Media Rituals

by Nick Couldry

Media Rituals rethinks our accepted concepts of ritual behaviour for a media-saturated age. It connects ritual directly with questions of power, government, and surveillance and explores the ritual space which the media construct and where their power is legitimated.
Drawing on sociological and anthropological approaches to the study of ritual, Couldry applies the work of theorists such as Durkheim, Bourdieu and Bloch to a number of important media the public media event; reality TV; Webcam sites; talk shows and docu-soaps; media pilgrimages; the construction of celebrity. In a final chapter, he imagines a different world where the media's ritual power is less, because the possibilities of participation in media production are more evenly shared.

Genres: Theory, Anthropology

186 pages, Paperback

First published December 19, 2002

About the author

Nick Couldry is Professor of Media, Communications and Social Theory in the Department of Media and communications at LSE. As a sociologist of media and culture, he approaches media and communications from the perspective of the symbolic power that has been historically concentrated in media institutions.

Reviews

[Charandeep Kaur · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating study of media and what it does to societies. It can be a bit unapproachable at times for someone who's not from a sociology background. Regardless, Couldry has some very interesting ideas about modern media and presents them wonderfully. It's an important work, especially for today's society where media has permeated our lives so seamlessly that one can't tell the difference.

[guia · Rating 4 out of 5]

How i want my thesis to be. Couldry covered everything. Not his fault most of it went over my head tho

[Malcolm · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is extremely good, and does, I think, two important things. The first, and less important, is that he argues (and demonstrates) that rather than granting access to a socio-political centre much of our media use actively constructs that centre. More important, however, is the analysis that sees in much media practice, consumption and production, a series of ritual activities based in a categorical difference between 'media persons' and 'ordinary persons'. He constructs a theory of ritual that draws on and critically extends both functionalist sociology and anthropology to build a sense of ritual in media practice that acts as a mask of power by naturalising relationships and social activities, and thereby making them normal. This is not an it's-the-media's-fault argument, but an analysis of mediation (a system of representations in a process of representation) as an agent of power. The case studies (of media events, media pilgrimages, 'reality' TV, and media confessions) reveal the subtle ways that this approach can be used to get beyond much of what passes for critical media studies, but without the depoliticised celebration embodied in much that passes for post-structural or post-modern analysis. Fabulous, and one to revist repeatedly.

[versarbre · Rating 4 out of 5]

How do we recognize new forms of "ritual" that naturalize certain categories and make certain ritual differentiation invisible? Couldry presents the case of media rituals and renews the Durkheimian tradition of ritual production of the social organization of lives. (He calls his own approach "post-Durkheimian & non-functionalist).