Ritual of Protest as a Factor of Social Change

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to justify the thesis that social rituals - usually perceived as conservative forms of collective action of simple societies - play an essential role in the processes of postmodern social change. The argument of the influence of rituals was motivated by analyzing classical subject literature and complemented with a description of a specific example of postmodern social ritual - the contemporary social protest. In the author’s opinion considering social protest as a ritual was possible after the ensuing of the postmodern age, in which social protests became an inseparable part of the canon of social interactional rituals in the societies of the western civilization. In the modern age protests were viewed as a marginal phenomenon, an indication of dysfunction of the political system, and as a consequence of fear, that they may spread chaos, they were consistently suppressed. In the author’s mind a protest can be understood twofold. Some of the societies - those that do have a high degree of structures’ inertness - consider protests as similar to revolutions, that aim at the total turnover of the power structures. In the other societies, the societies of the western democracies, social protests are well tolerated and act as a usual mechanism of social reaction on social change. Protest seems to be the phenomena that reconciles both the need for stability within the culture, and for the continuous social change. The intensification of social protests, as seen today, can be understood as an escalation of ritual forms of social behavior in the effect of intensive social changes. Being a part of culture’s processes, the social protests remain a part of the wide, social interactional processes.