Ritual works and practices: a case study from a Muslim community in Cambodia
Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis January 16, 2019 Peer reviewed DOI: 10.30674/scripta.67294 via DOAJ
Summary
Rituals are formalized, repetitive events that assert power over everyday life. This paper argues that ritual studies should examine how rituals negotiate power and influence. A spirit possession cult among Muslim Cham in Cambodia serves as an example, functioning both as state ritual and exorcism. Through the cult, Cham people engage with memories of the distant past rather than recent political violence. Songs of the spirits blend past and present, narrating conflicts and struggles in a spirit world that mingles with ordinary human life.
Study at a glance
| Design | theoretical or philosophical paper |
|---|---|
| Population | Muslim Cham in Cambodia |
| Key finding | The Cham spirit possession cult illustrates how ritual can serve both as state ritual and exorcism, allowing participants to engage with distant memories instead of recent political violence. |
Abstract
The function of the ritual is to assert a transcendental power over everyday experience and rituals therefore tend to be formalized, repetitive and conservative events. The purpose of this paper is to show the importance for ritual studies of ritualised strategies for the negotiation of power and influence. Here, research on a spirit possession cult among the Muslim Cham in Cambodia will serve as an empirical basis for a discussion of the open-ended and unbounded features of ritual in contemporary society, since the performances of this cult may be seen both as a kind of "state ritual" and as exorcism. Through the cult, the Cham tend to take refuge in their memories of the distant past rather than in their more immediate memories of terror and political violence, during the civil war and the Khmer Rouge regime. Rephrased as songs of the spirits, the present and the past intermingle in narrating the difficulties, the conflicts and the struggle in the world of the spirits who live next to, and mingle in, the world of ordinary human beings.