Ritualizing in a World at Risk

This is a book-project at the interface of finishing-up research and writing draft chapters for a volume on ritual as a cultural ressource: how do changing conceptualizations of the nature-culture bond create new conditions for ritual pluralizations and h ow do new rituals emerge in response to felt social and environmental risk ? Are ritual constitutive of how people and society changes and develops, or are they symbolic representations/celebrations of changes already made? The book to be written is based on empirical and comparative case studies of micro-communities of women and youth: young HIV positive women in a black South African township, a mixed Berkeley/Oakland community of urban farmers in the USA, an ongoing workshop-network in permaculture gar dening at Tjøme, Norway. Power and situatedness are important differential aspects since some women are marginalised, while others are affluent. Yet all have obtained training in the agricultural and social-spiritual practices of permaculture, and employ these practices to a larger og lesser extent, both as a way of producing food and improve their health, organise small trans-local communities, affirm and empower the self, and expand a sense of the sacred into various forms of gift-exchange with the natu ral world and thus re-orient identity and feelings of belongiong. In this sense the women are exemplary and representative of an emerging social movement globally which embraces simplicity in terms of lifestyle, non-violent direct action in terms of polit ics, the vernacular and « folk » in terms of spirituality, and the convivial plural in terms of private and public ritual. This thematic can fruitfully be approached by feminist theology and ecotheology, or analysed from the perspective of environment a nd religion, or the new nature religion. My primary interest here, however, is not religion « proper » but the role and function of of ritual in these new social movements, and its gendered agency.