{"id":438,"date":"2007-05-22T06:23:00","date_gmt":"2007-05-22T12:23:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/?p=438"},"modified":"2007-05-22T06:23:00","modified_gmt":"2007-05-22T12:23:00","slug":"madeleine-mccann-defending-ritual","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/2007\/05\/madeleine-mccann-defending-ritual\/","title":{"rendered":"Madeleine McCann: defending ritual"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"dropcaps\">J<\/span><a style=\"font-weight: bold;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.scholars.nus.edu.sg\/landow\/post\/poldiscourse\/2views.html\" target=\"_blank\">ames Carey<\/a>, ancient journalism professor, believed in news as ritual (something he may have got from <a href=\"http:\/\/adrianmonck.blogspot.com\/2007\/04\/solving-tiny-footnote-puzzle-in.html\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Hegel<\/span><\/a>).<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>A ritual view of communication is directed not toward the extension of messages in space but toward the maintenance of society in time; not the act of imparting information but the representation of shared beliefs.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>So is ritual a better way of understanding the <a style=\"font-weight: bold;\" href=\"http:\/\/news.sky.com\/skynews\/madeleine\" target=\"_blank\">Madeleine McCann<\/a><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\"> <\/span>story? Surprisingly few people have mentioned it, given the length of time Carey&#8217;s views have been around.<\/p>\n<p><a onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http:\/\/bp1.blogger.com\/_7FX8PyQEiZw\/RlLoz98KFYI\/AAAAAAAAACs\/TxQOMaAztzI\/s1600-h\/Madeleine+McCann.jpeg\"><\/a><br \/>American sociologist, <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Orrin Klapp<\/span>, in his quirky tome <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/Overload-Boredom-Information-Contributions-Sociology\/dp\/0313250014\/ref=sr_1_18\/203-7691232-9827153?ie=UTF8&#038;s=books&amp;qid=1179839128&#038;sr=1-18\" target=\"_blank\"><span style=\"font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;\">Overload and Boredom: Essays on the Quality of Life in the Information Society<\/span><\/a>, lists some basic social rituals:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\u201cYou are not alone, we are all together\u201d &#8211; rituals of solidarity<\/li>\n<li>\u201cWe are like brothers\u201d &#8211; the ritual of kinship extension<\/li>\n<li>\u201cDo not worry. Things will work out all right. Something you do not understand is working for you\u201d &#8211; a language of reassurance&#8230;<\/li>\n<li>\u201cWe hold this to right and self-evident\u201d &#8211; moral affirmation<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Klapp (crazy name, etc.) wrote:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>there is little argument about the importance of ritual (and its redundancy) for society, since it helps people feel more together &#8211; solidarity and fullness of emotional life being two important consequences of communicating by ritual. For societies it means maintaining sentiments necessary for social structures&#8230; <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>  Perhaps part of the ritual of the ritual is that we don&#8217;t examine our participation in it, for fear of weakening it.<\/p>\n<p>And rituals that are delivered by the invisible hand of the information market? If that&#8217;s not magic&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>James Carey, ancient journalism professor, believed in news as ritual (something he may have got from Hegel). A ritual view of communication is directed not toward the extension of messages in space but toward the maintenance of society in time; not the act of imparting information but the representation of shared beliefs. So is ritual [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7,50],"tags":[265],"class_list":["post-438","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journalism","category-journalists","tag-journalism-values"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=438"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}