Rite of passage

A rite of passage (or initiatory rite ) is a Rituel marking the social or sexual change of status of an individual, most generally puberty but also for other events like the birth or the menopause. The ritual generally materializes by a various ceremony or tests.

The rites of passage make it possible to bind the individual to the group, but also to structure the life of the individual in precise stages which allow an alleviating perception of the individual compared to his temporality and to its mortality.

This phenomenon thus has an important issue for the individual, the relation between the individual and the group, and for the cohesion of the group as a whole.

Study

The first studied the phenomenon is the Ethnologue - folklorist Arnold van Gennep ( Rites of Passage , 1909). Other theories were developed in the years 1960 by Mary Douglas and Victor Turner.

According to Arnold van Gennep, the rite of passage generally proceeds in three stages:

separation (the individual is isolated from the Groupe),
the margin or Liminalité (moment when the effectiveness of the ritual is carried out, with the variation of the group),
aggregation (return in the group).

Turner will for its part stress the functionalism of the rites of passage as regards social cohesion. By transforming the social statuses in a preset way, the rites of passages make it possible to avoid the conflicts (of influence).

The authors Geoffrey Miller, Ian Steward and Jack Cohen, also state that the initiatory rites are also used to detect those which are not sufficiently subjected to the group to undergo them. The latter are then led to seek protection of another group (which does not practice them, or in a less constraining form), purifying thus the initial group of its elements considered to be not very sure. The circumcision is regarded by them as a very important form socially of rite, because it tests and puts forward the tender of the parents more still than that of the children.

Arnold van Gennep, " Rites of passage. Systematic study of the rites" , A.J. Picardy, Paris 1981.

The mathematician and the Latinist are already familiar, in their intellectual formations, with the place from where one comes (unde), the place where one goes (quo), the place where one is (ubi) and the place where one passes (qua) that imply the concept of passage, transition or transformation, according to the reference considered in space, time (preliminary, preliminary and postliminaire), the state or the form. Then, the passage is the interface and the paradox of the superposition partial in the intersection of two universes usually disjoined of aggregation and separation at the same time and the insoluble coexistence of the departure and the arrival, of rupture and contact through a line of demarcation real or imaginary, physical or psychic. Starting from the ethnological and historical material, van Gennep refers especially to the place, the border and the threshold (limen, liminis in Latin) to distinguish in rites “preliminary” (in the separation of the old world), “preliminary” (in the passage itself) and “postliminaire” (in aggregation in the new world) of crossing.

In the material passing is superimposed a social and psychic transition marked by rites, as the threshold is at the border.

Much more than of a practical nature, the ceremonial of police and customs control is of order symbolic system of the always permeable territorial crossing of frontiers to clandestine of all kinds. The ritual is a sequence of entirely prédictibles actions which proceeds according to a conventional scheduling and symbolic system of a metarepresentation or diplomatic representation of the stage performances. The relation between the Anthropology and the Sociologie of the rituality could be equivalent to that between " macro" and " micro" , i.e. the study of a large range of human groupings at the same time or of only one grouping at various times of its history, or that where Anthropology is with the crossroads of sciences (logos) of the Man (anthropos), like required it Marcel Mauss through desired collaborations. Then, the rituality in sociology is spread in a multitude of demonstrations which the disciplinary fields cut out in pieces which sometimes are superimposed, as it is difficult to trace a clear border between the psychology and the sociology of the " politikon zoon" or social animal.

Multiple manifestations of the rites of passage

These demonstrations represent the longitudinal section of the authors and the texts in various singular situations of the disciplinary fields. These disciplinary fields can become vaults whose shades of the bell-towers do not interpenetrate and where the multidisciplinarity can not be the transdisciplinarity anthropo-socio-psycho-médico-policy which is not a " mixture; confus" (to take one for the other), but to melt one in another through a " structure which relie" or " métastructure". This transdisciplinarity consists of bridges and footbridges connecting the continents, the archipelagoes, the islands, small islands and islets of knowledge.

Pierre Bourdieu and rites like corporate measures

Pierre Bourdieu, " rites like acts of institution " , pp. 58-63, in " Acts of research in sciences sociales" , No 43 of June 1982 on the " Rites and fétiches" , Editions of midnight, Paris 1982.

Already the rites of the French meal are the marks of a distinction (Pierre Bourdieu, " the Distinction. Critical social of the jugement" , Editions of midnight, Paris 1979. Passage of the author of Education to the Culture) whose Republic erased the marks of the birth up to the point where the first Socialist government of the first septennate of François Mitterrand was invited to dine with Versailles by the old government on President Giscard d'Estaing demolishes with the elections of the pretty month of May 1981 for, seems T it, to undergo an examination of passage and to obtain a patent of middle-class good behavior.

