Role of Carnival, Tradition and Ritual in Festivals - Literature review Example

Role of Carnival, Tradition, and Ritual in Festivals Name: Lecturer: Course: Date: Introduction Festivals are considered to be among the most stable aspects of social life. Typically, festivals reflect the modes and systems of life, the means of life, the critical moments of life and the sense of identity, belonging and bliss. Survey of sociology, culturology, history, and archaeology literature corroborate the perspective that festivals are the most ancient forms of culture evident in the contemporary society (Fjell 2007; Devine 2013; Webb 2005). This essay argues that while the deep roots of festivals may have disappeared during the infancy of humankind, rituals traditions and carnivals have collaboratively or separately reinvented the festivals and made them relevant in contemporary society. To support the thesis statement, this paper first examines the meanings of carnival, tradition and ritual before exploring the roles of the concepts of carnival, tradition and ritual in contemporary festivals and events. Describing rituals, carnivals and traditions King (1997) defines ritual as a sequence of actions and practices intended to focus attention, attain beneficial outcomes and create significance to certain aspects of humanity. According to King, for events to be considered rituals, they have to be emotionally and intellectually satisfying. They should also have a strong beginning and ending. In order for the ritual to be intellectually satisfying, each movement and word has to be filled with meanings that participants and observers can understand. Hall et al (2010) defines a carnival as any public and unsettling performance or practices that happen at distinct time of the year, and which breaks some established rules or norms. Webb (2005) depicts carnival as an umbrella term for a range of ritual events and practices. According to Gotham (2007), giving a precise definition of the term is nearly impossible since a range of studies dedicated to the subject provide this evidence, which has varied definitions of the term. Carnival refers to the temporary suspension of preset hierarchies, victory of the physical, and events of high-spirited life force. Clearer definitions were suggested by Riggio (2004) who described carnival as a period of celebration or ritualised conflict that is characterised by transgression of boundaries or undermining of established hierarchies to allow participants to celebrate certain elements of humanity. Tradition refers to the old fashioned and generally undesirable conditions of something that has been left behind by the contemporary society, and which has subsequently eroded away in the fullness of time. Larsen and Tufte (n.d.), suggests that in modern societies where the concepts of globalisation, capitalisation and consumer centric approaches prevalently apply almost in every sector, tradition are viewed as incompatible and irrelevant. Roles of Rituals Rituals sacralise social structures and community bonds In attempting to make a distinction between profane and sacred, Emile Durkheim (1995), a sociologist, depicted religion as a combination of practices and ideas through which a social group sacralises the social structure and community bonds. According to Durkheim, ritual plays an integral role in arousing intensified passionate feelings of effervescence, through which people get to experience something larger than themselves. The Viking festival called Up-Helly-Aa provides an example of how rituals can sacralise social structures and community bonds. The festival is celebrated on the last Tuesday of January each year. It is based on Old Norse traditions associated with the turn and return of the sun. Several rituals called fire-rituals spin around the fire. Afterwards, a Viking ship leads a squad of people clad in Viking-themed costumes. Each year, some 600 visitors celebrate the event in Shetland, Norway. The event, which belonged to the people of Lerwick in Shetland, has also managed to attract thousands of tourists from Norway and the world, who secure a collective sense of belonging from the event. In which case, rituals encourage feelings of collectivity and sense of belonging and are drawn together collectively (Fjell 2007). The key features of Durkheim’s concept of ritual are anchored in the capacity of the ritual to create a shared focus, which is the sacred object, in a group. It also articulates certain moods, or mental state. Additionally, the ritual serves to honour the sacred object. Consequently, individuals who do not show that respect get to be symbolically or physically punished by other individuals. Rituals depict underlying trends and life styles Turner (1982) makes a significant distinction between rituals in contemporary and traditional societies. Turner stated that unlike in traditional society, rituals occur much more sporadically and are represented by the light-hearted experimentations that depict trends in the society. In Australia, the Message Sticks Festival held in March each year in Sydney depicts how rituals depict underlying trends and life styles. The event features film, dance, song, arts and discussions, all of which fuse the current or contemporary trends with the Aboriginal traditions. The rituals entail the participants themselves who are dressed in costumes that depict the Gadigal People and use of sticks to pass messages. Turner (1982) used the term liminoid to depict the ritual experiences in contemporary societies, relative to the liminal experiences prevalent in traditional societies. Such liminal experiences serve to be combined and centred towards the social processes