Collective rituals play an important role in strengthening community cohesion and reaffirming social values. This article explores the meaning and function of collective rituals, from traditional rituals to modern social performances.
People gather together to perform “collective rituals.” Durkheim explored the collective rituals of Australian tribes from the perspective of community cohesion. When a problem arises, tribe members stop their livelihood activities and perform collective rituals to determine whether the situation is sacred or profane by utilizing the classification system of sacred and profane that they share. In the process, they rediscover what they share as sacred and regenerate the weakened moral community around it. After the collective ritual ends, the tribe members return to their mundane world with sacredness in their hearts. Thus, livelihood activities, which were merely a matter of survival, acquire moral meaning connected to sacredness.
Durkheim emphasizes the importance of collective rituals, explaining how they enable individuals to reaffirm the values of their community and strengthen social cohesion. He also argues that collective rituals continue to play an important role in modern society. In modern society, collective rituals also play an important role in reaffirming the values of the community and strengthening social cohesion.
For example, national holidays, religious festivals, and sporting events can all be seen as examples of collective rituals in modern society. Through these events, people can reaffirm the values of the community to which they belong and strengthen their bonds with other members. Durkheim believed that collective rituals in modern society would not end with the regeneration of existing moral communities, but would create new moral communities.
For example, the French Revolution was a collective ritual that created new sacredness, such as liberty, equality, and fraternity, and formed a new moral community centered on these values. Durkheim believed that the newly created sacredness would provide moral meaning that would bind individuals pursuing their own interests in the profane world.
Parsons and Smelser concretize these theoretical insights into functionalist theory. They replace sacredness with the term value. In modern society, values lie latent beneath everyday social life, but during times of crisis when their moral meaning is shaken to its roots, they rise to the surface and become generalized nationwide. In everyday life, people pursue their self-interests rather than values, and they live according to norms that guide the realization of their goals. However, during times of crisis, people’s attention shifts from their particular interests to universal values. They engage in collective rituals that rely on values to relieve the psychological tension and pressure caused by the crisis. As a result, social integration is restored. Parsons and Smelser view this as similar to the process by which an organism restores its disrupted homeostasis through physiological functions in response to environmental pressures.
Alexander accepts Parsons and Smelser’s theory but argues that the biological metaphor they used has limitations in exploring the collective rituals of complex modern society. As an alternative, he proposes “social performance theory.” He views collective rituals that generalize values across society not as processes that occur naturally like the physiological functions of an organism, but as processes whose outcomes are not predetermined. In modern society, the elements of social performance are not only differentiated but also possess autonomy. Therefore, social performance that integrates these elements requires cultural practices with maximized contingency. This is why Alexander emphasizes the need to empirically and meticulously explore the conditions and processes under which the elements of performance are integrated, unlike functionalist theory.
The elements of social performance in modern society include scripts that diversify and concretize the classification system within performance, actors who execute various scripts in their own way, audiences that are internally differentiated by class, region of origin, age, gender, etc., mise-en-scène that stages performances on stage by arranging diverse spatial and temporal movements, symbolic means of production that disseminate performances to a wide audience beyond the limitations of time and space, and highly differentiated social power that cannot comprehensively control the process of producing, distributing, and interpreting performances. However, in a totalitarian society where there is no differentiation or autonomy of elements, it is difficult for social performances to occur, as there is only mass mobilization by state power.
In modern society, collective rituals are becoming increasingly diverse and complex. With the development of the internet and social media, collective rituals that allow people around the world to participate simultaneously have become possible. For example, global climate change movements and large-scale online campaigns are examples of collective rituals in which people around the world participate simultaneously. Such modern collective rituals contribute to reaffirming individuals’ sense of responsibility as members of the global community and forming shared values regarding global issues.