It is about the social function of the ritual and the social significance of the line, of the limit whose ritual sells by auction the passage and the transgression. Bourdieu, then, particularizes the rites of passage in rites of dedication, rites of legitimation or simply generalized in rites of institution. For Bourdieu, speech of rite of institution, it is to indicate that any rite tends to devote or legitimate, i.e. to make ignore as arbitrary and recognize as legitimate, natural, an arbitrary limit. By solemnly marking the passage of a line which founds a fundamental division of the social order, the rite draws the attention of the observer towards the passage, whereas the important thing is the line.

The rite devotes and legitimates the difference in separation as well as the similarity in aggregation.

The social order of Pierre Bourdieu is with the macrostructures what the social interaction of Erving Goffman is with the microstructures in the setting in scene of the daily life for the presentation of oneself (1973), of the Rites of interaction (1974) to the Ways of speaking (1987). These rites of interaction mark of their seal the level, the statute and the territory social of the people who exhibent them. The nomination juridico-policy of a deputy or a Head of State as well as the academic diplomation of a pupil or a student belong as much to the magic as the amulets. Social sciences should take into account does it symbolic system effectiveness of the rites of institution as well as the capacity which belongs to them to act on reality while acting on the representation of reality.

The titles of nobility and the titles school durably multiply the value of their carrier by multiplying the intensity and the extent of the belief in their value. In the line of the rites and fetishes, the crossing of the social field to the psychological field can be carried out number set of themes of the review of the sociological searchs for Pierre Bourdieu to the review " Dialog" clinical research and sociological on the couple and the family whose number set of themes 127 of the 1st quarter of 1995 is devoted to the " Rites and marks of passage".

The places and times of passage are not always marked by precise indices, nor even less by the ritual ones for " to mark the coup" and to transform the banal one into the exceptional one and reciprocally. With the development biological, professional, psychological and social, various authors treat various passages with it. Most interesting is perhaps the rite which does not say its name by ignorance or disguise. They would be then and at the same time the practices moved with the row of rites in its surface significance of reflex actions, in contrast with the considered conduits of the rites which are disguised to escape from the labels from obscurantism, at best, or of " Kitsch" , in the worst case, characterized by ostentation and the bad taste.

Anonymous rites of Jean Lemaire

Jean Lemaire, " Rites of passage which always do not tell them nom" , pp. 3-7, in " Dialog" , No 127 " Rites and marks of passage" , Paris, 1st quarter, Paris, 1995. lls is those which always do not say their name where marking introduces the paradox of visible-invisible into the cybernetic oscillation of a Gestalt figure-bottom. This marking is characterized by:

yearly tenure in the control assured and narrow control the impulses, scatalogy often found in the rites of hazing or initiation;
creativity to replace demonstrations fallen in obsolescence or disgrace;
festive dimension;
the agreement of the group;
a new direction in old forms;
an insidious slip of the practice to the rite;
the immutable repetition and the dramatizing of the behaviors with utilitarian, concrete and practical reasons at the beginning.

In these rites which always do not say their name, there are profane rites and pseudo-rites. The profane rites are based on beliefs other than those of the recognized and instituted religions, while the pseudo-rites of the practice are empty forms like shells collected on the beach. If the concept of rite is diluted and become a conceptual magma, a without delay mobile metaphorical matter and of a very general application, it would now act to circumscribe it and register it in its anthropological entourage, ethologic, historical, Psychologique and Social. That it is profane, monk or social, any rite marks a passage in the spirit and the facts.

Concept of rite of passage of Pierre Erny

Pierre Erny, " Concept of rite of passage" , in " Rites of passage: moreover, here, for elsewhere, pp. 21-29, (coll transverse social Practices), Eras, Paris, 1994.

In the compilation of texts carrying the title “Rites of passage: moreover, here, for” composed elsewhere of three parts: " ethnology of the rites of passage" , " passions of the daily newspaper and the ritualities ordinaires" and " testimonys and practical sociales". The text presented is in the first part of the ethnology of the rites of passage. Historically, the rite is of religious origin and indicates the whole of the ceremonies of the worship, with the example of the " rite romain" and of the " rite byzantin" for Catholicisms of Occident and the East.

