The World of Rituals

Landmarks, pivots for meanings, sources of consolation, organisers of time and space - why do we need rituals and ceremonies?

The coronation of a king in the Middle Ages, a virtual church service on Second Life, Valentine’s Day in New Delhi – what have these all in common? All three phenomena are informed by rituals, by actions that extend beyond everyday life and in that way transcend and elevate it. Rituals create meaning, identity and cohesion. They are the object of the researches of the scientists and scholars at the Heidelberg Collaborative Research Centre "Ritual Dynamics".

What is a Ritual?

A ritual is a human action that is bound by the prevailing context and culture. Rituals are often accompanied by specific customs, conventions and rules, and may be religious or secular in nature. Rituals can give a society stability and orientation inasmuch as they involve recurring sequences of actions and old familiar symbols.

The Research Strategy: The Genesis and Passing of Ritual Practices

It had been assumed till now that rituals are bound to unchanging patterns, or rigid, unchanging forms of behaviour whose original source can generally only be established with great difficulty. However, the project in Heidelberg chiefly addresses the question of how ritual practices come into being and disappear, and why rituals are invented or undergo further development.

Unique in Germany: The Collaborative Research Centre “Ritual Dynamics”

Der Sonderforschungsbereich "Ritualdynamik" (SFB 619) wurde im Jahre 2002 gegründet und wird von der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) gefördert. Er ist der bislang erste und einzige kulturwissenschaftliche Sonderforschungsbereich in Deutschland, der sich ausschließlich mit Ritualen auseinandersetzt.

The Collaborative Research Centre “Ritual Dynamics" (SFB 619) was set up in 2002 with the financial support of the German Research Foundation (DFG). It is at present the first and only collaborative research centre in Germany that looks solely at rituals from the perspective of cultural studies. Central to this initiative is empirical research into the dynamics of ritual practices in various historical and contemporary cultures, along with the constant development of the underlying theoretical approaches in ritual studies. To this end, SFB 619 embraces three major project areas: ritual dynamics between tradition and recent religious practice, the reconstruction of dynamic ritual processes in past cultures, and ritual transfer in societies in Europe and the Middle East. With over 90 scientists and scholars, SFB 169 is an especially large interdisciplinary research association that embraces 15 subjects: English Studies, Egyptology, Assyriology, Anthropology of South Asia, Ancient and Mediaeval History, Islam Studies, Jewish Studies, Classical and Modern Indology, Art History of East Asia, Medical Psychology, Musicology, Comparative Religion, and Theology.

Backing for Junior Researchers

The research centre wants above all to bring together younger researchers and link them up in an international network. Through regular symposia, summer schools, colloquia and international conferences, a high level of interdisciplinary thinking is learnt and practiced, which particularly motivates younger researchers to search for answers to questions outside the familiar bounds of their own disciplines.

The Objectives of the Research

Such different countries and cultures as Mesopotamia, Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece and Rome, late mediaeval and modern Europe, India, Nepal, Syria and Turkey are all part of the spectrum of the research. The researchers study living, traditional rituals in situ, share their knowledge and exchange ideas. They want to understand how rituals in different eras and cultures have changed, and how they also continue to develop today. Who invents rituals? For what occasions? And what is the meaning of ritual actions?

• Do they serve to cement and legitimise positions of power and to uphold the social order?
• What function did rituals have in earlier times as a means of communication?
• Do rituals help people to establish and maintain identity?/li>
• What function do rituals have in people’s life histories, from childhood to death?
• Can rituals provide therapeutic help in life crises?
• How do rituals help people to structure not only their life spaces but also their lifetimes? E.g. by distinguishing between the sacred/holy and the profane – i.e. worldly spaces - or by marking seasons and anniversaries?

Interdisciplinary Research

The tight networking of the projects enables various ritual practices and ceremonies to be mutually compared: purification rituals, rituals of initiation and marriage, healing rituals, rituals of power and dominion, rituals from court ceremonial, temple and festival rituals, trance rituals, and ritualisations of adolescent drug consumption. Researchers in one of the SFB sub-projects are looking for instance at rituals in Nepal. Having already studied various rituals of ageing and dying, of death and mourning, they have now turned to rituals of childhood and adolescence, especially to the various forms of initiation for girls and boys. Other researchers have devoted themselves to rituals in the youth culture of New Delhi, to the rules of ritual purity in mediaeval Judaism, and to the function of public political rituals in the Roman Empire of late antiquity.


Here's a link to the website of The Collaborative Research Centre "Ritual Dynamics" (SFB 619)