Advances in Consumer Research Volume 17, 1990
Pages 31-38
RITUAL, RITUALIZED BEHAVIOR, AND HABIT: REFINEMENTS
AND EXTENSIONS OF THE CONSUMPTION RITUAL CONSTRUCT
Mary A. Stanfield Tetreault, George Mason University
Robert E. Kleine III, Arizona State University
[The authors would like to thank Dr. Hunter S. Thompson for
his perspicacious comments on an earlier draft of this paper.]
ABSTRACT
The ritual construct offers great potential for interpreting
many aspects of consumption phenomena. Ritual's potential can
be best realized by a multi-layered view of the construct. We
refine and clarify Rook's interpretation to provide such a perspective.
We draw clear distinctions between the analytical classes of
ritual, ritualized behavior, and habit. Theoretical and methodological
implications are discussed.
INTRODUCTION
A number of consumer researchers have exhorted that the ritual
construct affords great potential for conceptualizing and interpreting
many aspects of consumption phenomena (Belk 1979; Kehret-Ward,
Johnson, and Louie 1985; McCracken 1986, 1988; Rook and Levy
1983; Solomon and Anand 1985; Sherry 1983). Rook's (1984, 1985)
contribution to our discipline's understanding of the ritual
construct as a conceptual framework offers rich insights into
the real, experiential lives of consumers and the types of symbolic
meanings that they invest in the use of consumer products.
In this article, we attempt to build upon Rook's (1985) elaboration
of the ritual construct by offering refinements, clarifications,
and extensions of his work. As such, our undergirding objective
is not to inculcate conceptual divisiveness or "hair splitting";
rather, we proffer a framework designed to incrementally sharpen
our discipline's understanding of the ritual construct and its
role in consumer behavior. Furthermore, we offer guidelines
for the analytical exploration of consumption rituals and their
constituent components.
RITUAL CONSTRUCT DOMAIN AND DEFINITION
We readily admit that Rook (1985) confronted a formidable analytical
task in his effort to define the ritual construct in a manner
most germane to the scope of consumption phenomena. Across the
transdisciplinary morass of divergent interpretations of the
term, Rook has abstracted a "mid-range" definition
of ritual. It is not limited to the overly restrictive interpretation
of ritual as "semicivilized" man's prescribed manner
of comportment in religious contexts, the jingoistic Victorian-era
definition predominately used until a generation ago (Kertzer
1988; Vizedom 1976). Neither does it subsume all forms of scripted
human activity (e.g., facing forward in an elevator filled with
strangers; snapping one's chewing gum). Instead, Rook's definition
of the term ritual is constructed to encapsulate the shared
"structural and content elements". . . of "both
everyday, and extraordinary human experience:"
The term ritual refers to a type of expressive, symbolic activity
constructed of multiple behaviors that occur in a fixed, episodic
sequence, and that tend to be repeated over time. Ritual behavior
is dramatically scripted and acted out and is performed with
formality, seriousness, and inner intensity" (1985, p.
252-).
Rook raised ta question whether it is "reasonable to ask
whether it is either possible or useful to derive a single definition
of ritual" (1985, p. 252). We agree that it is extremely
useful to attempt to capture a constructional domain which is
appropriate for conceptualizing consumption ritual phenomena
within our interdisciplinary framework. However, we believe
that further refinements in a definition of ritual are necessary
for crystallizing the construct's domain, and distinguishing
that domain from those of the related constructs "habit"
and "ritualized behavior". Although these constructs
may indeed "represent overlapping sets" (Rook 1985,
p. 252), greater discrimination between them may be "useful"
or "appropriate" for analytical purposes. None of
the constructs represent synthetic categories (Kant 1900 trans.;
Bagozzi 1980); thus, there are no "right or wrong"
definitions of them. Yet teasing out the distinctions between
them may enhance our ability to develop a coherent framework
for the different levels of symbolic meaning consumers may attach
or associate with each form of behavior.
Before presenting our refined definition of ritual, we will
discuss those characteristics which distinguish habit (or custom)
from ritual and those which distinguish ritual from ritualized
behavior (Erikson 1977, 1982).
