"Ritual" and Fine

Although I had a very difficult time with the “Ritual” reading, I was able to pull out some questions from points that I found interesting. McLaren brings up the concept that society is shifting from a gemeinschaft to a gesellschaft to explain why ritual is not practiced in society in such great numbers.  He writes,

“In other words, from a social aggregate in which individuals remain relatively united in spite of separating factors – as in European feudalism – to a community which superficially appears united but which essentially remains separated in spite of all the uniting factors – as evident in modern, technological societies” (McLaren 23).

From this concept, I am curious as to how society reacts with rituals that fit with its more technologically advanced state.  Does technology hinder society’s attachment to rituals?

Essentially, the United States seems to embody this idea by producing generations of children who can say the pledge of allegiance by heart (from saying it in school everyday), yet who do not know the history and reason behind the words they recite, or why they recite them in the first place.  In what ways do rituals affect and/or become habit?

In the Fine reading, I found it ironic that parents do not actively believe that the government should do more for integration amongst children of black and white backgrounds (Fine, et. al 62).  I found the concept McLaren discussed about “united communities” to be especially relevant in the context of the school Fine visited.  The children at this school seem to be united merely because they are in the same room, after centuries of schoolroom’s consisting solely of white children.  However, these gains in equal education do not equal unity amongst the students in any sense. 

Fine provides a Foucaultian concept when she discusses how “power operates as a set of social relations both inside and beyond the room” (172).  There are not only relations of power within the polarized groups of kids who sit together in class; there is also a ritualistic nature.  These children are performing a race-related ritual of grouping together to provide support against what they see as the “other.”

McLaren also discusses that rituals require social and political context, which I find to be intriguing.  Oftentimes, we associate rituals such as body mutilation in specific groups of people to be disgusting or crude, yet in Western society we also have forms of body mutilation that can be considered crude.

How do rituals affect relations of power within the classroom? At what point does ritual become habit?