Evidence of grand burials and monumental construction is a striking feature in the archaeological record of the Upper Palaeolithic period, between 40 and 10 kya (thousand years ago). Archaeologists often interpret such finds as indicators of rank and hierarchy among Pleistocene hunter-gatherers. Interpretations of this kind are difficult to reconcile with the view, still common in sociobiology, that pre-agricultural societies were typically egalitarian in orientation. Here we develop an alternative model of ‘Palaeolithic politics’, which emphasizes the ability of hunter-gatherers to alternate – consciously and deliberately – between contrasting modes of political organization, including a variety of hierarchical and egalitarian possibilities. We propose that alternations of this sort were an emergent property of human societies in the highly seasonal environments of the last Ice Age. We further consider some implications of the model for received concepts of social evolution, with particular attention to the distinction between ‘simple’ and ‘complex’ hunter-gatherers.

/pdf/farewell-to-the-childhood-of-man-ritual-seasonality-and-the-2n5mtyhfxi.pdf

Farewell to the ‘childhood of man’: ritual, seasonality, and the origins of inequality

Using a comparative analysis of Navajo healing ceremonials, acupuncture and biomedical treatment, this essay examines placebo studies and ritual theory as mutually interpenetrating disciplines. Healing rituals create a receptive person susceptible to the influences of authoritative culturally sanctioned ‘powers’. The healer provides the sufferer with imaginative, emotional, sensory, moral and aesthetic input derived from the palpable symbols and procedures of the ritual process—in the process fusing the sufferer's idiosyncratic narrative unto a universal cultural mythos. Healing rituals involve a drama of evocation, enactment, embodiment and evaluation in a charged atmosphere of hope and uncertainty. Experimental research into placebo effects demonstrates that routine biomedical pharmacological and procedural interventions contain significant ritual dimensions. This research also suggests that ritual healing not only represents changes in affect, self-awareness and self-appraisal of behavioural capacities, but involves modulations of symptoms through neurobiological mechanisms. Recent scientific investigations into placebo acupuncture suggest several ways that observations from ritual studies can be verified experimentally. Placebo effects are often described as ‘non-specific’; the analysis presented here suggests that placebo effects are the ‘specific’ effects of healing rituals.

/pdf/placebo-studies-and-ritual-theory-a-comparative-analysis-of-39pxc4j4fq.pdf

Placebo studies and ritual theory: a comparative analysis of Navajo, acupuncture and biomedical healing

Patients in the placebo arms of randomized controlled trials (RCT) often experience positive changes from baseline. While multiple theories concerning such “placebo effects” exist, peculiarly, none has been informed by actual interviews of patients undergoing placebo treatment. Here, we report on a qualitative study (n = 27) embedded within a RCT (n = 262) in patients with irritable bowel syndrome. Besides identical placebo acupuncture treatment in the RCT, the qualitative study patients also received an additional set of interviews at the beginning, midpoint, and end of the trial. Interviews of the 12 qualitative subjects who underwent and completed placebo treatment were transcribed. We found that patients (1) were persistently concerned with whether they were receiving placebo or genuine treatment; (2) almost never endorsed “expectation” of improvement but spoke of “hope” instead and frequently reported despair; (3) almost all reported improvement ranging from dramatic psychosocial changes to unambiguous, progressive symptom improvement to tentative impressions of benefit; and (4) often worried whether their improvement was due to normal fluctuations or placebo effects. The placebo treatment was a problematic perturbation that provided an opportunity to reconstruct the experiences of the fluctuations of their illness and how it disrupted their everyday life. Immersion in this RCT was a co-mingling of enactment, embodiment and interpretation involving ritual performance and evocative symbols, shifts in bodily sensations, symptoms, mood, daily life behaviors, and social interactions, all accompanied by self-scrutiny and re-appraisal. The placebo effect involved a spectrum of factors and any single theory of placebo—e.g. expectancy, hope, conditioning, anxiety reduction, report bias, symbolic work, narrative and embodiment—provides an inadequate model to explain its salubrious benefits.

/pdf/maybe-i-made-up-the-whole-thing-placebos-and-patients-1jpuzs9hv6.pdf

“Maybe I Made Up the Whole Thing”: Placebos and Patients’ Experiences in a Randomized Controlled Trial

Large portions of East and Southeast Asia are in the throes of a historically unprecedented upsurge in religious observance and association. Many of the new varieties of religiosity are inore popular, voluntary, and laity based than the religions of yesteryear. Many are also marked by the heightened participation of women, and an emphasis on inner-worldly well-being as well as otherworldly transcendence. Focusing on Southeast Asia, but with references to developments in China, this article examines the social and moral genealogy of eastern Asia's religious vitalization. Many analysts have emphasized the influence of postcolonial secularisms, neoliberal disciplines, and ascendant civil societies in the religious resurgence. Although these factors have indeed played a role, the macro-narratives of the state, capital, and democratization often give insufficient attention to the micro- and meso-passions of self family, and neighborhood, all of which have contributed to the popularization and proximatization of once restricted spiritual disciplines. essay concerns a development taking place across a broad swath of contemporary Asia: an unprecedented upsurge in religious ritual, association, and observance. The resurgence defies a century of forecasts by secularization and modernization theorists of religions imminent privatization and decline. The event also has distinctive social characteristics. Chief among these is that the new varieties of religion tend to be more popular, voluntary, and laity based than the established religions of yesteryear. Many are also marked by the heightened participation of women, although typically not by explicit normative affirmations of gender equality. Last but not least, some of the new movements also appear preoccupied less with otherworldly transcendence than with inner-worldly well-being. Of course, not all of Asia is being swept into this raging religious torrent, and not all new varieties of religion are popular, prosperity minded, or woman friendly. Two generations ago, Japan was a pioneer of laity-based, peace-and-prosperity religions (Davis 1992; Hardacre 1984; Metraux 1996).

Religious Resurgence in Contemporary Asia: Southeast Asian Perspectives on Capitalism, the State, and the New Piety

Scholars have converged on a theory that ritual involves poetically dense figuration of macrocosmic order in microcosmic action. I illustrate this by surveying work on how ritual and oratory involve coordination of action across multiple semiotic media. I review at greater length the “poetic density” theory's interest in how ritual and oratory causally shape people's worlds, and the theory's interest in the edginess of ritual as a site of articulation between actors with disparate political positionalities. Much scholarship now examines norms of the pragmatics of sign use (not just signification's semantics, so to speak) as being of a piece with the poetic, figurational organization of ritual and oratorical processes. This turn of attention is important for understanding what it means that ritual seems to be action about the organization of action itself. A final element in ritual and oratory's poetic density surveyed here is their nesting in culturally variable ideologies of ritual and oratorical genres ...

Ritual and Oratory Revisited: The Semiotics of Effective Action

Ritual and Its Consequences

Ritual and the Subjunctive

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Ritual and Its Consequences

Ritual and the Subjunctive