Habit/Custom Versus Ritual
Habits or customs constitute routinized behavior (Howard 1979).
Several characteristics best distinguish habits from rituals.
First, the scripts for habitual acts may be either created by
the individual consumer (e.g., the sequence of breakfast-making
acts) or prescribed by society (rules for standing in line at
the supermarket checkout counter). The second distinguishing
characteristic is the level of conscious awareness, or cognitive
processing, associated with the elicitation of the behavior
sequence (Douglas and Isherwood 1979; La Fontaine 1985; Peter
and Olson 1987; Turner 1985). Admittedly, this difference is
a matter of degree rather than type, and is thus dependent upon
individual and/or situational characteristics. For example,
arranging a place setting according to the rules of decorum
may be a completely routinized behavior on a mundane basis,
with the "rules" followed in order to save time/cognitive
processing. On the other hand, one may be more cognizant of
prescribed norms for place setting when preparing for an important
social occasion, but engage in the same behavioral sequence.
Thus, one's level of involvement (e.g., Celsi and Olson 1988)
distinguishes habit from ritual, rather than the intricacy of
the behavioral script.
The third characteristic distinguishing habit from ritual concerns
their communicative function (La Fontaine 1985; Turner 1985;
Lewis 1980). Analogous to language, habit or custom has been
suggested to transmit (through behavioral signals) a more circumscribed
message (e.g., if one offers a hand upon introduction, one has
no overtly hostile intentions). Ritual, with its more intense
symbolic properties and components, communicates or expresses
a more condensed, multivocal and ambiguous web of meaning (Kertzer
1988; Munn 1973; Turner 1967). Therefore, participation in habitual
or routinized behaviors is not likely to stimulate the same
level of affective response as does participation in ritual
(Warner 1959).
Finally, intransigence or resistance to change may serve to
discriminate between habit and ritual. Although rituals can
undergo procedural changes that diverge from an "ideal
type" or "stereotyped script" due to either short
term contingencies, or, on a more permanent basis, due to changes
in the distribution of resources in society (La Fontaine 1985;
Kertzer 1988), habits in general are more amenable to modification
or extinction when they no longer fulfill their instrumental
and/or expressive functions.
Ritual Versus Ritualized Behavior
In his definition of ritual, Rook (1985, p. 252) explicitly
aggregates the constructs "ritual" and "ritualized
behavior." This approach is attributable to Rook's sociopsychological
theoretical perspective, which is founded upon Erikson's (1951,
1977, 1982) theories of intrapsychic development. According
to this theoretical perspective, "both everyday ritualized
behavior and larger public rituals" (Rook 1985, p. 257)
are "energized" by the nature of the conflicts between
intrapsychic and social forces uniquely associated with each
of Erikson's (1951) eight universal stages of human development.
Diurnal ritualized activities are seen to serve as reinforcement
(through repetition) for status changes which are publicly "announced"
by means of symbolic public ritual activities (Rook 1985, p.
257).
Although we agree that ritualized behavior may serve to reinforce,
through mundane repetition, the role/status transitions around
which many rituals are focused, we suggest that "ritualized
behaviors" and "ritual" are not subsets of the
identical constructional domain. Upon the basis of the socioanthropological
theoretical perspective to which we subscribe, we aver that
these two constructs may be more appropriately viewed as distinct,
albeit related in a nomological network. The major properties
and characteristics which we believe discriminate between "ritualized
behavior" and "ritual" are summarized in the
Table. Our discussion will highlight those characteristics we
believe are most critical for discriminating between the constructs.
Our major rationale for distinguishing between ritual and ritualized
behavior concerns the notion that ritual 'instantaneously' accomplishes
its purported objectives of status transition and social maintenance
(Radcliffe-Brown 1952; Vizedom 1976; Turner 1985; La Fontaine
1985). This perspective is eloquently expressed by La Fontaine
(1985, pp. 35-36):
Ritual is purposive; the participants believe that they are
accomplishing their aim in what they do . . . this cannot be
ignored . . . Day to day social life is perpetually changing;
what is relatively constant in it is the part played by ideas
and beliefs through which individuals both perceive events and
evaluate their own and others' behavior -- what has been referred
to has the moral order. To refer to it [moral order] as false,
and the untidy process of living as real, is to make a judgement
of value by comparing noncomparable entities, which cannot be
helpful.