Then, the rite is made conspicuous towards particular religious acts, particular lithurgies to pass to the ceremonial of a secret society or a grouping, the builder following the example of, companions and apprentices, at the time of the entry and the exit by the dedication. Sociology seized the term by conferring a broader direction of a control regulated or scheduled in crowned matter or symbolic system to him. The ethology of the behaviors common to the members of a species evacuated crowned with the profit of the symbolic system and dissolution starts by comparing the rite to a manner of making usual, repetitive, mechanical and stereotyped. A rite is characterized by:

a body substrate;
an individual or collective specific control;
a code of rules and situations where minor improvisations can be done within this framework;
a reproduction or repetitive representation of another control;
a significance and a value lived and shared by the actors, authors and spectators;
an effectiveness out of the Newtonian field of the forces and movements;
a psychic effect about the placebo based on the belief.

Starting from the concept of rite, Pierre Erny arrives at the rites of passage through the categories of van Gennep based on the place of the threshold or " limen" articulated in preliminaries, preliminary and postliminaires. This passage turns mainly around dialogical, duality, dialog or dialectical death-life, disappearance-appearance. " Aufhebung" is the expression hégélienne amphibious which gives better an account of the threshold, the line, the border or limit by meaning at the same time appearance, disappearance and conservation with the first direction of emergence.

The third component of conservation is specific to the tribe of Souabes of which is resulting Hegel. Freud, in the article of 1905 on the " Négation" (Neinung) used it in connection with the refusal (Verneinung) which, at the same time, and repression (Verdrängung) preserves removes while indicating it. The complexity of the rites of passage is perhaps in the paradox of the collusion, confusion (to melt together one in another) or of the superposition of the visible-invisible universe, show-to hide, life-death and appearance-disappearance. Crowned or profane rites, pseudorites and rites nevrotic, they in common have the anguish dammed up and channeled at the individuals and the companies by the meticulous execution of the ceremonial representation which makes it possible to live with it.

In “Citadel”, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry wrote that the rites are in time what the residence is in space, i.e. a refuge and a reference mark to be located and be identified.

These rites of passage of Pierre Erny particularize in profane rites at Claude Rivière with all " événement" family and public, national and international or simply a festive meeting to celebrate and mark something.

Profane rites of Claude Rivière

Claude Rivère, “profane rites”, PUF, Paris, 1995.

In these rites, the share symbolic system is less than the ludic share and they are those of the demonstrations festive associative, family, national or international, like the Olympic Games and the World Fairs which succeed the old fairs. These festive demonstrations mark an event or the passage of the seasons and is based on the calendar from where crowned is evacuated with the profit of the symbolic system become a pretext for the meeting by the play.

These profane rites, compared to the medical practice, can exhiber a ceremonial violence of the initiatory rites studied by Anne Dutruge in the capacity as country doctor and ethnologist of the rural population in Haute-Savoie.

Initiatory rites and medical practice

Anne Dutruge, " Rites initiatory and practical medical in the French company contemporaine" , Harmattan, Paris 1994,

They are in the contemporary French company and they are revealed by Doctor Anne Dutruge, country doctor in Haute-Savoie and doctor of ethnology. The population and the rural habits of the French Alps are also the objects of the attentive care of Anne Dutruge, curious, with listenings of its patients. For it, the body and the spirit are immersed in a social context, a physical environment and a medium of life in which the collective history and the individual memory merge by being based one in the other.

The medical practices and the medical gestures and behaviors in the interaction look after-patient are true initiatory rites, especially concerning the sex of the individual in the medical circumcision, the Voluntary interruption of pregnancy (IVG) and the episiotomy. The initiatory function of these three contemporary practices in the modern French company is largely enlightened in the light of the rites in many companies known as traditional. The protocol of the diagnosis, the forecast and therapeutic constitutes already a rituality by the repetitive, immutable character and of scheduling.

the medical Circoncision is a shortening préputial by the surgical practice leaving the nipple partially or completely with discovered whose only disease prevention is the Phimosis or contracting préputial which prevents the discovery of the nipple and causes superinfections by avoidable accumulation of secretions with a simple forced uncapping. Prophylactic poverty and the superabundance of the representations as well medical as popular lead the thought towards the direction of marking, the body inscription by a universal initiatory rite through times and the continents, in a form or another, for reasons and others. The violence of the inscription suggests the initiatory ritual character of the social recognition and the legal acceptance of the new statute of a person sexuée and capable of sexual activities.

