Jeltje Gordon-Lennox Editor Coping Rituals in Fearful Times An Unexplored Resource for Healing Trauma Editor Jeltje Gordon-Lennox Geneva, Switzerland ISBN 978-3-030-81533-2 ISBN 978-3-030-81534-9 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81534-9 (eBook) © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. 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The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Mae-Wan Ho (1941–2016) Laureate of the 2014 Prigogine Award Jacques Ménétrey (1959–2019) Advisor for Cultural Affairs in Geneva, Switzerland percussionist and friend Graham Stickney Haber (1963–2021) Senior Photographer at The Morgan Library & Museum, New York City, NY, USA photo consultant and family member Foreword The idea that rituals are crucial to human behaviour is consistent with the arguments of different social scientists, such as Durkheim, Goffman, Collins, Douglas, Leach, Kertzer, Bell, Alexander, Warner, Shils, and Bellah, who have used this concept to analyse and examine society. However, despite the work of scholars such as these, the concept of ritual has been underutilised, if not often ignored, in sociology and related disciplines. This is due to the conventional understanding of rituals in sociology and the social/behavioural sciences in general. For instance, it is often assumed that rituals are found only, or far more often, in premodern rather than modern societies. This is due in part to implicit or explicit evolutionary assumptions that depict modern societies as increasingly rational. Rituals are also presumed to be static, unchanging, and fixed in nature. Furthermore, rituals are often thought to occur only or mainly in religious or sacred contexts. And rituals are believed to be of secondary importance to more significant social processes—and epiphenomenal in that they are a product of those processes—which implies they have little effect or significance for people and occurrences in society. Consistent with these assumptions, we find that many sociologists and others, while attentive to social organisation, pay relatively little attention to culture and/or identity (or personality) structures notwithstanding the contributions of those in social psychology, sociology of emotions, and the sociology (and anthropology) of culture. For these reasons, rituals are often thought to have limited explanatory value and are often downplayed in social analysis. They remain in various ways invisible to and ‘under the radar’ of many students of social life and modern society. In contrast, like this book with its thought-provoking range of approaches to ritual as a resource for healing trauma, structural ritualisation theory (SRT) focuses on the role rituals play in society.1 Both are grounded on the basic supposition that daily life 1 For a discussion of some of the issues addressed by the SRT perspective, see Knottnerus 2016 (2011) and Knottnerus 1997, 2005, 2009, 2010, 2014a, 2014b, 2015, in press. vii viii Foreword is normally characterised by an array of social and personal rituals. Such everyday— often taken for granted—rituals can lead to consequences unanticipated by group members while both being fed by and feeding into larger societal levels of interaction. As such, this theory and the chapters in this collection are directed to rituals that occur in various social settings, e.g. face-to-face interaction, small groups, formal organisations, and society as a whole. Likewise, just as the presuppositions of SRT support my argument that ritual provides a ‘missing link’ in sociological thought, they also serve as a general framework for this entire volume on the role of ritual in healing trauma. More precisely: 1. Rituals are found in both premodern and modern societies. Stated somewhat differently, rituals are found all over the world and throughout history. They occur in all societies in one form or another. 2. Rituals occur at and impact micro- and macro-levels of society, ranging from face-to-face interaction and relationships to larger groups and organisations, societies as a whole, and globally. Furthermore, the relations between ritual activities within any particular level and between levels can take many different forms and exhibit various degrees of complexity. 3. Rituals occur in both secular and religious, or more broadly speaking, sacred contexts. They are not restricted to only religious and sacred milieus. Rather, rituals can play a central role in our ordinary, everyday lives and many collective events in the secular realm. 4. Rituals are dynamic in nature and subject to change. They are not always static, fixed, or permanent in nature. While rituals can be enduring they may also be altered for many reasons. 5. Rituals can have consequences for social organisation (i.e. social structure), culture, and identity. These are key dimensions of human and social reality that are of interest to many. Rituals can significantly influence all of these factors. 6. Ritual is a social phenomenon that can be investigated with very different methods and types of evidence, e.g. qualitative and quantitative techniques. Evidence collected by these research strategies can complement, supplement, and validate the findings of different methodologies. 7. The concept of ritual can be linked to perspectives emphasising other social dynamics and issues, i.e. approaches focusing on ritual should be capable of forming linkages or conceptual bridges with other perspectives (what is sometimes referred to as theory integration). 