xv, 351 pages ; 24 cm; Theories: The History of Interpretation --Myth or Ritual: Questions of Origin and Essence --Early Theories and Theorists --The Myth and Ritual Schools --The Phenomenology of Religions --Psychoanalytic Approaches to Ritual --Profile: Interpreting the Akitu Festival --Ritual and Society: Questions of Social Function and Structure --Early Theories of Social Solidarity --Functionalism --Neofunctional Systems Analyses --Structuralism --Magic, Religion, and Science --Profile: Interpreting the Mukanda Initiation --Ritual Symbols, Syntax, and Praxis: Questions of Cultural Meaning and Interpretation --Symbolic Systems and Symbolic Action --Linguistics --Performance --Practice --Profile: Interpreting British and Swazi Enthronement Rites --Rites: The Spectrum of Ritual Activities --Basic Genres of Ritual Action --Rites of Passage --Calendrical Rites --Rites of Exchange and Communion --Rites of Affliction --Feasting, Fasting, and Festivals --Political Rites --Characteristics of Ritual-like Activities --Formalism --Traditionalism --Invariance --Rule-Governance --Sacral Symbolism --Performance --Contexts: The Fabric of Ritual Life --Ritual Density --Systems --Typologies --Orthopraxy and Orthodoxy --Traditional and Secular --Oral and Literate --Church, Sect, and Cult --Ritual Change --Tradition and Transformation --Ritual Invention --Media and Message --Ritual Reification --Repudiating, Returning, Romancing --The Emergence of "Ritual, "; Catherine Bell provides a practical introduction to ritual and its study with comprehensive overviews of the most influential theories of religion and ritual. The book examines the major categories of ritual activity.; 

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