We have been led to believe that rituals are well-behaved and predictable, but they sometimes behave in unpredictable ways, especially when they emerge in unexpected places. However much rites may seem to be at home in churches, temples, mosques, and synagogues, they are not captives of sacred spaces. Rituals appear on television, stare back at the lens in family photographs, slip into university classrooms, haunt the wilds, and attend movies. Rite Out of Place makes provocative discoveries by scouting out some of the unexpected places where ritualizing takes root. Most ritual studies scholarship still focuses on central religious rites. For this reason, Grimes argues, dominant theories, like the data they consider, remain stubbornly conservative. This book issues a challenge to these theories and to popular conceptions of ritual. Grimes writes in an accessible, engaging style, using a broad, interdisciplinary approach. This collection of seminal essays by one of the founders of the discipline appeals to anyone interested in the intersection of ritual and public life.
Much ritual studies scholarship still focuses on central religious rites. For this reason, Grimes argues, dominant theories, like the data they consider, remain stubbornly conservative. This book issues a challenge to these theories and to popular conceptions of ritual. Rite Out of Place collects 10 revised essays originally published in widely varied sources across the past five years. Grimes has selected for inclusion those essays that track ritual as it haunts the edges of cultural boundaries-ritual converging with theater, ritual on television, ritual at the edge of natural environments and so on. The writing is non-technical, and the implied audience is sufficiently broad than any educated person interested in religion and public life should find it intelligible and engaging.
"This wide-ranging volume by Ronald Grimes, a distinguished interpreter of ritual, includes eleven artful and provocative reflections on rites performed outside specifically religious spaces-in popular culture, academic settings, and the natural landscape. Rite Out of Place will be useful for all those who want to think more deeply, and creatively, about the meaning and function of performance."--Thomas A. Tweed, author of Crossing and Dwelling: A Theory of Religion
