Laughter at Marriage: Subversion in Performance

Abstract

This chapter addresses the problem of contradictions between what Gregory Bateson called 'ethos', the emotional attitude or tone displayed by participants to an event, and the meanings that can be extracted from an analysis of the complex of custom that composes the practices associated with the event. It aims to note that performances are often judged on the quality of transformation of that which is known into that which is performed. This judgement is aesthetic. The chapter describes the marriage process as it is punctuated by ritual over time, the predominant emphases expressed in symbol and rite in those rituals, and the performance of the first phase of the marriage, the one most distinguished by the laughter of women. The social process of marriage rites has as its consequence transformations in status for the protagonists; it alters the relationships among the kin of each party, expresses a sense of commitment both to the relationship created in the rite.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 21 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.