Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-mlc7c Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-16T23:15:13.910Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

A ritual by any other name

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 April 2018

Rohan Kapitány  and
Christopher Kavanagh
Rohan Kapitány
Affiliation:
School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnology, University of Oxford, Oxford OX2 6PE, United Kingdom. rohankapitany@gmail.comchristopher.kavanagh@anthro.ox.ac.ukwww.rohankapitany.com
Christopher Kavanagh
Affiliation:
School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnology, University of Oxford, Oxford OX2 6PE, United Kingdom. rohankapitany@gmail.comchristopher.kavanagh@anthro.ox.ac.ukwww.rohankapitany.com Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Hokkaido 060-0808 Japan.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

We question the privileged role of trance within the framework presented. The features that Singh suggests make it unique are not well demarcated from those of rituals more generally, and we challenge the depth of explanation presented for the mechanisms of trance. We outline the form of a solution, which may facilitate increased operational utility for the presented framework.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 41 , 2018 , e79
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Banerjee, K., Haque, O. S. & Spelke, E. S. (2013) Melting lizards and crying mailboxes: Children's preferential recall of minimally counterintuitive concepts. Cognitive Science 37(7):1251–89.Google Scholar
Bering, J. M. (2006) The folk psychology of souls. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 29(5):453–98.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bering, J. M. & Bjorklund, D. F. (2004) The natural emergence of reasoning about the afterlife as a developmental regularity. Developmental Psychology 40(2):217–33.Google Scholar
Bloom, P. (2004) Descartes' baby: How the science of child development explains what makes us human. Basic Books.Google Scholar
Boyer, P. (2001) Religion explained: The evolutionary origins of religious thought. Basic Books.Google Scholar
Cohen, E. (2007) The mind possessed: The cognition of spirit possession in an Afro-Brazilian religious tradition. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Csibra, G. (2008) Goal attribution to inanimate agents by 6.5-month-old infants. Cognition 107(2):705–17.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fischer, R., Callander, R., Reddish, P. & Bulbulia, J. (2013) How do rituals affect cooperation? An experimental field study comparing nine ritual types. Human Nature 24(2):115–25.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hamlin, J. K., Kiley Hamlin, J. & Baron, A. S. (2014) Agency attribution in infancy: Evidence for a negativity bias. PLoS ONE 9(5):e96112.Google Scholar
Henrich, J. (2009) The evolution of costly displays, cooperation, and religion. Evolution and Human Behavior (4):244–60.Google Scholar
Huang, J., Cheng, L. & Zhu, J. (2013) Intuitive conceptions of dead persons' mentality: A cross-cultural replication and more. The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion 23(1):29–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kapitány, R. & Nielsen, M. (2015) Adopting the ritual stance: The role of opacity and context in ritual and everyday actions. Cognition 145:13–29.Google Scholar
Kapitány, R. & Nielsen, M. (2016) The ritual stance and the precaution system: The role of goal-demotion and opacity in ritual and everyday actions. Religion, Brain, and Behavior 7(1):27–42.Google Scholar
Kelemen, D. (1999a) Function, goals, and intention: Children's teleological reasoning about objects. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 3(12):461–68.Google Scholar
Kelemen, D. (1999b) Why are rocks pointy? Children's preference for teleological explanations of the natural world. Developmental Psychology 35(6):1440–52.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Liu, D., Wellman, H. M., Tardif, T. & Sabbagh, M. A. (2008) Theory of mind development in Chinese children: A meta-analysis of false-belief understanding across cultures and languages. Developmental Psychology 44(2):523–31.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Norton, M. I. & Gino, F. (2014) Rituals alleviate grieving for loved ones, lovers, and lotteries. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 143(1):266–72.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Purzycki, B. G. & Willard, A. K. (2015) MCI theory: A critical discussion. Religion, Brain & Behavior 6(3):207–48.Google Scholar
Rudski, J. (2001) Competition, superstition, and the illusion of control. Current Psychology 20(1):68–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sosis, R., Kress, H. & Boster, J. (2007) Scars for war: Evaluating alternative signaling explanations for cross-cultural variance in ritual costs. Evolution and Human Behavior 28(4):234–47.Google Scholar
Spelke, E. S., Bernier, E. P. & Skerry, A. E. (2013) Core social cognition. In: Navigating the social world: What infants, children, and other species can teach us, ed. Banaji, M. R. & Gelman, S. A., pp. 11–16. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Wellman, H. M., Cross, D. & Watson, J. (2001) Meta-analysis of theory-of-mind development: The truth about false belief. Child Development 72(3):655–84.Google Scholar
Whitehouse, H. (2004) Modes of religiosity: A cognitive theory of religious transmission. AltaMira Press.Google Scholar
Xygalatas, D. (2014) The burning saints: Cognition and culture in the fire-walking rituals of the Anastenaria. Routledge.Google Scholar