MEN WEARING MASKS - ISSUES OF DESCRIPTION IN THE ANALYSIS OF RITUAL

Since Durkheim ([1912] 1965), the concept of ritual has held a privile ged position in studies of social life because investigators recurrent ly have treated it as a source of insight into core issues of human so ciality, such as the maintenance of social order Consequently, studies of ritual have typically focused on rituals' function(s), and, specif ically whether ritual begets social integration or fragmentation. In t his frame, students of ritual have tended to ignore other equally fund amental issues, including (1) how actions, or courses of action, const itute a ritual, and (2) whether ritual is best understood as an aspect of all social action or a specific type of it. Drawing on Durkheim's overlooked contemporary, Van Gennep ([1908] 1960), I argue that analys es of ritual must describe how participants enact an occasion as ritua l through distinctive activities and sequences of these. Analysts of r itual must attempt to ground the relevance of their descriptions in th e participants' demonstrable orientations, an undertaking with move ge neral implications for the study of social action.