Models and Mirrors: Towards an Anthropology of Public Events

379 Pages·1998·24.39 MB·English

by  Don Handelman

Models and Mirrors
Models and Mirrors:
towards an anthropology
of public events
Don Handelman
with a new preface by the author
~
Berghahn Books
NEW YORK • OXFORD
First published in 1990 by
Cambridge University Press
Published in 1998 by
Berghahn Books
Editorial offices:
55 John Street, 3rd floor, New York, NY 10038, USA
3, NewT ee Place, Magdalen Road, Oxford, OX 4 IRE, UK
©1990, 1998 Don Handelman
All rights reserved.
No patt of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means
without the written permission of Berghahn Books.
Library ofC ongress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Handelman, Don.
Models and mirrors : towatds an anthropology of public events I by
Don Handelman ; with a new preface by the author.
p. em.
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
ISBN 1-57181-165-6 (alk. paper)
1. Festivals. 2. Holidays. 3. Play. 4. Symbolism. I. Title.
GT3930.H34 1998
394.2--dc21 98-30855
CIP
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Printed in the United States on acid-free paper
For Lea and Ronit, my magic mirrors
Contents
List off igures page ix
Preface to second edition: theorizing through models and mirrors
X
Comparison XI
Ritualization and the symbolic type XVll
Modelling and the problem of representation XXI
Bureaucratic logic and the event-that-presents XXIX
Notes xliii
Bibliography I
Acknowledgements !iii
1 Introduction 1
Premises and prepossessions 3
Why study public events? 9
Some basic features of public events 10
The positioning of performance 17
Proto-events 20
2 Models and mirrors 22
Events that model the lived-in world 23
Events that present the lived-in world 41
Events that re-present the lived-in world 49
Qualifications 58
3 Precariousness in play 63
Predicaments in play: the laughter of the Ik 72
Events and societies 76
2 Proto-events 83
Intersections 85
4 The donkey game 86
Play in the workshop 89
The donkey game - a tell-tail sign 93
Hanging tails on the angels 95
The sign of the tail 97
Intersections 102
5 Banana time 104
'Times' and 'themes' in the workplace 105
The integration of 'times' and 'themes' 107
3 Public events 113
Intersections 115
vii
Contmts
6 The Palio of Siena 116
Comune, city, contrade 117
The Madonna 120
The contrada and the horse 122
The sequence of occasions in the festival model: frames of
integration and opposition 126
The parade and the race 129
Alternative views 132
Intersections 136
7 Christmas mumming in Newfoundland 138
Interior and exterior attributes of person and community 139
The mumming complex in outport Newfoundland 145
Time, space, and control in mumming 148
Inside-out, outside-in: inversion and congruency in mumming 152
Convergence and divergence, concealment Mid revelation 15 5
Intersections 160
8 Holiday celebrations in Israeli kindergartens
(Co-author, Lea Shamgar-Handelman} 162
Kindergarten and celebration in Israel 16 5
Kindergarten celebrations 168
Conclusions 187
Intersections 190
9 State ceremonies of Israel - Remembrance Day and
Independence Day (Co-author, Elihu Katz} 191
The unit of comparison: sirens and fireworks 192
The dating of days, the shaping of space: aspects of Zionist
cosmologic 194
Opening Remembrance Day: closing ranks and the struggle
for renewal 202
Opening Independence Day: the glories of pluralism 212
National cosmology and the encoding of time 223
Intersections 234
10 Symbolic types - clowns 236
'In process': the clown at a Pakistani wedding 238
The clown as a symbolic type 240
The clown type and the boundary 245
Attributes of Pueblo Indian clowns 248
Hopi down and kachina: opposition and reconciliation 251
Anti-structure and process 255
The Dance of Man: down, boundary, process, and anti-structure 256
Conclusion 263
Epilogue: towards media events 266
Notes 270
Bibliography 30 1
Index 323
viii
Figures
1 Self-regulation in Chisungu 35
2 Further feedback in Chisungu 36
3 Systemic design in Chisungu 38
4 Relationships among types of public events 61
5 Levels in the Palio model: hierarchy and fragmentation 126
6 The Palio model: transformations through parade and race 130
7 The opening ceremony of Remembrance Day, spatial layout 203
8 The opening ceremony of Independence Day, spatial layout 213
ix
Preface to second edition: theorizing
through models and mirrors
I intended Models and Mirrors to be a book of ideas on what is (still so loosely
and at times lightly) called 'ritual' in anthropology and cognate disciplines,
and not a compendium of truth, or, for that matter, even of knowledge on
the subject.'
How phenomena that may be called 'rituals' exist in (and through) social
worlds is of extreme importance. 'Rituals' are constituted through practice.
So, for example, there was not and is not anything that can be called 'religion'
