Ritual and Social Change: A Ghanaian Example1

Abstract

A communal ritual of tribal origin is discussed in order to show that its persistence in an urban area is attributable to its ability to remain congruent with the urban sociocultural system. It is argued that congruity/incongruity operates at three distinct levels: the cognitive‐affective, the structural, and the functional. The ritual, organized on a mass basis, generates a nonritual superstructure that affords political, commercial, recreational, and other opportunities, thus reinforcing the ritual in the urban sociocultural system. It is further argued that any ritual has to be conceived of as a sociocultural subsystem, embracing a culture, a social structure, and the motivations of its participants, and not simply as a cultural item.

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