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Ritual and style across cultures 173

9. Ritual and style across cultures

Helga Kotthoff

1. Introduction

Ritual and style play an important part in the (re)construction of culture. Rituals
are multidimensional, social performances of collective knowledge and sense
making. In agreement with Geertz (1973) I see ritual performances as “meta-
social commentaries” which can be interpreted in all their shades of meaning by
producers and recipients within a community of practice. Various ritual theor-
ists have emphasized that their social functions are more important than the in-
strumental ones (Leach 1976; Werlen 2001); they bind the group together, in-
spire joint action and structure the social reality. They have a beginning and an
end and thus a time structure. By highlighting expressive and aesthetic dimen-
sions they also stimulate emotional and metaphysical experiences of the partici-
pants (Knoblauch and Kotthoff 2001). Style comes into play. Collins (2004: xi)
suggests that we can see how variations in the intensity of rituals lead to vari-
ations in social membership patterns “not on the global level of ‘society’ in the
large sense but as memberships that are local, sometimes ephemeral, stratified
and conflictual”. Hence, it is always important to identify how a ritual is carried
out stylistically. Style features indexicalize the social meaning of an event and
they invite inferencing (see Gumperz and Cook-Gumperz in this volume; Eckert
2000).
In this chapter I will discuss a variety of rituals, from simple rituals such as
gift presentation to complex ones such as toasting. I will primarily discuss
examples from Germany and countries of the former Soviet Union, especially
from Caucasian Georgia. We will take a close look at cultural specificities and
the knowledge which is demanded for the performance of toasts at the dinner
table. All stylistic shades are interpreted, which sometimes in crosscultural en-
counters leads to misunderstanding or astonishment. Some rituals are open to
everybody; some are exclusive.
Toasts are a genre known in many societies. In the former Soviet Union,
however, toasting was of outstanding importance and it continues to be so. In
Caucasian Georgia, especially, it is also a way to “do being Georgian” (as eth-
nomethodologists would put it, see Spreckels and Kotthoff in this volume) be-
cause it is often used to confess national values, which are communicated in a
very emotional style.
The West likes to see itself as “antiritualistic” (Douglas 1982). Goffman
(1967, 1981), more than anyone, has however made us see that our everyday life