A classic question in studies of ritual is how ritual performances achieve-or fail to achieve-their effects. In this pathbreaking book, Matt Tomlinson argues that participants condition their own expectations of ritual success by interactively creating distinct textual patterns of sequence, conjunction, contrast, and substitution. Drawing on long-term research in Fiji, the book presents in-depth studies of each of these patterns, taken from a wide range of settings: a fiery, soul-saving Pentecostal crusade; relaxed gatherings at which people drink the narcotic beverage kava; deathbeds at which missionaries eagerly await the signs of good Christians' "happy deaths"; and the monologic pronouncements of a military-led government determined to make the nation speak in a single voice. In each of these cases, Tomlinson also examines the broad ideologies of motion which frame participants' ritual actions, such as Pentecostals' beliefs that effective worship requires ecstatic movement like jumping, dancing, and clapping, and nineteenth-century missionaries' insistence that the journeys of the soul in the afterlife should follow a new path. By approaching ritual as an act of "entextualization"-in which the flow of discourse is turned into object-like texts-while analyzing the ways people expect words, things, and selves to move in performance, this book presents a new and compelling way to understand the efficacy of ritual action.

About the Author
Matt Tomlinson has conducted anthropological research in Fiji since 1996, focusing on the intersections of culture, language, ritual, and politics. After receiving his Ph.D. in 2002, he taught for three years at Bowdoin College, and then became a lecturer at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. He is currently an Australian Research Council Future Fellow in Anthropology at The Australian National University in Canberra.

Reviews
Overall, this is an intriguing and meticulous study, developed over years of fieldwork, which brings together widely differing social practices in a compelling account of ritual movements. Tomlinson convincingly proposes entextualization as the right intellectual tool to account for the shifting and repeating patterns which we find in ritual performances of various kinds, and performs effective close readings of ritual situations in the process. * Jem Bloomfield, quiteirregular *



Book Information
ISBN 9780199341146
Author Matt Tomlinson
Format Paperback
Page Count 188
Imprint Oxford University Press Inc
Publisher Oxford University Press Inc
Weight(grams) 272g
Dimensions(mm) 155mm * 231mm * 18mm