Oxford University Press announces the publication of Ritual, Media, and Conflict. The book can be purchased either from the Press or through the Ritual Studies Bookshop. Rituals can provoke, initiate, or escalate conflict. In Iraq suicide attacks, beheadings, and “surgical” bombings were both ritualized and mediatized as strategies for legitimizing violence. Smuggled video images of [...]

In these two videos Kate MacGarry has followed Marcus Coates as he “shamanically” embodies animals and performs bird calls. Is he serious? Ironic? Merely playing? Both? Is this bad ritual? Bad theater? Good ritual? Good theatre? Installation art? And, aside from the genre question, do such events really matter to anyone other than the artists/shaman? [...]