TY - JOUR
T1 - Ritual and authority in world politics
AU - Kustermans, Jorg
AU - Svensson, Ted
AU - Costa López, Julia
AU - Blasenheim, Tracey
AU - Hoffmann, Alvina
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
Copyright:
Copyright 2021 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2022/1/2
Y1 - 2022/1/2
N2 - The contributions to this Forum on Ritual and Authority in World Politics examine the role that ritual performances play in the constitution of positions of authority and the maintenance of relations of authority in historical and contemporary international relations. The Forum takes as its point of departure three related observations: (i) that recent years have witnessed a remarkable upsurge of interest in ritual as a recurring feature of international practice, but (ii) that this recent interest in ritual has not extended, thus far, to the study of international authority, (iii) in spite of political anthropologists’ long-standing claim that the performance of ritual is absolutely crucial to the production of authority. The performance of ritual grounds, makes tangible and enhances various forms of authority, including forms of international authority, historical and contemporary. The contributions to this Forum demonstrate the veracity of that claim in five different empirical contexts—Byzantine diplomacy, early modern cross-cultural encounters, British imperialism in India, military lawyering in America’s armed forces, and the casting of ballots in Crimea and the US—and attempt also to explain precisely how it is that ritual served to undergird and stabilise authority in these various instances.
AB - The contributions to this Forum on Ritual and Authority in World Politics examine the role that ritual performances play in the constitution of positions of authority and the maintenance of relations of authority in historical and contemporary international relations. The Forum takes as its point of departure three related observations: (i) that recent years have witnessed a remarkable upsurge of interest in ritual as a recurring feature of international practice, but (ii) that this recent interest in ritual has not extended, thus far, to the study of international authority, (iii) in spite of political anthropologists’ long-standing claim that the performance of ritual is absolutely crucial to the production of authority. The performance of ritual grounds, makes tangible and enhances various forms of authority, including forms of international authority, historical and contemporary. The contributions to this Forum demonstrate the veracity of that claim in five different empirical contexts—Byzantine diplomacy, early modern cross-cultural encounters, British imperialism in India, military lawyering in America’s armed forces, and the casting of ballots in Crimea and the US—and attempt also to explain precisely how it is that ritual served to undergird and stabilise authority in these various instances.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85115207132&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/09557571.2021.1975647
DO - 10.1080/09557571.2021.1975647
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85115207132
SN - 0955-7571
VL - 35
SP - 2
EP - 30
JO - Cambridge Review of International Affairs
JF - Cambridge Review of International Affairs
IS - 1
ER -