It may be tautological to state that ritual effects its purported
objectives (i.e., the maintenance of, and/or. change of individuals'
status within the social order) because that is what the ritual
process is designed to do. However, grounded in our aforementioned
theoretical perspective, we aver that we (as "scientists")
must believe this, or take this "leap of faith," because
the participants of rituals espouse that they do so. Here we
stand in contrast to Rook (1985) and Erikson (1977), who imply
that mundane ritualized behaviors are necessary to fulfill ritual's
"unfinished business." But is this is not an imposed
view on the part of the "enlightened scientist"? Whose
statement or interpretation should be taken as veridical: that
of the "detached, objective scientist", or that of
the ritual participant (the "crazy native")? We (as
"crazy scientists"?) side with he perspective of the
participant. Thus, we conceive of ritual and ritualized behaviors
as "apples" and "oranges"; they are both
in the same "angiosperm," or construct class, but
are non-comparable "species."
Ritual's 'instantaneous' transitions are most evident in public
events marking or celebrating either a change in an individual's
or group's status (e.g., baptism, sorority initiation, marriage,
communion, naturalization, Bastille day, Independence Day)
or a transition through natural and/or "supernatural"
or aesthetic cycles (e.g., the "primitive" vestiges
and extant religious versions of Christmas, Easter, May Day,
the Wagner "Ring" Cycle). Ritualized behaviors may
be more closely associated with conditions in which roles or
TABLE
RITUALIZED
BEHAVIOR CHARACTERISTICS VERSUS RITUAL CHARACTERISTICS
interaction patterns are gradually assimilated, such as divorce
and other relationship disengagements (Baxter 1984; Lee 1984),
landing the first post-MBA job (Solomon and Anand 1985), or
'fitting-in' as a new assistant professor on the faculty. Clearly,
ritual is most closely linked to the maintenance of and/or change
within systems of society, knowledge, and nature (Vizedom 1976;
Van Gennep 1960 trans.; Radcliffe-Brown 1952; Durkheim 1974
trans.; Aron 1970); ritualized behaviors are more likely to
be associated with the maintenance and/or change in one's self-perception
(e.g., Solomon 1983; Mead 1956; Goffman 1959).
The public enactment of ritual requires the participation of
at least two actors in a socially prescribed, standardized sequence
of events (Durkheim 1974 trans.; La Fontaine 1985; Turner 1985;
Kertzer 1988). The transformative, symbolic effects of ritual
occur in social time (Warner 1959) which is bracketed from mundane
life (Turner 1985; Wolff 1978). Turner (1985) and Vizedom (1976)
view the bracketness of ritual as an essential prerequisite
for affective and cognitive changes to 'instantaneously' occur;
these changes permit the transition (of an individual) to a
new status (within the social system).
Ritualized behavior, on the other hand, requires only a private
enactment of a script whose elements are intrapsychically orchestrated.
The sequence of events and artifacts employed may thus be guided
by idiosyncratic tradition (a question raised by Rook 1985,
p. 262) as well as social norms. The mundane repetition of ritualized
behavior occurs in self time (Warner 1959).
Definition of Ritual and Its Components
Our preceding summary of the qualities or characteristics of
ritual vis a vis its related analytic constructs, habit and
ritualized behavior, provides us with a foundation for abstracting
a refined, interdisciplinary interpretation of the ritual construct
Ritual is defined as an analytical class of purposive, socially
standardized activity sequences. Ritual is designed to maintain
and transmit both social and 'moral' order: to reaffirm social
interdependency, by evoking and communicating a network of condensed,
multivocal and ambiguous affective and cognitive meanings to
which members of the collectivity may jointly subscribe. Ritual's
meanings are conveyed through the use of symbolic or metaphorical
artifacts (objects, language, actors, and behaviors) that are
orchestrated into a structured, dramatic complex (episode or
script) often repeated over time. Ritual is enacted in bracketed
social time and/or place, wherein time and/or place themselves
have meaning.
