Jews or Christians. Screen Kierkegaard gives a deep and beautiful account of Abraham’s sacrifice in his 1843 book, Fear and Trembling, told from an existential Christian viewpoint. It is also a profound psychological inquiry. Both the earlier Walter Lowrie translation and the more recent translation by Howard and Edna Hong are excellent, each with a useful introduction and notes. Lowrie places Fear and Trembling in the same volume with The Sickness Unto Death. The Hongs plan it with Repetition.

The complexity of any ritual experience and the embededness of that ritual with our life — within our lives — within the lives of our family, friends, societies, and cultures — is what distinguishes ritual from performance. One must perform any ritual, but not every performance is a ritual.

This leads to a serious question: is it possible to purposefully design a ritual? I can see arguments for and against the possibility. To argue this requires an understanding of the key background issues, and it requires one to foreground a number of ontological, epistemological, and personal decisions about what it is we mean.     

This also leads to a second range of question about the issue of material possessions. There is a huge literature on this, as well, especially in anthropology, material culture studies, sociology, economics, and marketing. I’d suggest that the place to begin is with a week in the library. A major research university such as Newcastle has the necessary digital resource collections and the subject field librarians to help you get the most out of these questions from different perspectives.  

Yours,

Ken

Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | Editor-in-Chief | 设计 She Ji. The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation | Published by Tongji University in Cooperation with Elsevier | URL: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/she-ji-the-journal-of-design-economics-and-innovation/

Chair Professor of Design Innovation Studies | College of Design and Innovation | Tongji University | Shanghai, China ||| University Distinguished Professor | Centre for Design Innovation | Swinburne University of Technology | Melbourne, Australia 

Email [log in to unmask] | Academia http://swinburne.academia.edu/KenFriedman | D&I http://tjdi.tongji.edu.cn 


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