The modern anthropolgist basing his analysis on detailed observation in the field, is concerned in greater detail with the ceremonial roles of persons, categories of persons, an social groups, in relaion to one another. Distinguishes from Frazer in focusing on sociological evidence in lieu of other sources.
Ceremonies in Africa surrounding farming patterns are latently express social tensions. Women permitted to asert licene and dominance against formal subordination to men, princes pretend to covet the trhone, and subjects vent about authority. Rebellion part of an established and sacred tradition system where particualar distributions of power are disputed, but not the structure of the system itself. The institutional protest renews the unity of the system.
Similar employment of sources from ethnographic studies. Dominant role of women in a ceremony contrasts sharply with the mores of the people: a protest against order but nonethelesss eems to embrace it and bless it with progress. Contrast ritual behavior with normal behavior. Women necessary for economy and procreation, but not dominant in system of kinship where they were married off to other families. The group is threatened by two sons and hence women are dangerous.
Changing gender roles for a period was seen as somehow producing a good harvest. Psychological and sociological mechanisms are contained in that somehow - not Concerned. Operates seemingly as an act of rebellion, by an open and privileged assertion of obscentiy acting of fundamental conflict in social structure and individual psyches.
Ceremony makes the king's authority sacred by allowing the airing of tension to achieve unity and prosperity. Problems in who can and cannot be represented through sources solved through similarly organized social sessions. The acting of conflict yields to unity. Women seeking good husbands have an opportunity to act out conflict.
Acceptance of public order as good alloows for unbridled excess, very rituals of rebellion, for order itself keeps the rebellion in bounds. Every social system is a field of tension, full of ambivelence, of co-operation and contrasting struggle: repetivie and developing social systems (diachronic/synchronic)
Alterations of offices, but not a shift in pattern. Contrast with Europe illuminates social setting. Ritual leads to united, is it not possible that civil rebellion itself was a source of strength for these systems. Compare/contrast with Europe.
To achieve anything it values, it must have food, which requires capital and a division of labor, which requires split up of wealth. Peace, good order, and the observence of law necessary for a nation's survival. Individuals vs. political order as a whole demonstrated.
Rebellious rituals may be perhaps be confined to situations where strong tensions are aroued by conflict between different structural principles, which are not controlled by secular institutions. The answer to all these problems lies in comparative research.
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