Ritual, Conflict and Consensus

The present volume gathers nine papers that present new empirical data and theoretical findings on the significance of ritual for performers and participants, for certain social groups or for an entire society. Starting with an introduction by Gabriela Kiliánová, the case studies by Tatiana Bužeková, Gebhard Fartacek, Andre Gingrich, Christian Jahoda, Eva-Maria Knoll, Maria-Katharina Lang, Helmut Lukas and Joanna Pfaff-Czarnecka contribute notably to the current discourse on ritual performances, whose power and effectiveness lend them an enduring fascination for the social anthropological research community and beyond. Although the authors have approached their cases from a variety of theoretical standpoints and methodological approaches, all of them have focused on the question: how does ritual become a possible source of conflict or consensus in society, and also how may it be instrumental in avoiding conflict and bringing about consensus? The search for answers to this question produced a second unifying line in the publication: this was the necessity of tracing ritual against the background of social relationships and local or global economic, political, ideological and cultural processes. As the research findings show, contemporary societies in Asia and Europe on their way to multiple modernity face many crises in which economic interests, political goals, ideological concepts and the values of various social groups or individuals come into potential or open conflict. Ritual meanwhile continues to function in both directions: on the one hand as a reflection or trigger of conflict, on the other hand as a pressure towards the limitation of conflict, tending towards social cohesion.