in entirety. They are structures by shared symbols. The Liminoid experiences are usually individual, more idiosyncratic; expose political processes, immoralities, and injustices. The liminoid and liminal experiences exists in the modern rituals. Still, in modern societies, the rituals do not clearly make a distinction between what is profane and what is sacred. For instance, in the Up-Helly-Aa festival in Norway, each participant carries a torch that in the end is thrown to the Viking ship that burns, symbolising a Viking funeral. In which case, it is difficult to determine whether burning ship is sacred or profane. At the same time, religious rituals also still do exist. Here, it is the self and individual, which are the ritual objects (Fjell 2007). Rituals are modes communicating cultural practices Within the context of contemporary society, two critical issues are drawn into perspective regarding festivals. They are both spectacle and ritual. The ritual is described as a set of performance of more or less unvarying sequences of utterances, practices or formal acts that performers do not encode. Ritual is often considered as a mode of communication related to the practices and concerns of religion. Despite this perspective, they have relevant symbolic performances that happen outside the religious context. According to Rappaport (1999), rituals and festivals are evident in modern societies and specifically in modern religions as distinct events. However, older religions incorporate rites in their calendars that may be regarded as festivals within the larger ritual cycle. Impressing and influencing people Winston (2005) theorised that rituals serve to impress people, although many of the societal standards are performed for purposes of dogma or tradition and those who lead them are no longer influenced or impressed by these events. This implies that people are constantly seeking differential rituals to satisfy their needs for purposes of enjoyment and fulfilment. This imply why many people in Australia today are interested in festivals, which integrates song, dance, connecting with nature in addition to meaning, joy and creativity. Role of traditions Reflect the historical and cultural take-off The fragments of tradition reflect the historical and cultural take-off, which shows the capacity of traditions to be fluid, to change and to adapt to changes. In which case, traditions do not remain stagnant. Devine (2013) called this process liquid modernity, where tradition is viewed as capable of hybridising to create neo-traditions that convey or add new values to the religious events or societal festivals. In this way, traditions retain their relevance through re-invention. Laura Aboriginal Dance Festival characterises an event where the fragments of indigenous traditions play an integral role in reflecting the historical and cultural take-off. In turn, they show the capacity of indigenous traditions to be fluid, to change and to adapt to changes in the contemporary society. The Laura Aboriginal Dance Festival takes place in Cape York Peninsula, Queensland after every two years in June. At the event, hundreds of dancers gather at Laura town. The Aboriginal communities in the area share and celebrate their traditions through art, dance and song they practiced some 40,000 years ago. The objective of the festival is to enable the Aboriginal Australians to reconnect to their past traditions and to pass down stories to the younger generation. Promote desired values about the past Ordinarily, the concept of tradition is viewed as a set of practices and beliefs that share certain relationship with aspects of the past. During the festivals, traditions serve to promote desired values about the past. They hence indicate attempts to reverse the risks of disintegration of bonds of social solidarity or efforts to generate common identity. In this case then, one would expect festivals to recall past traditional practices in the contemporary Australian society, where linguistic and cultural diversities are extreme. Different perspectives have been shared to explain the role of tradition in reflecting the needs of the ever-changing present scenarios relative to the past. According to Turner (1997), tradition consists of a process through which the past and certain elements of social life derived from the past are given value in the present. The Spirit Festival performed in Adelaide, South Australia each February provides an example of how traditions help in passing on values. The festival is typically celebrated by the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander. The festival features over 100 dancers from across Australia, to present the traditional indigenous art, dance, culture and music. In the festival, tradition gives value to old indigenous practices, such as smoking ceremony, which is done to welcome the visitors to the dance ground (Palti Yerta). The role of carnivals Carnival transgresses the set rules, hierarchies, and boundaries Webb (2005) argued that the utility of the concept of carnival is anchored in its capacity to shed light on potentially transgressive aspects in the contemporary festivals. Essentially, a carnival integrates disorderly and high-spirited life force and twists authority to allow people celebrate events or rituals in certain aspects of humanity. By doing this, it allows contemporary festivals to take place. By managing to overturn authority, carnival undermines the set rules and positions of power or life. As a result, it allows participants in the festivals to assume different roles in participating in the events without fear of the authority. With its inherent disruptive nature, carnivals are at