8. The idea of ritual can provide a common vocabulary and framework to study developments occurring in various groups and its individual members. It has analytical value helping us to explain the workings of society. 9. Ritual is a concept that has potential relevance for the multifaceted nature of social life. Consequently, it can be utilised in a wide range of studies given the complexity of human behaviour. In other words, ritual has implications for various dimensions of human reality ranging from personal experiences and individual conduct to diverse kinds of social formations, large and small. Foreword ix 10. Rituals can be of profound importance in social life. They are real and consequential for humans, albeit in numerous and varied ways. 11. Rituals have great explanatory value. Simply stated, they help us understand different aspects of social behaviour in a multitude of situations. In my work, SRT directly addresses these issues and concerns because it, amongst other things, uses the idea of ritual to explain different social developments. It provides formulations that focus on ritual dynamics taking place in many settings throughout the world and in different historical periods, e.g. small groups, corporations such as Enron, ethnic communities in urban areas or small towns, slave societies in the antebellum south, health-care facilities, especially nursing homes, the emergence of golf in the USA, youth groups in nineteenth-century French elite schools, the socialisation of youth in ancient Sparta, and political systems ranging from the Nazi party to the Khmer Rouge. For all these reasons, ritual and perspectives using this concept provide a missing link in sociological analysis and more generally the social/behavioural sciences. So too the work presented in this book is consistent with and builds upon these assumptions. The following chapters demonstrate in different ways how ritual provides a missing link in our understanding of human behaviour and social dynamics. More accurately, these chapters in both bold and more implicit, subtle ways demonstrate how critically important trauma is in human lives and the importance of ritual for coping with and mitigating the deleterious effects of traumatic experiences. I would also emphasise that this volume’s focus on ritual and trauma parallels and contributes to one line of research in SRT dealing with the disruption of ritualised practices. While I have not focused on the concept of ‘trauma’, it is directly relevant for much of this research and significantly expands the scope of what others and I have studied and thought about. Our work focuses on disruptions, deritualisation, and reritualisation, i.e. breakdowns of social and personal rituals, their consequences, and the ways people may cope with such experiences by reconstituting old or new ritualised activities. More precisely, disruption refers to events or conditions that interrupt the rituals that people normally engage in. Deritualisation involves the breakdown or loss of previously engaged-upon rituals, i.e. the cessation of ritualised practices that occur in our daily, taken-for-granted lives. This can be an extremely difficult condition for individuals and groups; it can be confusing, uncomfortable, disorienting, aversive, and destabilising. Reritualisation refers to the re-creation of rituals after disruption and deritualisation. The re-creation of rituals (and patterns of such practices) helps people achieve, amongst other things, a sense of direction, a meaningful focus, coherence in their perceptions and behaviour, stability in their lives, and a sense of security. Thus, the re-enactment of rituals serves as a buffer to disruptive occurrences. They enable people to cope with problematic situations such as these. Research has examined these ideas in a variety of settings, including internment in concentration camps during the mid-twentieth century, the displacement of youth during China’s Cultural Revolution, disasters in general, the impact of earthquakes x Foreword on a major city in Nepal, dark ages/periods of ecological degradation in ancient China, task groups in a laboratory experiment, the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia with particular attention to ritual and social control, rituals engaged in by victims of disasters, i.e. tornadoes striking two American cities, and the ritual and social dynamics of crews on polar expeditions from the mid-nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century. Because of the contributions to this new book edited by Jeltje Gordon-Lennox, I have gained a much better appreciation for how most if not nearly all of the cases studied involve different forms of trauma. Indeed, the chapters in this book (and the research just mentioned) offer many ideas and raise many questions about the nature of rituals and how rituals may help people cope with the disruptions caused by, for instance, (a) hurricanes, earthquakes, and tornadoes, (b) actions often coercive in nature such as wars, colonisation, terrorism, internment, or imprisonment, (c) long-term, unsafe, stressful, and isolated ventures and settings such as expeditions, space missions, pandemic lockdowns, or refugee camps, and (d) social, economic, scientific/technological, and political developments in the modern world and to a certain degree in premodern