the Voluntary interruption of pregnancy (IVG) is socially and legally recognized like abortion caused by medical means in hospital or clinical medium within the limits of the technical availability compared to the degree of pregnancy. With the sure and simple medical gesture are grafted around the conduits much more within the competence of the rituality of initiatory or narcissistic marking or of the seizure of power on the partner. Initiatory marking, in the young women, of fruitfulness and femininity is in the importance of the inscription on the body, violence and the ambiguity of the gesture which hides as much as it reveals, legal procedure of preparation and institutional character. Narcissistic marking is in the assertion-negation of an identity and a femininity as a mother. The takeover on the partner is the assertion of his control in at least a field, that of procreation.

the episiotomy is an incision périnéale, generally in a first calf cow, i.e. to the first pregnancy, to facilitate expulsion and to prevent after-effects postparturientes whose effectiveness and systematization make raise questions about the medical value opposite the cultural value where, as in the traditional companies, initiation passes by the sex of the individual. Like any preventive act and violent one, the episiotomy returns to an impulsive control registered in the order of the initiatory ritual on the body of the woman during its first childbirth. Referring to sexuality these initiatory rites, the profane rituality could, with utility and fruitfulness, to grow rich by the psychoanalytical prospect which would clarify the interface between the subject, the psychic apparatus groupal and the social group.

Profane rituality: a psychoanalytical prospect for Bernard Duez

Bernard Duez, " Profane rituality: a prospect psychanalytique" , pp. 73-100 in “international Books of sociology”, vol. XCII from January-June, PUF, Paris 1992.

The difference between the ritualities crowned and layman is in the articulation more-or-less implicit or explicit with the myth crowned through the symbolic system. With exposed ritual private and social, ritual pathological and ritual ones of integration symbolic system of the child in the family group, ritual legal and different, Bernard Duez shows how the ritual constitutes an interface between the subject, the psychic apparatus groupal and the social group.

The profane rite expresses an opposition between an order instituted (of the regulation and assignment) and the work of the anarchistic impulse which has as a function to re-establish a sufficient disorder so that the group is not sclerosed in a process of exchange of the endogamic type which would lead it to its disappearance. This work of the disorder is generating of a new order. This " impulse anarchique" allows for the subjects to represent and represent in the group the radical negativity, that which are represented in space psychic only by defect, absence, nothing or non-being, unstageable, unnamable, withdrawal of case or simply repression. These experiments correspond for the subject to actualizations, representations of very early experiments of distress often. The ritual repetition of these lived seems to have to be included/understood in a traumatic equivalent.

What makes traumatism for the subject is an experiment to which it cannot assign a place in its psyché, the traumatic situation involving an effraction of the psychic framework by the instinctual push. When an event serves as traumatism, it is characterized by its eternal presence, its aptitude to be constantly brought up to date in an unexpected way of the life of the subject or by its radical preclusion which excludes it from any representation and condemns it to repeat itself ad infinitum in reality. The ritual repetition is an attempt to control itself, to integrate it in the psychic life. This presence of negativity in the profane rite encourages, in margin of ritual pathological, to privilege the talk of what is the originating rite, where can best seize again these antiquated dimensions and their organization.

For the instituted social group, the traumatism is the sudden appearance of this internal negativity coming from subjects. For the individual subject, the traumatism is the excess of internal tension related to the impulse like psychic expression of the somatic one. For one as for the other, the traumatic effect seems to be related to the impossible representation of a fact in a system symbolic system given. The pathological rites are spread in the fields of the neurosis, the psychosis, perversion and the antisociality.

The ritual phenomenon of Victor W. Turner

Victor W. Turner " The ritual phenomenon. Structure and against-structure" , PUF Paris, 990. French translation of " The Ritual Process. Structure and Anti-Structure " , 1969

It would be a “ritography”, if there are possible “ritology” and “ritonomy”. Indeed, it is a description of 206 pages whose two chapters are of a methodological nature of the techniques of field work folk and exotic of African manners concerning the fertility. Concerning the rites of the passage, most interesting starts in chapter 3 with the “liminarity” and the “communitas” of the social stratification and the marks of statute.

This part of the secular rites of the American folklorist probably inspired Erving Goffman since it took part in the conference organized in 1974 in Burg Wartenstein. The talk is based on the categories of van Gennep with the separation of the preliminary rites, the preliminary margin of the shore left without to have still approached the shore of destination, and the rites postliminaires of the reception and aggregation to the new shore.

