State and Ritual in East Asia

By Pierre-Etienne Will and Catherine Bell

Among the results, that were summed up in the final discussion, are a better grasp of the diversity of rituals in every culture, notably Chinese culture, and among the different cultures considered (notably China, Korea, Japan). It has also been made clear that, despite appearances, a sinocentric approach must definitely be avoided as far as, for example, Korean rituals are concerned. Important advances have also been made in the comprehension of the linguistic and theoretical aspects of the problem.
A number of speakers, in rather different ways, underlined the importance of keeping in view the so-called 'religious' aspects of ritual, by which they meant that most of the time people really believed, often in personally committed ways, that ritual had an intrinsic importance and impact on the universe. At the same time, many of the presentations made it clear that ritual is one of those forms of social action in which personal convictions, religious assumptions, and political purposes become virtually indistinguishable. In other words, while religious aspects cannot be dismissed, in ritual they often appear to be readily, and usefully, conflated with other aspects. Erik Zürcher was certainly correct in reminding us that we should distinguish between the personal, court, state, or universal spheres in which an emperor might appropriate or conduct a ritual. However, at the same time, one of the reasons that ritual was so important appears to be the way in which the boundaries between these spheres can be muddled and unclear in ritual practice.

Ritual as a medium for cultural action
Many papers pointed to the role of controversies in the historical and ethnographic materials to illuminate the assumptions about ritual, as well as the variety of viewpoints. This approach appears to support the contention, espoused in several presentations, that ritual is a way of talking about things that cannot, or should not, be talked about in other ways. For example, ritual debates concerning the proper lineage rituals performed by the emperor was a way in which the construction of the monarchy in terms of lineage could be defined or redefined. To debate lineage rites enables people to address institutions like the monarchy and the family without being more verbally explicit about the 'constructedness' of these institutions in general -- which would 'de-naturalize' such institutions. This suggests that ritual action and ritual discourse (or debates) are ways of naturalizing certain socio-cultural constructions, making them appear embedded in the 'nature of things' despite controversies over details.
The foregoing points support the imagery of ritual as a 'medium' of cultural action, terminology that appears to be rather straightforward while encouraging us to be alert to the ways in which such a medium works (how the medium is the message, to use Marshall Mc Luhan's famous phrase). As a medium, ritual possesses some exceptional or distinctive qualities. For example, everyone knows a ritual when they see it; it can be named, organized, and proscribed, etc. Yet the spectrum of ritual actions is a very unclear continuum, which makes ritual a wonderfully flexible medium that requires an abundance of interpretation. As someone pointed out, it is a medium in which there can be no winners and losers, or, depending on the interpretations, very different perspectives on winners and losers. As a medium, it works less to give people specific concepts or doctrines that are open for debate or denial, and more to present ways of 'embodying' values and dispositions.

Influences of Li
What is most striking about China, in comparison to Korea and Japan (although the comparisons are complex), is the centrality of its appeal to Li as a medium of socio-cultural creation and ordering. More than any other culture, it seems to have relied very heavily, though not exclusively, on ritual to accomplish various forms of social organization, political leadership, and cultural consensus. Li created social order in a hierarchical or grid fashion, and it also created types of social 'groups' -- and anthropological theory suggests that ritual can and should provide both grid and group. But Li was clearly better suited to establishing various social grids, which reached down to 'people' in very limited ways. The 'group' established by Li was that of a cultural elite, not a sense of the Chinese people as a whole. While some have seen Chinese ritual as an amazing source of cultural unity, many papers suggested that there was also reason to marvel at the lack or inconsistency of cultural consensus achieved in China. The relationships between local and elite ceremonial life were often problematic. Hence, we are left wondering what is responsible for the cultural unity and for the lack of cultural consensus -- is it the heavy dependence on ritual as a medium of cultural communication that gives one this paradoxical situation, or is it the specific nature of Li itself: at least in the way it tended to be interpreted and promoted in Chinese history? Ritual has recently become a popular tool of analysis in conjunction with the issue of the cultural unity and diversity of China. We are not sure that China is any more unified or diverse than most other polities, but clearly we tend to perceive its unity and diversity as tied up with the more subtle cultural dynamics of ritual. We are left with questions concerning just how Li specifically exerted both positive and negative influences on the development of cultural consensus. It is interesting to note, for example, that Li was so inept at addressing a modern republic, and the rituals that did most to consolidate a national consensus revolved around personality cults (Sun Yatsen, Mao, etc.). Likewise, cultural consensus and diversity in Japan and Korea seem to have worked out differently, not only appealing to different organizational bases, but also being rather modified or even quite different notions of what the Chinese would call Li.

Open conference
It may be of interest to stress that the conference was from the start designed as an 'open' one -- that is, open to the general public of non-participants, for whom simultaneous translation was provided. Indeed, a number of scholars and students present in Paris followed part or all of the discussion. In this way, the conference was an important place for contact as exchange between scholars from all points of the compass, European or otherwise.
Virtually all the papers presented were communicated to the organizers in advance and could be copied and circulated among the participants. A publication is planned in the form of one or several special issues of T'oung Pao and the Bulletin de l'Ecole Française d'Extrême Orient.