Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Deleage, Pierre

Titel

Towards an Epidemiology of Ritual Chants

Ist Teil von

• Homme, 2012-07, Vol.203-204 (203-204), p.103-138

Erscheinungsjahr

2012

Quelle

Alma/SFX Local Collection

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• This article applies and develops an epidemiological approach to the analysis of ritual discourse, comparing three distinct genres of Amazonian ritual chants (Wayana, Sharanahua, Ingariko). Unlike in essentialist or classificatory approaches, the aim here is not to identify the inherent properties of chants, nor to establish ideal types of their ritual context (initiation, shamanism, prophetism). Instead, the article takes as its starting point the idea that ritual traditions are composed of heterogeneous elements with varying degrees of stability, which are influenced by a range of different factors. The analysis of these different factors allows us to understand the morphology of ritual chants, why those that spread and stabilise within oral traditions take the form they do. I begin by identifying the different types of procedure (order transference, degrees of discursive formalisation, intersemioticity and inscription) that help stabilise the content of ritual chants. Then, working from the assumption that the diffusion of ritual chants depends on their location within an institutional apparatus, I explore the chants' rules of distribution and the types of authority that legitimise their transmission, focussing on how they influence the stability and spread of these cultural phenomena. Finally, I show how the combined analysis of these different factors offers us a new way of understanding ritual innovation. Adapted from the source document.