societies. All of these situations and others not mentioned can involve trauma and the potential for different kinds of ritualised responses. Overall, the goals of this volume are clearly stated by the editor. They are to examine a wide variety of approaches that are potentially relevant to the issue of ritual as an asset for responding to trauma and to focus on what it means to ritualise in ways not impeded by mistaken presumptions and ways of thinking. In doing so, it suggests new points of view for examining an extremely wide range of ritual practices. And it would promote further examination of the ways and reasons ritual takes such varied forms in different epochs, regions of the world, cultures, and even within specific societies. I will not address in detail the organisation of the book and the authors and contents of the different chapters because Jeltje Gordon-Lennox does so in exemplary fashion in the “Introduction”. I will say that the contributors’ focus reflects the just described objectives of the editor and many of the suppositions that underlie the belief that ritual provides a missing link for understanding human behaviour and the workings of society. My comments will, therefore, be of a much more limited and general nature concerning the assumptions and goals of the authors. Certainly, the contributions to this volume rest on the assumption that rituals occur in the present and the past, i.e. modern and premodern times, and in all types of societies and regions of the world. For instance, some chapters focus on the archaeological study of mortuary rituals in prehistory, healing rituals in ancient China (481–221 BCE), and rituals such as processions, festivals, and the wearing of masks in medieval Europe. Other chapters, on the other hand, concentrate on the modern world, sometimes in a very broad manner, and other times giving more attention to modern Western nations. And certain chapters focus on rituals in South Sudan (both today and in the past), and contemporary Afghanistan, Ukraine (and the Soviet Union), Nepal, Brazil, and Switzerland. Foreword xi While the focus of the contributions to this book is on a more micro-level since they are examining trauma in the lives of people and their enactment of rituals, they also often give attention to more macro-levels of society including the ways the latter may influence the former. For instance, we learn how widespread events and practices such as wars and political conflict in a country, the treatment of patients in hospitals (large organisations) and medical professions (which operate at a national level), and hazardous environmental practices, some of which are influenced by large-scale political, economic, and corporate entities, influence the lives of individuals, the suffering they experience, and the rituals they may turn to. So too we find that while some rituals are of a more sacred nature, others occur in very secular settings. Contrast, for example, the more traditional, ancestral rituals of the Dinka in South Sudan, rituals which brought a sacred quality to the secular environments of a hospital, those of farmers struggling to survive in Nepal or Brazil, or the routine use of the Internet by persons around the world. In the latter case, we learn, however, that sometimes when people mourn and memorialise online the death of certain persons this type of collective activity takes on, albeit in a temporary manner, a special meaning for all concerned, a quality that might be considered to be sacred in nature. Actually, this online collective event also shows how rituals are dynamic. For instance, a new online ritual has emerged in recent years in which individuals respond to the death of a person in a manner that is quite different from traditional practices. And another example is the recent development of a community-based ritual whose goal is to facilitate healing and reconciliation in war-torn Afghanistan. Given the potency and ubiquitous nature of many rituals, it should not be surprising that they have consequences for social organisation, culture, and identity (and personality). For example, it is argued that responses to social dislocation in the modern world can lead to different forms of powerful addictions, which may be reduced if not eliminated through the cultivation of particular kinds of communal rituals. When this happens the social worlds people live in and the structure of their relations to other groups can radically change along with the culturally shared beliefs and sentiments they share with others and the way they see themselves, i.e. their identity. Moreover, in a study of people’s responses to terror, we find that when individuals in two quite different groups engaged in special rituals, their sense of despair or trauma was ameliorated and the values presumably shared by group members were affirmed. Of course, we should remember that the study of ritual is not limited to any particular technique. Many different methodologies can be employed to study this phenomenon as the chapters in this volume clearly demonstrate. Some of the methodologies used include interviews, field observations of specific groups and/or collective events, personal (autobiographical) accounts, and the examination of historical evidence such as ancient texts or objects, e.g. masks. So too some studies are based on the examination of other research employing similar or different methods whether they