Taiwan or hong kong (asian) rituals Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Taiwan or hong kong (asian) rituals - Essay Example It has to be believed that the concrete religious practices, such as community festivals, calendrical festivals, rites of cosmic renewals, and family oriented and individual religious rituals of Taiwan are culminated from the fusion of local and national traditions. Thus, it is an attempt at unraveling intricacies of rituals in the sphere of: (1) how does the ritual reflect the values of a community; (2) what are the underlying consequences of the ritual; (3) what is the stated purpose of the ritual; and (4) what behavior does this ritual make it seem natural or normal, in the socio-cultural Taiwanese perspective. Anthropologists and sociologists are interested in ritual studies, because discussions about rituals have key cultural importance and social concern. They take ritual events as â€Å"a mirror to reflect the larger problems of particular interests in an ethnographic case that become amenable to analysts† (Husken). Rituals are viewed to act as powerful mechanisms for constructions of the self and the other, of personal and collective identities, and are generally held to have benign effects. They bring core cultural values, ideology, knowledge and dramatic style to bear on real social relationships, problems and difficulties, often at key moments of transition or intensification. Social scientists view that ritual action is a conscious social mechanism of symbolic actions that reinforces the status quo by overwhelming the practitioner with a feeling of moral obligation to adhere to societal sentiments, which stress the importance of maintaining social structure.In short, ritual s are often at the centre of the play of social and cultural forces operating in a society. The cultural attributes of marriage, death, as well as religious practices are considered fundamental to the cultural make-up and identity of a country. Taiwan is a country where past, present and future