The original English title of ritual process, structure and against-structure is much clearer and explicit. The structure is of the order sociétal of from top to bottom a geometrical and crystalline fitting. The against-structure refers to tentacular, crawling and arborescent sociability or a certain way of disputing and then to reconcile itself, to gradually bind the ones to the others on the ground, in a fitting in network upwards. The process relates to more the syntactic one (relation sign-sign) and the semantics (relation mean-meant) which are two of the three ways of the communications theories with the pragmatic one of the relations between the signs and their effects in the psychotherapeutic applications to prevent and attenuate the distresses and the after-effects at the time of the passages of life and to repair the psychic traumatisms during the events of life.

Rites of passage and identity

The most studied transition is undoubtedly the Adolescence which correspond in the passing biological and social of the child to the adult through the state-limit or the interval of penal responsibility-irresponsibility, the reproductive capacity-incapacity and autonomy-heteronomy on the plans biological, legal, psychological and social. Birth with death, the course of a life is the sum and the chronicle of a multitude of passages where each passage is the rupture of an unspecified identity as the birth of a child is the rupture of a wife who becomes mother, of a " girl of… " who becomes " mother of… " and of a " mother of… " who becomes a " grandmother of. " for the female kind as for the male kind. Another illustrative example of passage in childhood is the rupture between the privative one of the family and the public of the first days at the nursery.

The passage of the elementary school at the secondary school corresponds to the préadolescence where the subject passes, through estival school vacations, of the group of the " grands" at the elementary school with the group of the " petits" at the secondary school. Each passage represents the paradox of the interval of the interpenetration, the superposition, the alternation and the dispute of the dissimilar universes.

This passage is also at the same time the abandonment of the old identity which of " figure" becomes " fond" , in a Gestalt or " totality figure-fond" and the acquisition of a new identity which replaces " figure". The rite of passage is a ceremony of public recognition and approval of the abandonment of the old identity and acquisition of the new identity.

It is an accompaniment of training in the abandonment of the old identity and the acquisition of the new identity.

The rite of passage is also this guide of voyage and training and an accompaniment of a trade-guild of road in the abandonment of the old identity and the acquisition of the new identity, an helping hand of the close relations and distances to cross turbid water of the life.

" No training avoids the voyage. Under the control of a guide, education pushes outside. Leave: leave. Leave the belly your mother, cradle, shadow by the house of the father and the youthful landscapes. With the wind, the rain: outside the shelters miss. Your initial ideas repeat only old words. Young person: old parrot. The voyage of the children, here is the naked direction of the Greek pedagogy. To learn lance the errance". (Michel Greenhouses, " The Third-Instruit" , p. 28, François Bourin, Paris, 1991).

Examples of rites

In much of traditional companies the Circumcision, which is carried out with puberty or right front, mark the passage of the statute of boy to that of man (as in the Moslem company). In certain companies where the Community life is the rule, the young person consequently moves occasion of the district of the women in whom he lived since his birth towards the district of the men.
Among Christians the principal rites are the Baptême, the Communion and the Mariage.
At the Jews, for the boys it is the Brith milah (circumcision) then the Bar Mitsva at the age of puberty, for the girls the Zeved habat, the Bat Mitsva then the marriage.
At the amish there is a rite of transition called Rumspringa by which the young person amish is brought to leave his community during a few months and with going to live in a modern way. With resulting from this period, the young person must choose between remaining in the modern world or to return to live in its community (only a light percentage decides not to return among his)
Among Hindus the first ceremony is the Upanayanam (or ceremony of the cord) by which the child from 7 to 8 years is invested by the cord brahmanic that it must carry and by which it is initiated with will mantra.
In Japan there is the Genpuku for the teenagers from 12 to 16 years and the Seijin shiki , ceremony which takes place at 20 years.
At the Amerindians the rite was the Search of vision, generally preceded by a fast and by the absorption of Enthéogène S.
In certain primitive companies, the teenager must achieve certain tests such as running naked through a herd, taking part in combat of group or to jump of the summit of a tree. In other traditional companies, the rite is carried out by a body marking, tattooings or scarifications.

Into Low Casamance (Senegal), the Boukout takes place only every approximately twenty years, even more, as with Baïla where the ceremony of 2007 was the first since 1971.

In the western world there exists a great number of rites more or less solemn and codified like the handing-over of diplomas, the military service, the hazing… The difference between these rites and the rites in passage are in the systematicity of the rite in the company given. In a general way, one in particular observes a reduction in the solemn rites of passage (of religious type) and the appearance of these rites less codified in remplacement.
Les behaviors ordalic can also be regarded as rites of passage of replacement.

See too

The topic of the next number of review XYZ is " rites of passage".

Internal bonds

Circumcision
Baptism
Bwiti
Rites of pagan passages

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