A cursory reading of our interpretation of ritual and its components
may indicate that it varies from Rook's (1985) definition only
along a few dimensions. However, these dimensions are substantial
(i.e., they have important theoretical and methodological implications),
and serve to recast ritual as a distinct analytical category.
We highlight critical points below:
* Ritual is an analytic category.
* Ritual is purposive behavior; it accomplishes its objectives
of transition and maintenance of both social and moral order
(e.g., La Fontaine 1985; Radcliffe-Brown 1948; Gluckman 1965).
* Ritual is socially standardized. Its enactment requires the
organized cooperation of individuals to fulfill all necessary
roles (La Fontaine 1985). Ritual is also socially standardized
in that the script prescribes roles and associated rules of
conduct for actor comportment (Durkheim 1974 trans.).
* Ritual evokes and communicates more than one specific meaning
(e.g., Kertzer 1988; Munn 1973; Turner 1967); it evokes a network
of both cognitive and affective meanings. Thus, it does not
evoke immediate, identical behavioral responses from all actors
(Rook 1985, p. 253). However, consistency would be expected
across actors fulfilling similar roles.
* Ritual occurs in bracketed social time and/or place (Warner
1959; Turner 1985). This does not necessarily imply that ritual
encompasses only "extraordinary" human experience
(Rook 1985, p. 252); it encompasses human experience that celebrates
significant social or natural transition events.
* The socially standardized rules for ritual performance consist
of both explicit and implicit conventional requirements. Implicit
rules, as part of "hidden culture" (Garfinkel 1963;
Hall 1977) exert an extremely powerful influence on behavior.
Deviation from these rules can elicit scorn, alienation, or
outright hostility, as illustrated by the following apocryphal
passage:
"It was just about then that somebody noticed my 'press'
tag was attached to my shirt by a blue and white McGovern button.
I'd been wearing it for three days, provoking occasionally rude
comments from hotheads on the convention floor and in various
hotel lobbies -- but this was the first time I'd felt called
on to explain myself. It was, after all, the only visible McGovern
button in Miami Beach that week -- and now I was tying to join
a spontaneous Nixon Youth demonstration that was about to spill
out onto the floor of the very convention that had just nominated
Richard Nixon for reelection, against McGovern . . .
They seemed to feel I was mocking their efforts in some way
. . and at that point the argument become so complex and disjointed
that I can't possibly run it all down here. It is enough, for
now, to say that I was finally compromised: If I refused to
leave without violence, then I was damn well going to have to
carry a sign in the spontaneous demonstration -and also wear
a plastic red, white, and blue Nixon hat. They-never came right
out and said it, but I could see that they were uncomfortable
at the prospect of all three network TV cameras looking down
on their spontaneous Nixon Youth demonstration and zeroing in
-- for their own perverse reasons -- on a weird looking, 35
year old speed freak with half his hair burned off from overindulgence,
wearing a big blue McGovern button on his chest, carrying a
tall cup of 'Old Milwaukee' and shaking his fist at John Chancellor
up in the NBC booth -- screaming: 'You dirty bastard!' . . .
I politely dismissed all suggestions that I remove my McGovern
button, but I agreed to carry a sign and wear a plastic hat
like everyone else. 'Don't worry', I assured them, you'll be
proud of me' . . . (Thompson 1973, pp. 355-356).
To further explore this analytical category, ritual, we next
explicate threads of the interdisciplinary fabric which inculcates
ritual with so much power.
THE POWER OF RITUAL: AN INTERDISCIPLINARY PERSPECTIVE
The power of ritual as an analytical category for consumer
research is two-fold. First, it describes a system of which
consummatory behavior is an important component. As such, ritual
provides an analytically tractable microcosm within which the
consumption systems of the larger culture are condensed and
brought into relief -- thus facilitating their identification
and analysis. Second, ritual emphasizes the integrated nature
of psychological and social structural phenomena. As Kertzer
(1988, p. 10) observes:
"The power of ritual stems not just from its social matrix,
but also its psychological underpinnings. Indeed these two dimensions
are inextricably linked. Participation in ritual involves physiological
stimuli, the arousal of emotions; ritual works through the senses
to structure our sense of reality and our understanding of the
world around us".