be quantitative or qualitative in nature. Moreover, some contributions are informed by or directly build upon different conceptual frameworks and arguments, i.e. a bridge, linkage, or integration of xii Foreword theoretical ideas. For instance, one chapter presents an extremely sophisticated formulation, polyvagal theory, which primarily deals with neurophysiological processes involving the brain and a major nerve system. Yet, being receptive to observations and insights concerning ritual, the theory also addresses behaviours that are found in ancient rituals and their relevance for people’s physiological condition in contemporary society. In a quite different vein, the chapter on addiction in modern societies, which takes a psychological—or perhaps I should say psychosocial—approach, draws upon the ideas of such diverse thinkers and scholars as Plato, Karl Polanyi, and Émile Durkheim. The issues and investigations discussed so far clearly show how ritual is a concept that provides a common vocabulary and set of ideas for studying and better understanding different groups and persons. The scope of the concept is to be sure wideranging. As one example of how this concept can be used, consider the investigation of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster and the doctors and scientists who at great risk documented the health costs of the contamination for countless persons and who developed protocols for curing and preventing some of the medical problems many people experience. Their dedication to such endeavours was grounded in the rituals of science which they were committed to, ranging from the collection of evidence and developing explanations for what they found to the need to disseminate this information to others and provide care for all those who were sick. The value of ritual is quite apparent in this chapter on Chernobyl and especially the discussion of it by Jeltje Gordon-Lennox in the introductory chapter. The cases examined in this volume also demonstrate the value of ritual for understanding the different dimensions of human reality. It is a concept that can be used in many kinds of studies whether they address the impact of the scientific and medical professions to which one belongs, the ways ritual can help people cope with disturbing experiences, or other investigations. Finally, all the chapters in this volume and the other studies referred to here show how profoundly important ritual is in the lives of humans, past and present. And how important it is for dealing with harmful and emotionally disturbing disruptions in our lives, perhaps especially in the world we live in today. For all of these reasons, ritual has great explanatory value. To summarise, this book (and SRT) rests on the fundamental assumption that ritual is a key dimension of social behaviour as are other aspects of social conduct such as rationality, symbolic interpretation, or emotions. Put somewhat differently, ritual is like an engine that drives much of social life, sometimes quite intensely (Knottnerus, 2016 [2011]). This driving force, particularly as it is exposed in these chapters, remains largely unacknowledged at a time when ritual greatly influences how society handles the trauma of a pandemic. In closing, the chapters in this volume are extremely timely and relevant, highly engaging, thought-provoking, sometimes quite moving, and simply put exceedingly interesting if not fascinating to read. It is a very valuable work, not only for all the reasons previously discussed, but because it paves the way for more theorising, research, reflections, and conjectures about ritual, trauma, and their effects on individuals’ psychological states, the psychosocial reality of group members, and Foreword xiii broader collective phenomena within society. I urge all concerned with such issues to read this book. J. David Knottnerus Emeritus Regents Professor of Sociology, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK, USA e-mail: david.knottnerus@okstate.edu References Knottnerus, J. D. (1997). The theory of structural ritualization. In B. Markovsky, M.J. Lovaglia, & L. Troyer (Eds.), Advances in group processes (Vol. 14, pp. 257–279). Greenwich, CT: JAI Press. Knottnerus, J. D. (2005). The need for theory and the value of cooperation: Disruption and deritualization. Sociological Spectrum, 25(1), 5–19. Knottnerus, J. D. (2010). Collective events, rituals, and emotions. In S.R. Thye & E.J. Lawler (Eds.), Advances in group processes (Vol. 27, pp. 39–61). Bingley, UK: Emerald Group Publishing Limited. Knottnerus, J. D. (2014a). Emotions, pride and the dynamics of collective ritual events. In G. B. Sullivan (Ed.), Understanding collective pride and group identity: New Directions in emotion theory, research and practice (pp. 43–54). London and New York: Routledge. Knottnerus, J. D. (2014b). Religion, ritual, and collective emotion. In C. von Scheve & M. Salmela (Eds.), Collective emotions: Perspectives from psychology, philosophy, and sociology (pp. 312–325). