Festivals and Social Relations in a Mysore Village: Mechanics of Two Processions

According to Marcel Mauss, "The aim and principle of sociology is to observe and understand the whole group in its total behaviour." Following this method in his study of ritual prestations, he stated that "We are dealing...with something more than... institutions divisible into legal...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Economic and political weekly 1972-08, Vol.7 (31/33), p.1517-1522
Main Author: Hanchett, Suzanne
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Agricultural land
Brahmins
Carts
Festivals
Harvest festivals
In the Field
Processions
Religious festivals
Religious rituals
Reserve banking
Villages
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Summary:According to Marcel Mauss, "The aim and principle of sociology is to observe and understand the whole group in its total behaviour." Following this method in his study of ritual prestations, he stated that "We are dealing...with something more than... institutions divisible into legal, economic, religious and other parts. We are concerned with 'wholes', with systems in their entirety...It is only by considering them as wholes that we have been able to see their essence, their operation and their living aspect, and to catch the fleeting moment when the society and its members take emotional stock of themselves and their situation as regards others." In this paper the author has attempted to identify the South Indian village-level festival as one of those "fleeting moments" of social life to which Mauss referred, moments during which the total social structure is confronted by its members. In particular, the procession of the deity through the village is such an event. [The research on which this paper is based was financed by a research grant from the National Institute of Mental Health. The author wishes to express her gratitude to the Department of Anthropology of the American Museum of Natural History, whose Ogden Mills Fellowship provided her with time for writing and post-doctoral research on this topic. Robert Carneiro and Stanley Regelson have kindly offered criticisms of the original manuscript, on which this paper is based. This paper was originally presented at the 1969 meetings of the American Anthropological Association, with the title, "Myth and Mechanics: Two South Indian Festival Processions".]
ISSN:0012-9976
2349-8846