The idea that rituals are crucial to human behavior is consistent with the arguments of different social scientists who have used this concept to analyze and examine society such as Durkheim, Goffman, Collins, Douglas, Rappaport, Kertzer, Myerhoff, Alexander, Warner, and Bellah. However, despite the work of scholars such as these the concept of ritual has been underutilized, if not often ignore...

GROWTH OF THE METROPOLITAN AREA (MAP) E N T R I E S M Multicentered Chicago Next Chicagoans like to think of their home as “multiethnic,” or as “the city of neighborhoods.” Indeed, the celebration of neighborhood is one of the binding rituals of Chicago culture. The shelves of local bookstores are crammed with neighborhood guides of various sorts, and in the 1990s Mayor Richard M. Daley harness...

The symbolism of rituals creates a shared understanding of events among group members. In the context of romantic relationships, a shared understanding of relationship status transitions may be associated with greater commitment and higher quality relationships. We argue that couples with differing retrospective accounts of their premarital courtship may not have had clear discussions or ritual...

Infant circumcision has recently attracted controversy with professional groups recommending it and various individuals trying to criminalize it. Circumcision is beneficial in the prevention of certain diseases, causing minimal tangible harm to those circumcised. This article argues that government should affirmatively adopt policies tolerating minority practices. Such activities should be bann...

Background Works of artistic and cultural expression have been celebrated, censored, deplored and

The purpose of this paper is to gain insight into the effects of practicing short, frequent and structured reflection breaks interspersed with the learning material in a computer-based course. To that end, the study sets up a standardised control trial with 2 groups of secondary-school pupils. The study shows that, while performance is not affected by these embedded “reflection rituals”, they s...

This paper examines the relationship between architecture and civil participation by specifically looking at the formal attributes of Rabin Square in Tel Aviv, its development as a public urban space, its nationally symbolic meaning, and its civic role. A major conclusion of this study is that public assembly and the physical space in which it occurs are indivisible, revealing architecture’s un...

In his Tree of Knowledge (ToK) System, Henriques (2003) posits that the human ego or "self" has evolved because human beings are the only animals that have had to justify their behavior to others. This essay provides evidence for this Justification Hypothesis (JH) from everyday life sociology, starting with the work of George Herbert Mead and Charles Horton Cooley, and focuses on research relat...