Shared rituals alone can bind a group into a body without any political content.
Evidence
Aside from dancing, what made this group into a body and not just a string of separate friendships were activities like lotteries, grab-bags, and raffles in which the whole group participated. These celebrations were ‘‘rituals,’’ in the broadest sense — group activities that reflect and produce a group’s sense of collective life. Rituals can offer windows into groups’ self-understanding and their understanding of their place in the world. Emile Durkheim (1965 ) says that rituals offer members a representation of the group, showing the group to itself in a concrete form, giving the group a name and a body. Rituals indirectly honor society itself, as the source of all meaning. Without direct acknowledgment and celebration of the bonds between people, sentiments of glad solidarity dry up, and a healthy society falls apart. — Nina Eliasoph, Avoiding politics, 827
Categorization
- XREF: Core to the reader’s research question: Durkheimian ritual solidarity formed through wholly positive collective celebration — no external enemy involved — which the raffles concretely instantiate. — connects to: Group solidarity can form through shared bodily practice, not shared ideas — Nina Eliasoph, Avoiding politics: how Americans…, 686; Groups without a shared political language produce only inarticulate noise — Philip Pettit, Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and…, 605; Group cohesion can form through shared ironic distance from rituals, not shared beliefs. — Nina Eliasoph, Avoiding politics: how Americans…, 830 (+3 more)
- DEEPTHINKING: The tension is sharp: Durkheimian glad solidarity through ritual is present here and yet coexists with absolute political emptiness — solidarity and civic capacity are shown to be separable, which complicates any simple ‘ritual builds community’ claim.
Broader Connections
- Group solidarity can form through shared bodily practice, not shared ideas
#corroborates(0.90) — Nina Eliasoph, Avoiding politics, 686 - Groups without a shared political language produce only inarticulate noise
#qualifies(0.85) — Philip Pettit, Republicanism, 605 - Military discipline alone cannot create a political body.
#corroborates(0.85) - Ritual binds members through shared experience of awe rather than shared belief
#corroborates(0.85) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 871 - Group cohesion can form through shared ironic distance from rituals, not shared beliefs.
#expands(0.80) — Nina Eliasoph, Avoiding politics, 830 - No single bond alone can produce or sustain a social group.
#complicates(0.80) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 287