the same time occasions of joy and laughter. This is illustrated in the Dionysic rituals practiced by the Maenads, where after the participants in the event celebrate god, they tear him apart. After his rebirth, another celebration proceeds. Consequently, the underlying aspect of carnival is the celebration of rebirth and renewal (Daboo 2010). Carnivals break all forms of hierarchy. Webb (2005) posited that carnival ensures that the official ordering of time and space is delayed, enabling people to become organised in their own way without hierarchies. This is since carnival contrasts coercive political and socioeconomic organisation, which are suspended at least until the end of the festivals. Carnivals create an atmosphere of familiarity, frivolity, and freedom During festivities, hierarchy distinctions and barriers are suspended temporarily, so that all participants are considered as equals. Yabun Festival in Nigeria provides a perfect example. The event, which happens on Australia Day, is among the largest single-day events in Australia as it draws some 15,000 people. It is an indigenous music event that also presents cultural programs that combine academics, leaders, politician and artists. During the festival, the participants view themselves to be equal, despite the social and professional ranks. The Yabun Festival is nothing less than the participant’s second life that is organised on the foundation of laughter through which people celebrate the ‘rebirth of the old or the birth of the new’. For instance, in the festival, prohibitions and norms of everyday life are suspended to create a mood of tolerance, familiarity and freedom. Webb (2005) noted that when freedom and tolerance happen, an ideal type of communication that is unusual in ordinary life is created. During the Yabun Festival, people feel liberated. Indeed, the festival appears to celebrate temporary liberation from prevailing truths in the society, in addition to the prevailing established order. At the same time, individual self dissolves, as people feel that they are a binding component of collectivity. This perspective is supported by Webb (2005) who argued that carnival makes participants in events to feel that they are members of a mass body of people. Further analysis in support of the role of carnivals in creating an atmosphere of liberation in contemporary festivals show that it is only within the context of equality, liberal and communal human relations that is interceded through collective experience does carnival laughter or holiday mood get to exist during festivals (Webb 2005). In Gotham’s (2007) view, carnival laughter is what expresses the recreational, frivolous and gay feeling during the festivals. Conclusion While the deep roots of festivals may have disappeared during the infancy of humankind, rituals, traditions and carnivals have collaboratively or separately reinvented the festivals and made them relevant in contemporary society. Rituals, traditions and carnivals play significant roles in reinventing festivals to make them relevant. Rituals sacralise social structures and community bonds. They also depict underlying trends and life styles. Rituals are also modes of communicating cultural practices. They also serve to impress and influence people. On the other hand, traditions reflect the historical and cultural take-off and promote desired values about the past. The carnivals transgress the set rules, hierarchies, and boundaries. They also create an atmosphere of familiarity, frivolity, and freedom. Reference List Daboo, J 2010, Ritual, Rapture and Remorse: A Study of Tarantism and Pizzica in Salento, Peter Lang, New York Deflam, M 1991, Ritual, Anti-Structure, And Religion: A Discussion Of Victor Turner's Processual Symbolic Analysis, viewed 26 Aug 2014, Devine, P 2013, "The Concept of Tradition: A Problem out of MacIntyre," Reason Papers vol. 35, no. 1, pp.107-123 Getz, D 2010, "The Nature and Scope of Festival Studies," International Journal of Event Management Research vol. 5 no. 1, pp.1-47 Fjell, L 2007, "Contemporary Festival: Polyphony Of Voices And Some New Agents," Stud. ethnol. Croat., vol. 19, str. 129-149 Gotham, K 2007, Contrasts of Carnival: Mardi Gras Between the Modern and the Postmodern, viewed 25 Aug 2014, Hall, J, Grindstaff, L & Lo, M 2010, Handbook of Cultural Sociology, Routledge, New York Karabaev, M 2003, Festival-Ritual Culture As A Factor Of Social Progress, viewed 25 Aug 2014, http://www.crvp.org/book/Series03/IIIC-1/chapter_vii.htm King, S 1997, "Rituals and Modern Society," Aloha International, viewed 25 Aug 2014, Koster, J 2002, "Ritual performance and the politics of identity: On the functions and uses of ritual, viewed 26 Aug 2014, Larsen, B & Tufte, T n.d., Rituals in the Modern World: appling teh concept of ritual in media ethnography, viewed 25 Aug 2014, http://s3.amazonaws.com/academia.edu.documents/4990167/Rituals_in_the_Modern_World-libre.pdf?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAJ56TQJRTWSMTNPEA&Expires=1409002827&Signature=3NKzeLxpSb5nrjOELcBZ%2B1okht0%3D Riggio, C 2004, ‘Time Out or Time In?” The Urban Dialectic of Carnival’, in Milla Cozart Riggio (ed.), Carnival: Culture in Action – The Trinidad Experience, Routledge, New York and London, pp. 13–30. Rappaport, R 1999, Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge Turner, J 1997, “Continuity and Constraint: Reconstructing the Concept of Tradition from a Pacific Perspective," Contemporary Pacific, pp.341-381 Webb, D 2005, "Bakhtin at the Seaside: Utopia, Modernity and the Carnivalesque," Theory, Culture & Society vol. 22 no. 3, pp.123-138 Winston, J 2005, Drama, Narrative and Moral Education, Routledge, New York Read More

