The Puzzle of Extreme Rituals
Around the world, people engage in ritual activities that involve obvious expenditures of effort, energy and resources without equally obvious payoffs. Anthropologists have long proposed that such costly behaviors persist because they convey certain benefits to their practitioners and their communities. But how can we study these ostensible benefits in their natural contexts? This talk will present an interdisciplinary research program that combines laboratory and field methods to explore the puzzle of extreme rituals in real-life settings. Drawing on recent empirical evidence on high-arousal rituals, I argue that ritual is a social technology that extends far beyond religion, into sports, politics, and other domains of human life.
Bio:
Dr Dimitris Xygalatas is an anthropologist and Director of the Cognitive Science Program at the University of Connecticut. His research focuses on cultural practices that create meaning, promote resilience, and motivate cooperation and bonding which he studies through innovative combinations of experimental and participatory methods. He has conducted several years of fieldwork in Southern Europe and the Indian Ocean. His work has been published in over 100 scientific articles across various fields. His most recent book, Ritual: How Seemingly Senseless Acts Make Life Worth Living, was translated into ten languages and won the 2023 Carol R. Ember Book Prize for scientific anthropology.
Curated & Hosted by
Marguerite Johnson is a cultural historian of the ancient Mediterranean, specialising in sexuality and gender, particularly in the poetry of Sappho, Catullus, and Ovid, as well as magical traditions in Greece, Rome, and the Near East. She also researches Classical Reception Studies, with a regular focus on Australia. In addition to ancient world studies, Marguerite is interested in sexual histories in modernity as well as magic in the west more broadly, especially the practices and art of Australian witch, Rosaleen Norton. She is Honorary Professor of Classics and Ancient History at The University of Queensland, and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.
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