Gunter Senft and Ellen Basso’s Ritual Communication is a provocative collection of essays from a variety of theoretical perspectives and ethnographic locales concerning both what is meant by “ritual communication” and what kinds of social work such forms of “ritual communication” may be doing. The introduction by Senft and Basso lays out a useful summary and orientation for the papers in the collection. Senft and Basso (1) define ritual communication as “an undertaking or enterprise involving a making of cultural knowledge within locally variant practices of speech-centered human interaction” and state that it “is artful, performed semiosis, predominantly but not only involving speech, that is formulaic and repetitive and therefore anticipated within particular contexts of social interaction.” Central to this definition then are the ways that “ritual communication” move across levels of formality and informality, “ordinary” and “ritual.” Senft and Basso (18) offer a useful model of communication as a “series of ‘clines’.”

What follows the introduction is a series of chapters by many of the leading scholars in linguistic anthropology. John Haviland, for example, takes up a Goffmanesque analysis of the ways that fleeting moments of interaction, here an interaction between two Zinacantec shamans as a truck was being loaded, where “‘ritual’ resonances” (37)—from the parallelism of prayers to cargo greetings—interanimate such encounters. These are, what Haviland following Goffman, calls “little rituals.” For Haviland, such little rituals (and ritual action more generally) have the “ability to smooth out potential conflict by suppressing insubordination” (48). This concern with self-suppression recurs throughout a number of chapters.

Joel Kuipers’ chapter deals with unjuk rasa (expression of feeling) in Sumba and the events that led up to Bloody Thursday, when a number of people were killed. According to Kuipers, unjuk rasa has become a recognizable “protest ritual” in much of Indonesia, and in the student protest against Regent Malo protesters chanted his “stigmatized nickname” (233). The regent’s kin supporters (from Weyewa) then staged a counter-protest to respond to the use of the ngara katto (hard name). However, this counter-protest was then interpreted by members of the Loli ethnic group “as an aggressive act” (236), though importantly they were not part of the original student protest but were in the area for other reasons. Attempts to mollify the increasing escalation by the regent through “the lexicon of ritual speech” (235) were unsuccessful. Tragedy ensued. Kuipers’ discussion shows a compelling example of the ways that ritual genres can be recognized in local terms, terms that differ dramatically across participant categories. The student protestors meant to link with a wider set of ritual protests throughout Indonesia; the Weyewa interpreted the use of the regent’s hard name as an insult and felt a need to protect their kin; the Loli then interpreted the Weyewa’s defense of their kin as an aggressive act against them. As Kuipers notes, “no single framework, no unitary definition of ritual, no consensus point of view explains the Sumbanese tragedy of Bloody Thursday” (240).

There are a number of other compelling chapters in this book. To single out only a few, Suzanne Oakdale’s discussion of the expansion of the use of the maraca ritual by Kayabi towards the larger Brazilian national society is particularly interesting and here resonates with Kuipers’ chapter on the use of ritual genres within the larger national field. However, in Oakdale’s example she is concerned with the ways the shaman Prepori attempted to align “perspectives among radically distinct types of people and to structure new types of communities in a national and international context” (168–169) and the ways that such forms become “emblems of cultural difference” (169). Oakdale is especially adept when she notes that “shamanic cures can be a way of expanding social relationships and sociability by generalizing a point of view” (162). Here Oakdale sees such shamanic cures not just as exchange or trade, but rather as the expansion of perspective (here Oakdale’s work speaks to much current South American ethnography).

Ingjerd Hoëm has a wonderful chapter on the emergence of a Tokelau (who live on a series of atolls near New Zealand as well as in New Zealand, Australia, the United States, and other places) theatrical play and its performances. Hoëm shows how the theatrical group Tokelau Te Ata’s play resonates with and diverges from other Tokelau ritual genres. In fact, Hoëm argues that Tokelau Te Ata used the broader genre of action theater and “theater for community development” to open a space for a discussion of excluded topics and to create a “national sense of Tokelau ethnic identity” (207). What Hoëm does so well is discuss the ways the performances were multiply received, both on the Tokelau atolls and in New Zealand. In New Zealand the performance was understood as a fiafia, a “public festive gathering” in which highly competitive exchanges take place between two “sides” (204). On the atolls, the performance was understood as a malaga, a touring performing group, and a more intimate and playful response was evoked.

Michael Silverstein’s chapter on private rituals, which must be understood through indexical tells and not explicit statements about the content of the ritual encounter, is also of interest. His chapter reminds us that while ritual communication is often thought of as public, it can also be non-public and never fully revealed. Maurizio Gnerre’s chapter on why certain forms of ánent (magical songs) and shamanic singing have persisted and other “important rituals” have not is an excellent example of the ways aesthetics of fixity and flexibility and language ideologies may intersect with the relative persistence of genres. Ellen Basso’s chapter continues her careful investigation of affinal civility and ideologies of deception among the Kalapalo. Basso takes a broadly multimodal perspective, here linking with a number of chapters, which looks not just at the “texts” of ritual forms, but also investigates bodily postures and actions. As Basso (266–67) elegantly notes, “where personal voices cannot be heard, either because they cannot be understood or because they have been suppressed in order to achieve at least temporary harmony... the material body and its activities serve as safe and effective devices for communicating feelings of comfort, solidarity, patience, and respect.”

Two other theoretical strands can be traced in the chapters in this book. One is the Anna Wierzbicka-inspired natural semantic metalanguage approach. Cliff Goddard, for example, employs this perspective insightfully in his chapter on Malay proverbs. The other strand involves the “evolutionary” basis of ritual communication. Nick Enfield’s chapter is the most developed argument concerning this strand. Enfield’s chapter is, for me, the most provocative and also the least compelling. Where Enfield (54) argues that, “all of language, along with the rest of our symbolic resources, is predicated upon this notion of norm-governed recognizability of meaning (or action or intention),” I would instead suggest that all of language and the rest of our symbolic resources are also simultaneously ambiguous. Recognition may, in fact, be an “illusion” (to invoke Enfield’s term). Many of the chapters reviewed here speak to the misrecognition of ritual events. Kuipers’ chapter speaks to the ramifications of such layered misrecognitions and Silverstein’s chapter speaks to the ambiguity of “reading” a private ritual communication through later public actions. Likewise Basso’s chapter should remind us of the importance of deception as well. Oakdale, Gnerre, Kuipers, and Hoëm all point to the ways that ritualized practices have both persisted and changed over time. This is, not, however, to argue with Enfield’s concern with the social force of everyday rituals, the naturalizing of everyday practices, the way that “social facts” are understood as “natural facts,” but rather to note that ambiguity can also exist simultaneously, precisely because the world is not static. Here we do well to heed Gunter Senft (99) and “file a strong caveat” concerning the current “evolutionary” explanatory models.

Senft and Basso have produced a provocative and engaging collection of essays on ritual communication. The chapters challenge us to think about both ritual and communication in interesting and thought-provoking ways. Likewise, the chapters remind us—as Goffman would—that rituals leak across genres and settings, that public and private, formal and informal, need to always be ethnographically and historically contextualized. I would recommend this book for both upper division undergraduate classes and for graduate courses in linguistic anthropology, anthropology, folklore, and like-minded disciplines.

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[Review length: 1374 words • Review posted on August 18, 2010]