Alternative memorial ceremonies: Extending a research program for the study of ritual

• In Event: Sociology of Culture Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): 3. Memory Politics & National Narratives

Abstract

This paper focuses on the activist utilization of national memorial ceremonies for protest. This appropriation of the state’s ritual form aims to complement or replace official ceremonies with alternative commemoration. This is a unique addition to other recent cases of memory activism, such as the toppling of national monuments in 2020 or the calls to national museums and archives to reconsider their role as guardians of national history. Through memorial ceremonies, the state models its ideals using specific cultural forms and strengthens the relations between the individual and the national community. Unlike state ceremonies, alternative memorial ceremonies are created by and for individuals, but they also address the nation. The paper examines: (1) What is alternative about these ceremonies or what aspects of state ceremonies do they try to complement or change. Is it the ideals, the form, or the relations between the individual and the national community? (2) Why now? What do these aspirations for change tell us about the societies that engage in them? (3) How do alternative ceremonies relate to the utilization of other state memorial forms, such as monuments or museums, as contemporary expressions of contestation and active participation in public life? Forging new links between existing memorial forms and contemporary political mobilization advances our understanding of global and domestic struggles, which stand at an important intellectual intersection of sociological and anthropological theory; The research proposes a new analytical tool: a classificatory spectrum integrating the functionalistic (Durkheim) and transformative (Turner) approaches to ritual by scaling a ceremony’s features between representing-hegemonic and transformative-alternative poles. Using Palestine/Israel from the late 1990s until 2025 as a case study, the classificatory spectrum offers a comparative perspective to the study of public ritual in a particular region over time. It also contributes to understanding transnational and global processes and debates. In particular, it can help explain why certain aspects of ritual become more contested than others or why memory activists target certain commemorative forms and not others in a particular historical context.

Author

• Yifat Gutman, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev