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Ritualisation
Ritualization refers to the process by which a sequence of non-communicating actions or an event is invested with cultural, social or religious significance. This definition emphasizes the transformation of everyday actions into rituals that carry deeper meaning within a cultural or religious context. Rituals are symbolic, repetitive, and often prescribed activities that hold religious or cultural significance for a certain group of people. They serve various purposes: promoting social solidarity by expressing shared values, facilitating the transmission of cultural knowledge and regulating emotions. History of ritualization The concept of ritualization was first described by Edmund Selous in 1901 and later named by Julian Huxley in 1914 as ritualization (Dissanayake 2006; Lorenz 1966). It has been studied in various fields, including animal behavior, anthropology, psychology, sociology and even cognitive sciences. In the field of animal behavior, ritualization refers to the evol ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Edmund Selous
Edmund Selous (14 August 1857 – 25 March 1934) was a British ornithologist and writer. He was the younger brother of big-game hunter Frederick Selous. Born in London, the son of a wealthy stockbroker, Selous was educated privately and matriculated at Pembroke College, Cambridge in September 1877. He left without a degree and was admitted to the Middle Temple just over a year later and was called to the bar in 1881. He practised as a barrister only briefly before retiring to pursue the study of natural history and literature. Edmund married Fanny Margaret Maxwell (1863-1955) on 13 January 1886. Fanny was the eldest daughter of the novelist Mary Elizabeth Braddon (1835-1915) and publisher John Maxwell (1824-1895). In 1888 they moved to Wiesbaden, German Empire and then to Mildenhall in Suffolk in 1889. In the 1920s, they moved to the Weymouth village Wyke Regis in Dorset, where they lived in Wyke Castle. Career Selous started as a conventional naturalist, but develo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oskar Heinroth
Oskar Heinroth (1 March 1871 – 31 May 1945) was a German biologist who was one of the first to apply the methods of comparative morphology to animal behavior, and was thus one of the founders of ethology. He worked, largely isolated from most other scientists of the period, at the Berlin Aquarium where he took care of fishes, reptiles and birds, especially waterfowl before he was murdered by Soviet occupying police agents shortly after WW2. Biography Heinroth was born in Mainz-Kastel. He studied medicine and graduated in 1895, but later studied zoology at Berlin while working at the Zoological Garden and at the Natural History Museum. He joined an expedition to the Bismarck Archipelago in 1900-1901 serving as a zoologist to Bruno Mencke, the South Seas expedition leader who was attacked and killed in an encounter with indigenous peoples while Heinroth himself escaped with a spear wound. In 1904, Heinroth became an assistant at the Berlin Zoological Garden. He began his st ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Structural-functionalism
Structural functionalism, or simply functionalism, is "a framework for building theory that sees society as a complex system whose parts work together to promote solidarity and stability". This approach looks at society through a macro-level orientation, which is a broad focus on the social structures that shape society as a whole, and believes that society has evolved like organisms. This approach looks at both social structure and social functions. Functionalism addresses society as a whole in terms of the function of its constituent elements; namely norms, customs, traditions, and institutions. A common analogy called the organic or biological analogy, popularized by Herbert Spencer, presents these parts of society as human body "organs" that work toward the proper functioning of the "body" as a whole. In the most basic terms, it simply emphasizes "the effort to impute, as rigorously as possible, to each feature, custom, or practice, its effect on the functioning of a suppo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pierre Bourdieu
Pierre Bourdieu (, ; ; ; 1 August 1930 – 23 January 2002) was a French sociologist and public intellectual. Bourdieu's contributions to the sociology of education, the theory of sociology, and sociology of aesthetics have achieved wide influence in several related academic fields (e.g. anthropology, media and cultural studies, education, popular culture, and the arts). During his academic career he was primarily associated with the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences in Paris and the Collège de France. Bourdieu's work was primarily concerned with the dynamics of power in society, especially the diverse and subtle ways in which power is transferred and social order is maintained within and across generations. In conscious opposition to the idealist tradition of much of Western philosophy, his work often emphasized the corporeal nature of social life and stressed the role of practice and embodiment in social dynamics. Building upon and criticizing the theor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Practice Theory
Practice theory (or praxeology, theory of social practices) is a body of social theory within anthropology and sociology that explains society and culture as the result of structure and individual agency. Practice theory emerged in the late 20th century and was first outlined in the work of the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. Practice theory developed in reaction to the Structuralist school of thought, developed by social scientists including Claude Lévi-Strauss, who saw human behavior and organization systems as products of innate universal structures that reflect the mental structures of humans. Structuralist theory asserted that these structures governed all human societies. Practice theory is also built on the concept of agency. For practice theorists, the individual agent is an active participant in the formation and reproduction of their social world. History In 1972, French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu published ''Esquisse d'une théorie de la pratique'' (publish ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Catherine Bell (religious Studies Scholar)