FIGURE
THE POWER
OF RITUAL: AN INTERDISCIPLINARY PERSPECTIVE
This "inexorable linking" of phenomena -generally
investigated by researchers from disparate research traditions
-- led us to reconceptualize Levy's (1978) typology of ritual
behavior into our Figure depicting the cyclical power of ritual.
This reconceptualization is in the spirit of Van Gennep's (1960
trans.; cf. Vizedom 1976) insistence that analytical power is
focused, rather that diminished, by emphasizing the similarity
among ritual's elements .
We reconceptualized Levy's (1978) five ritual types -- human
biology, individual aims and emotions, group learning, cultural
values, and cosmological beliefs -- into their corresponding
research traditions: sociobiology, psychology, sociology, and
cultural anthropology. The nonrecursive feedback loop linking
these elements emphasizes that each contributes to ritual. A
researcher could begin study of ritual from any of these perspectives;
however, s/he should strive to capture the Gestalt (La Fontaine
1985). The study of ritualized behavior (Rook 1985) can be represented
as investigation of the "slice" of the ritual cycle
surrounding psychology.
For expository purposes, and to elucidate some of the myriad
activities enacted within ritual, we now tour the ritual cycle
one "slice" at a time. However, to analyze ritual
in such a manner (i.e. investigate only one or two of the "slices")
would strip much of the phenomenon's vitality. Sociobiology,
as Barash illustrates, provides the foundation from which all
ritual springs:
"Sociobiology will probably have little to tell us about
why we select a blue necktie or a red one, but a great deal
about why we choose to adorn our bodies in the first place;
very little about why we vote Democratic or Republican, but
a great deal about why we choose to have leaders in the first
place; very little about the details of our lives, which are
largely determined by learning, by chance, or by the whims of
custom, but a great deal about why, underneath it all, we act
like human beings" (Barash 1979, p. 14).
Sociobiology thus concerns the most fundamental, evolutionarily
refined human tendencies which predispose humans toward not
only ritual, but also certain types of ritual.
Ritual phenomena pertinent to psychological analysis include
individuals' (idiosyncratic) meanings ascribed to ritual artifacts,
ego development, and belief system changes which may include
changes of the individual's perception of his/her environment
(social or natural) and of self. Also pertinent phenomena are
the content and elaboration of individuals' ritual scripts.
Sociological inquiry of ritual emphasizes not individuals,
but the roles designated by a ritual's script, and the social
structure within which those roles are embedded. The effects
of ritual on group cohesion and status (i.e., role) transitions
of ritual actors are also salient. Emphasis is placed on the
role ritual serves to reaffirm the extant social order and build
solidarity through the joint action of ritual participants (Durkheim
as interpreted by Kertzer 1988, p. 76).
The complex texture of ritual artifacts' symbolism is of vital
interest in anthropological analysis of ritual (Turner 1985;
Vizedom 1975). Also emphasized are the use of ritual artifacts'
symbolic properties to bracket the ritual both in time and space
and to indicate social inclusiveness/exclusiveness among ritual
actors.
Analytically, we can distinguish ritual phenomena characteristic
of sociobiological, psychological, sociological, and anthropological
modes of inquiry. However, the power of ritual resides not in
the fact that this diversity of phenomena occur within the boundaries
of ritual. The power of ritual emerges from the fact that traditional
disciplinary boundaries dissolve. The result is the seamless
interplay of individuals' emotional, cognitive and affective
responses to their idiosyncratic interpretations of the enactment
of socially defined roles which are demarcated one from another
by cultural artifacts that become condensed symbols to facilitate
ritual enactment. Consequently, ritual provides a vehicle through
which consumption behavior, with all its multisensory, hedonic,
affective, cognitive, social, and cultural qualities are fully
recognized. However, the power of ritual comes not without challenges
to consumer researchers. The most notable challenge is methodological,
to which we now shift our attention.
