Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions

Catherine Bell

Nov 1997 · Oxford University Press

About this ebook

From handshakes and toasts to chant and genuflection, ritual pervades our social interactions and religious practices. Still, few of us could identify all of our daily and festal ritual behaviors, much less explain them to an outsider. Similarly, because of the variety of activities that qualify as ritual and their many contradictory yet, in many ways, equally legitimate interpretations, ritual seems to elude any systematic historical and comparative scrutiny. In this book, Catherine Bell offers a practical introduction to ritual practice and its study; she surveys the most influential theories of religion and ritual, the major categories of ritual activity, and the key debates that have shaped our understanding of ritualism. Bell refuses to nail down ritual with any one definition or understanding. Instead, her purpose is to reveal how definitions emerge and evolve and to help us become more familiar with the interplay of tradition, exigency, and self-expression that goes into constructing this complex social medium.

About the author

Catherine Bell has been involved in food for 20 years. In 1989, she established the Epicurean Workshop, a specialist cookware store & cooking school in Auckland, New Zealand. For much of the last ten years she has regularly taught classes both locally & internationally, & has written about food & cookery for a number of newspapers & magazines. She is a member of IACP & holds the qualification of Certified Culinary Professional.