Catherine Bell (1953 – 23 May 2008) was an American religious studies scholar who specialised in the study of Chinese religions and ritual studies. From 1985 until her death she worked at Santa Clara University's religious studies department, of which she was chair from 2000 to 2005. Born in New York City, she studied at Manhattanville College and University of Chicago Divinity School before briefly teaching in Japan at the Seishin Joshi Gakuin and International University of Japan. Returning to the United States, she began work at Santa Clara in 1985, devoting her research to Chinese ritual, resulting in her most prominent publication, ''Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice'' (1992). In 1998 she became the Bernard Hanley Professor of Religious Studies, before becoming chair of the religious studies department in 2000. Retiring due to persistent health problems in 2005, she continued to research until her death. Biography Born in New York City, Bell undertook her undergradua ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Social Roles
A role (also rôle or social role) is a set of connected behaviors, rights, obligations, beliefs, and norms as conceptualized by people in a social situation. It is an expected or free or continuously changing behavior and may have a given individual social status or social position. It is vital to both functionalist and interactionist understandings of society. Social role theory posits the following about social behavior: # The division of labour in society takes the form of the interaction among heterogeneous specialized positions, we call roles. # Social roles included appropriate and permitted forms of behavior and actions that recur in a group, guided by social norms, which are commonly known and hence determine the expectations for appropriate behavior in these roles, which further explains the position of a person in the society. # Roles are occupied by individuals, who are called actors. #When individuals approve of a social role (i.e., they consider the role legitim ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Communitas
''Communitas'' is a Latin noun commonly referring either to an unstructured community in which people are equal, or to the very spirit of community. It also has special significance as a loanword in cultural anthropology and the social sciences. Victor Turner, who defined the anthropological usage of communitas, was interested in the interplay between what he called social 'structure' and 'antistructure'; ''Liminality'' and ''Communitas'' are both components of antistructure. Communitas refers to an unstructured state in which all members of a community are equal allowing them to share a common experience, usually through a rite of passage. Communitas is characteristic of people experiencing liminality together. This term is used to distinguish the modality of social relationship from an area of common living. There is more than one distinction between structure and communitas. The most familiar is the difference of secular and sacred. Every social position has something sacr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Social Cohesion
Group cohesiveness, also called group cohesion, social harmony or social cohesion, is the degree or strength of bonds linking members of a social group to one another and to the group as a whole. Although cohesion is a multi-faceted process, it can be broken down into four main components: social relations, task relations, perceived unity, and emotions. Members of strongly cohesive groups are more inclined to participate readily and to stay with the group. Definition There are different ways to define group cohesion, depending on how researchers conceptualize this concept. However, most researchers define cohesion to be task commitment and interpersonal attraction to the group. Cohesion can be more specifically defined as the tendency for a group to be in unity while working towards a goal or to satisfy the emotional needs of its members. This definition includes important aspects of cohesiveness, including its multidimensionality, dynamic nature, instrumental basis, and emotio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Collective Conscience
Collective consciousness, collective conscience, or collective conscious () is the set of shared beliefs, ideas, and moral attitudes which operate as a unifying force within society.''Collins Dictionary of Sociology'', p93. In general, it does not refer to the specifically moral conscience, but to a shared understanding of social norms. The modern concept of what can be considered collective consciousness includes solidarity attitudes, memes, extreme behaviors like group-think and herd behavior, and collectively shared experiences during collective rituals, dance parties, and the discarnate entities which can be experienced from psychedelic use. Rather than existing as separate individuals, people come together as dynamic groups to share resources and knowledge. It has also developed as a way of describing how an entire community comes together to share similar values. This has also been termed " hive mind", " group mind", "mass mind", and "social mind". Historical use of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mechanical Solidarity
In sociology, mechanical solidarity and organic solidarity are the two types of social solidarity that were formulated by Émile Durkheim, introduced in his '' Division of Labour in Society'' (1893) as part of his theory on the development of societies. According to Durkheim, the type of solidarity will correlate with the type of society, either mechanical or organic society. The two types of solidarity can be distinguished by morphological and demographic features, type of norms in existence, and the intensity and content of the ''conscience collective''. In a society that exhibits ''mechanical solidarity'', its cohesion and integration comes from the homogeneity of individuals—people feel connected through similar work; educational and religious training; age; gender; and lifestyle. Mechanical solidarity normally operates in traditional and small-scale societies (e.g., tribes).''Collins Dictionary of Sociology''. p. 405–06. In these simpler societies, solidarity is usual ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Traditional Societies
In sociology, traditional society refers to a society characterized by an orientation to the past, not the future, with a predominant role for custom and habit. Such societies are marked by a lack of distinction between family and business, with the division of labor influenced primarily by age, gender, and status. Traditional and modern Traditional society has often been contrasted with modern industrial society, with figures like Durkheim and Pierre Bourdieu stressing such polarities as community vs. society or mechanical vs. organic solidarity; while Claude Lévi-Strauss saw traditional societies as 'cold' societies in that they refused to allow the historical process to define their social sense of legitimacy. Within modernisation theory, traditional society is also the first stage of economic development as established in W.W. Rostow's Economic Growth Model. Classified as "pre-newtonian," science and technology are not practiced. Life is agrarian, and family or clan relation ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
