The archaeological identification of individuals has been an important component of both processual attempts to characterize social organization by the treatment of individuals in mortuary ritual and more recent agency theory applications to studies of political economy and social change. Both approaches have been critiqued for failing to adequately define the individual, instead applying the W...

We thank the commentators for their thoughtful remarks. We have arranged our responses to the commentators thematically; within each section we start first with general comments before discussing particular statements by individual commentators. We also thank the Journal of Medical Ethics for publishing our original manuscript, the accompanying commentaries, an editorial from the Journal staff,...

This essay provides an outline and a history of the theory of performance. This new macro-sociological theory reconfigures the concept of ritual into a more complex model of social action as lying in the continuum between the analytic poles of successful and failed performances. I argue that the more complex and segmented social and cultural structures become, the more the elements of performan...

It seems that facilitating conditions for knowledge sharing, like a shared understanding, a common language as well as the multifold and direct relations between are idiosyncrasies of a knowledge network. However, these facilitating conditions are limited if a high turn over rate is involved in a knowledge network. As a consequence, capability differences between knowledge network members will ...

An integrated anthropological and linguistic analysis of Creek oratory shows oratory to be part of a ritual cycle which recreates both the fundamental Creek cultural system and the Creek towns, the basic political units of Creek society. 1 Creek individual and group identities are thus defined and integrated into the Creek political system. This paper describes the performative effectiveness of...

the topheth (in ancient jerusalem), considered as a holly land in canaanites period, it was the altar of human sacrifice in honor of baal. the history of the ritual, human sacrifice and the ceremonies accompanied with, among jewish people returns back to when the land of canaan in jordan valley was occupied by the israelite people leading by joshua (ca.1426 b.c.). on these altars the new born c...

OBJECTIVE Although serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SRIs) are approved for the treatment of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), most OCD patients who have received an adequate SRI trial continue to have clinically significant OCD symptoms. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of augmenting SRIs with exposure and ritual prevention, an established cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT)...

background: recognizing the importance of ritual pray as one of the most significant indicators of practical religion; this study examines the ritual pray among students. methods: this cross-sectional study was conducted at isfahan university of medical sciences in 2012 all freshman students by census were examined. entry criteria were being muslim and willingness to participate in the study. d...

Do human beings need rituals? Have they become an obsolete “evolutionary appendix” in the modern world, or are they an indispensable part of the human condition? Right at the start, I wish to adopt a clear stance with regard to this repeatedly controversial discussion in ritual studies: From the perspective of cultural anthropology, I assume that human beings need rituals, that they are an anth...