The Power of Ritual and the Future of the Nation

Abstract

This chapter summarises the relationship between national re-enchantment and four new national ritual forms: international civil religious pilgrimage, recreational re-enactment, dialogical crisis and national humanitarianism. In doing so it points to the ways in which the study of these rites advance the sociological study of national ritual. This occurs in two way. Firstly, the examining of new national ritual forms has contributed to pushing sociological analysis of national rituals beyond concern with modern state based rites, and the idea that these simply sanction dominant beliefs systems or becomes a site of conflict reflecting broader social and economic structures. Secondly, such ritual analysis evidences the need for postmodernists to understand that national meanings run deep and that they have adaptive qualities. This means that national identity will not necessarily continue to erode, and in fact when it is engaged with through contemporary consumption, leisure and tourist practices and logics it can become rejuvenated and institutionally strengthened.