The Viking festival called Up-Helly-Aa provides an example of how rituals can sacralise social structures and community bonds. The festival is celebrated on the last Tuesday of January each year. It is based on Old Norse traditions associated with the turn and return of the sun. Several rituals called fire-rituals spin around the fire. Afterwards, a Viking ship leads a squad of people clad in Viking-themed costumes. Each year, some 600 visitors celebrate the event in Shetland, Norway. The event, which belonged to the people of Lerwick in Shetland, has also managed to attract thousands of tourists from Norway and the world, who secure a collective sense of belonging from the event.

In which case, rituals encourage feelings of collectivity and sense of belonging and are drawn together collectively (Fjell 2007). The key features of Durkheim’s concept of ritual are anchored in the capacity of the ritual to create a shared focus, which is the sacred object, in a group. It also articulates certain moods, or mental state. Additionally, the ritual serves to honour the sacred object. Consequently, individuals who do not show that respect get to be symbolically or physically punished by other individuals.

Rituals depict underlying trends and life styles Turner (1982) makes a significant distinction between rituals in contemporary and traditional societies. Turner stated that unlike in traditional society, rituals occur much more sporadically and are represented by the light-hearted experimentations that depict trends in the society. In Australia, the Message Sticks Festival held in March each year in Sydney depicts how rituals depict underlying trends and life styles. The event features film, dance, song, arts and discussions, all of which fuse the current or contemporary trends with the Aboriginal traditions.

The rituals entail the participants themselves who are dressed in costumes that depict the Gadigal People and use of sticks to pass messages. Turner (1982) used the term liminoid to depict the ritual experiences in contemporary societies, relative to the liminal experiences prevalent in traditional societies. Such liminal experiences serve to be combined and centred towards the social processes in entirety. They are structures by shared symbols. The Liminoid experiences are usually individual, more idiosyncratic; expose political processes, immoralities, and injustices.

The liminoid and liminal experiences exists in the modern rituals. Still, in modern societies, the rituals do not clearly make a distinction between what is profane and what is sacred. For instance, in the Up-Helly-Aa festival in Norway, each participant carries a torch that in the end is thrown to the Viking ship that burns, symbolising a Viking funeral. In which case, it is difficult to determine whether burning ship is sacred or profane. At the same time, religious rituals also still do exist.

Here, it is the self and individual, which are the ritual objects (Fjell 2007). Rituals are modes communicating cultural practices Within the context of contemporary society, two critical issues are drawn into perspective regarding festivals. They are both spectacle and ritual. The ritual is described as a set of performance of more or less unvarying sequences of utterances, practices or formal acts that performers do not encode. Ritual is often considered as a mode of communication related to the practices and concerns of religion.

Despite this perspective, they have relevant symbolic performances that happen outside the religious context. According to Rappaport (1999), rituals and festivals are evident in modern societies and specifically in modern religions as distinct events. However, older religions incorporate rites in their calendars that may be regarded as festivals within the larger ritual cycle. Impressing and influencing people Winston (2005) theorised that rituals serve to impress people, although many of the societal standards are performed for purposes of dogma or tradition and those who lead them are no longer influenced or impressed by these events.

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