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Knottnerus, J. D. (2015). Structural ritualization theory: Application and change. In J. D. Knottnerus & B. S. Phillips (Eds.), Bureaucratic culture and escalating world problems (pp. 70–84). London and New York: Routledge. Knottnerus, J. D. (2016 [2011]). Ritual as a missing link: Sociology, structural ritualization theory and research. London and New York: Routledge. Knottnerus, J. D. (in press). Polar expeditions: Rituals, crews, and hazardous ventures. London and New York: Routledge. Acknowledgements This collection grew out of a professional curiosity about how people ritualise to deal with feelings of helplessness in the face of danger and uncertainty. In August 2017, nearly half of the chapters of this volume had been completed when a worksite accident radically altered my circumstances. I fell seriously ill; life as I knew it came to an abrupt halt as the subject of my project became a personal challenge: my family and I needed to move from immobilised shock to action in order to seek appropriate medical care and restore a sense of safety to our home (see the final chapter). I am grateful to our family doctor, Françoise Chuat Vuissoz, for down-to-earth practical advice about clean-up, to Carmen who made it happen, and to Alexey V. Nesterenko at BELRAD for guidance about cures with concentrated apple pectin. This simple product, used by populations in areas of the Republic of Belarus to lower radiation contamination from Chernobyl, helped our bodies deal with exposure to high levels of lead (Pb). David R. Chettle at McMaster University was amazing; we are grateful to him for the X-ray fluorescence analysis of our bones—as well as for his patience and wisdom in addressing our many questions. My heartfelt thanks go to Stephen W. Porges for suggestions on how to cope with profound fatigue and loss of concentration and to neurologist Roman Sztajzel for identifying the neurological issues. Nadja Holfeld (physical therapist), Petra Zahn (osteopath), and Olivier Gavin (ergotherapist) helped me face the day-to-day trials of neurological dysfunction. During those dark months, somatic experiencing (SE) professors Liana Netto and Sônia Gomes, as well as rolfer Annika Sundell, taught me how to use my body as a resource. My SE group was generous with moral support, in particular Christina Heinl, Maria Lucia Reenberg, Anita Ogilvie, Daya Cabestany, Zena Takieddine, and Nelia Reyes. Special thanks go to Isabel Russo, Tara Rice, Leslie Jagoe, and Jussi Pellonpää for reading parts of the manuscript and making insightful comments. I am most indebted to Matthieu Smyth for his collaboration, guidance, contributions and unfailing belief in the pertinence of the project. The creativity of my colleagues at the European Ritual Network inspires this book. xv xvi Acknowledgements My warmest thanks go to the team at Springer Nature for taking up the challenge of publishing this new collection on coping rituals and the healing of trauma. In particular, I am grateful to Shinjini Chatterjee my commissioning editor for her enthusiastic support, as well as to my project coordinator Shanthi Ramamoorthy and project manager Marianathan Sandou for their equanimity and professionalism. Expression of my profound appreciation and praise goes to all of the contributors for their patience and trust. I am touched by the humility, mutual respect, and dedication of the authors, especially those who have collaborated on chapters. Mae-Wan Ho’s remarkable work features in this volume thanks to Peter Saunders and Eva Sirinathsinghi of Science in Society. Thanks too to Adam Petrusek for his contribution. The dedication and efficiency of editor Alexandra Holmes and indexer Margaret de Boer gave the book its professional polish. Graham Stickney Haber, our photo consultant, died as this book was going to print. Graham was a deeply compassionate person, and unfailingly generous and helpful when we came to him for help or advice of any kind. Last but certainly not least, I am grateful to Ian for sharing my life over these last 30 years. His steady presence transformed our recent challenges into another few bumps along our anything but dull path together. Contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jeltje Gordon-Lennox Part I 1 Trauma and Ritual in Other Times and Places Deeply Human . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Liv Nilsson Stutz and Aaron Jonas Stutz 23 Ancient Rituals, Contemplative Practices, and Vagal Pathways . . . . . . . Stephen W. Porges 43 Coping with Social Trauma in Ancient China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ori Tavor 65 Processions and Masks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Matthieu Smyth 77 Part II The Role of Ritual in Healing Trauma At the Sharp End of Medical Care . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Robin Karr-Morse, Juan Carlos Garaizabal, and Jeltje Gordon-Lennox 93 Dinka Community Case Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113 Alex Namu Kamwaria Memory Boxes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125 Sophia Milosevic Bijleveld Networked Solidarity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137 Sasha A. Q. Scott xvii xviii Part III Contents Global Threat, Trauma, and Ritual Challenging Global Dislocation Through Local Community and Ritual . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151 Bruce K. Alexander and Matthieu Smyth Ritual in an Age of Terror . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163 Lisa Schirch Nuclear Disaster, Trauma, and the Rituals of Scientific Method . . . . . . . 175 Mae-Wan Ho, Alexey V. Nesterenko, Odile Gordon-Lennox, and Peter T. Saunders ‘Dead Land Dead Water’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191 Jeltje Gordon-Lennox Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211