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Ritual and classification: a study of the Booran Oromo terminal sacred grade rites of passage1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

Aneesa Kassam
Aneesa Kassam
Affiliation:
University of Durham
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Extract

In her deconstruction of the category ‘ritual’, Bell (1992: 6) suggests that all theoretical discourse on this subject is based on the opposition between thought (beliefs, symbols and myths) and action (the enactment of such cultural templates). Bell further demonstrates that this basic distinction has generated two other homologized structural patterns in ritual theory. In the second pattern, (represented in the works of Durkheim, Tambiah and Turner), there has been an attempt to produce a synthesis of the initial dichotomy. In the third pattern (represented in the studies of Geertz), this opposition and integration has led to another permutation of the original pattern, in which ‘ritual participants act, whereas those observing them think’ (Bell, 1992: 28).

Type
Research Article
Information
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 62 , Issue 3 , October 1999 , pp. 484 - 503
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 1999

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Footnotes

1

This essay is based on fieldwork carried out in northern Kenya in the summer of 1995, funded by the Nuffield Foundation and the University of Durham Staff Travel Fund. A subsequent field trip in May 1998 was funded by the Department of Anthropology, University of Durham. I express my gratitude to both institutions for their financial support. I was invited to attend the ritual by Father Paul Tablino of the Catholic Mission in Marsabit. I thank him and the Solooloo Mission for hospitality and assistance provided. I attended the ceremony with a number of other researchers, and my observations were often complemented by theirs. I thank here in particular Cynthia Salvadori and Abdullahi Shongollo. Among the many Booran participants who helped me to understand the ritual, I extend my thanks to Richard Roba Halakhe, William Wario, Katello Bule, Boru Elema, Gabriel Galgallo, Jirma Baggaja and Abdub Waaqo for the clarifications they provided. My thanks also to Boku Tache, who generously shared data with me. Finally, I express thanks to my colleague Gemetchu Megerssa (University of Addis Ababa) for his help in the analysis of the symbolic meanings of the ritual. A preliminary description of the ritual was published in Oromo Commentary in 1995.

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