METHODOLOGICAL IMPLICATIONS OF RITUAL
How does the researcher approach the challenge of understanding
and capturing the meaning, power, and outcome of consumption
ritual? As consumption ritual represents a complex Gestalt,
embodying a multivocal latticework of manifest and implicit
meanings derived from ritual actors' participation and interaction
among themselves and with the ritual's symbolic set of artifacts,
ritual presents the researcher with a formidable, but enticingly
variegated "multivariate" analytical task.
The corpus of ritual literature is replete with expositions
that disaggregate and taxonomize the outcomes and components
of ritual -- e.g., Grimes' programmatic bibliography (1985);
Moore and Myerhoff (1977). As we recapitulate that these phenomenal
components are inexorably linked, we maintain that the exploration
of consumption ritual should ideally be approached using methods
of inquiry subsumed within the holistic, interpretive, hermeneutic
paradigm(s) of ethnography (e.g., Denzin 1989; Geertz 1973;
Goodenough 1971; Hirschman 1986; Hudson and Ozanne 1988; O'Shaughnessy
and Holbrook 1988). Approaches which proffer a continual interplay
between individual actors' scripts or meaning systems (D'Andrade
1986) for particular ritual "texts" and the 0 systemic
ritual complex "text" (itself embedded 9 within a
sociocultural totality) -- a hermeneutic i circle -- would provide
a strong foundation of interpretive understanding of consumption
ritual phenomena from the perspectives of the participants (the
"crazy natives").
The consummation of interpretive modes of inquiry, although
devoutly to be wished, may be difficult for many consumer scholars
to achieve in the short run. The production of "thick description"
(Geertz 1973) requires not only the implementation of an orchestrated
set of ethnographic tools; it requires an "artistic sensibility"
which our discipline's predominant patterns of "scientific"
socialization neither promulgate nor invariably reward (e.g.,
Calder and Tybout 1987; Tetreault 1987). Furthermore, the exegistical
conjoining of individual and systemic units of analysis contradicts
our discipline's bias/affinity toward a reductionist, atomistic
perspective.
Yet short run straits should not be bewailed. Exemplars of
the use of interpretive paradigms in consumer research exist
(e.g., Belk, Wallendorf, and Sherry 1989; Holbrook and Grayson
1986; Sherry and McGrath 1989), and may inspire scholars interested
in consumption ritual to "take arms against a sea of troubles"
(Shakespeare 1603) and rigorously journey beyond "thin
description" (Ryle 1968).
Moreover, incremental insight into the 'meaning" of particular
consumption rituals may be gleaned through the application of
extant research approaches/ techniques concerned with eliciting
informants' meaning or belief systems (e.g., Fiske and Taylor
1984; Olson and Reynolds 1983; Reynolds 1983; Smith and Houston
1985). The use of field observation techniques in tandem or
conjunction with the elicitation and analysis of protocol data
will afford a broadened understanding of the meanings that consumers
attach to rituals of consumption.
Finally, the use of sociocognitive network analysis for examining
consumption rituals offers great promise for capturing both
individual actors' "operating culture" and the collective
"public culture" (Goodenough 1971) associated with
consumption ritual events. As this set of analytical techniques
addresses both individual and sociostructural units of analysis
in the formation and transmission of belief systems, it is well-suited
for elucidating the social interdependencies which shared networks
of meanings ascribed to symbolic artifacts reaffirm and reinforce.
If applied within the naturalistic context of ongoing ritual
consumption activity, results from this approach may well mirror
the holistic insights provided by hermeneutical paradigms of
ethnography.
CONCLUSION
Rook's (1985) sociopsychological approach for conceptualizing
the ritual dimension of consumption provides a strong foundation
for exploring the symbolic meanings individual consumers invest
in their everyday behaviors. By refining the ritual construct
and recasting it into a multi-disciplinary perspective, we have
illustrated that the construct weaves a multihued, complex fabric
of meaning. We hope that our discussion both challenges and
inspires consumer researchers to approach the examination of
rituals' meaning(s) with a broader interpretation of appropriate
research methodologies. We hope also that our reconceptualization
of ritual focuses researcher's attention on the joint and interactive
nature of consumption phenomena.
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