without its practice, and this practice is often called 'ritual'. If religion is not
practiced, it dies. One can argue that, to a considerable extent, 'ritual' actively
constitutes (because it generates in and through practice) what is understood
as 'religion'. So, too, more broadly (and now without any reference to reli
gion), 'rituals' intentionally organize and orientate us to our horizons of
being-in-the-world. Through the different meta-logics that organize the prac
tice of 'rituals', we are enabled to change and/or to stultify, in relation to the
possibilities that these horizons offer and withhold. Practice (the embodiment
of the human being in action, moving towards, perceiving, and reconstituting
horizons-of-being) is the condition of being human. Practice is the normal
condition of curiosity about oneself in relation to the world. Practice makes
us social beings, and curiosity is integral to this.
Stemming from my own curiosity, the ideas of this volume are intention
ally provisional and uncertain, and therefore playful (in the sense of play dis
cussed in chapters 3, 4, and 5 - good to think with and to take in your own
directions, together with, or instead of, in mine). The modes of thinking in
the volume-modes of perception, analysis, and the making of connections
are much more important than the conclusions reached. But I cannot spell
out these ways of thinking without subverting the effects that the book may
have on you. So, too, you can only know whether these ways of thinking res
onate within you by reading the volume. (In this respect the volume is mod
ular-it can be read as a coherent piece, but each chapter also stands by itself
and can be read as such).
The consequences of intentionally explicating all information and thereby
making it available to consciousness, were set out close to three decades ago
X
Preface
by Gregory Bateson in his Steps to an Ecology ofM ind (1972). The informa
tion we hold consciously tends to be rationalized and made efficient in terms
of relationships between ends and means: we thereby lose powerful, poetic
qualities in this information. We become more single-minded in our hearing,
reading, and feeling, losing the meta-possibilities that talk, text, and emotion
may otherwise open to us. Therefore I tried to write this book on two levels.
One should engage you directly, argumentatively, analytically. The other is
more of ... a wondering (and wandering) but critical attitude ... towards the
'ritual' practices that people put together in order to act on the lived-in world
by being in the world. This second level is, in the main, not conveyed directly
- before we become conscious of certain kinds of information, these should
sediment within us. Then the mind particles of information drift to where we
dwell within ourselves, without being rationalized and reif1ed along the way.
So I am especially pleased that this book is again available, this time in a
paperback edition, a more compact (and friendly) constellation of particles.
Comparison
I also intended Models and Mirrors to take some first steps towards modes of
comparison within this fuzzy zone that is called 'ritual'-a zone defined much
more common-sensically than analytically in anthropology, as if we know
what ritual is, and is about. (Catherine Bell [1992] has some trenchant com
ments on this in arguing that the domain of 'ritual' has come into existence
through the theoretical constructions ofWestern scholars). I am choosing my
words carefully here, given various claims that comparative studies of ritual are
prevalent in anthropology (and in the study of religions). I do not think that
comparative studies of 'ritual'-especially studies of ritual practice-are preva
lent in any discipline. 2 (Note that even though, from here on, I largely drop
the quotation marks from the word, ritual, I continue to question the value
and validity of the term).
My own focus of comparison is on the logics of organization, of design,
through which public events are put together. This concentrates attention on
the logics of the practice of these events. In meta-terms, my concern is with the
practice of practice. (I prefer the concept, 'public event', to that of 'ritual', for
reasons given in chapter 1; and for those very reasons I am open to other, alter
native terms as well). By 'logic,' I refer to the logics of phenomena, but not to
the (philosophical, mathematical) logic of logic. The logics of phenomena refer
here to the principled ways in which certain social occasions are intentionally
ordered and disordered as practice (and practiced as ordering and disordering).
A public event is activated, first and foremost, by the practice of the
logic(s) of its organizational design. This idea does not tumble from some
XI