The Library Of The University of Washington Essay

There is no doubt that the library of the University of Washington is one of the most well-known and popular libraries in the United States. It includes a wide collection of cataloged volumes, serial titles, and other print and electronic formats available in the Libraries. In addition, describing the library of the University of Washington, it is possible to add that this particular library provides students, faculties, and staff with different services and resources with the purpose of supporting teaching and learning at the University of Washington. What is more, many persons who visit the library of the University of Washington are welcome and can utilize various resources and many of the services they wish to.

Analyzing the ritual through the lens of the theories, it is possible to speak about Victor Turner – an anthropologist who is greatly influenced by ritual ideas. Furthermore, the works of Alfred Radcliffe-Brown greatly influenced Victor Turner’s theory. In fact, he is one of the most prominent representatives of symbolic anthropology, ‘the archetype of the creative spirit in anthropology, a prolific contributor to the anthropology of ritual, symbols, and performance’ (John 1). Indeed, his attention is mainly focused on the symbolic systems that integrate human communities in various stable forms.

Supporting this position, Bell points out that:

‘Turner’s work is full of insights that were developed in a variety of interdependent directions. His rich ethnographic accounts of tribal personalities and political maneuvering prompted more attention to forms of network analysis, social strategies, and game theory. His emphasis on how ritual does what it does by means of a process of dramatization led him and other scholars to explore ritual as performance’ (42).

In his studies, Turner explored liminal (threshold, extreme, borderline) communities and states of the collective life, the phenomena of ‘anti-structure’ – the phenomenon of splitting and breaking, collective protest, mass austerity, voluntary poverty and utopian equality, their role in the different eras. For Turner, symbols and symbol systems are not static, they are included in the action (custom, ritual, social conflict, social movements) and in this sense must be understood in specificity and dynamics as ‘ritual processes’ that can be considered to be stereotyped sequences of activities, which can include gestures, objects and words created in order to have an impact on preternatural entities on behalf of the actors’ purposes and desires.

Alfred Radcliffe-Brown as one of the well-known sociologists and representatives of symbolic anthropology became very popular with the crowds because of his ideas on the ritual. One of Radcliffe-Brown’s major contributions to science was a systematic approach to the study of primitive societies and a radical turn of social anthropology to the comparative study of cultures. As a result, social anthropology has become a rigorous theoretical and empirical discipline; it became involved in a comparative analysis of stable and changing social structures. According to Radcliffe-Brown, social relations are the result of human needs. In fact, he believed that culture did not satisfy the basic needs of every individual and society as a whole. Radcliffe-Brown also attached great importance to the very process of creating cultural processes of interaction. What is more, he greatly contributed to the sociological aspects of Durkheim’s interpretation concerning religion and ritual in a number of certain ways.  For instance, ‘he sought a more systematic correlation between religious ideas and social structure, theorizing that if the image of God is a collective representation or projection of the social group, then different forms of social organization will have different self-reflective notions of God’ (Bell 27). For Radcliffe-Brown, socio-cultural anthropology is considered to be the highest degree of generalization of theoretical material collected by ethnography. According to the sociologist, it is necessary to commonly use the empirical research methods and be aware of the fact that orderly social life is greatly dependent upon ‘the presence in each member’s mind of certain sentiments, such as solidarity, goodwill, love, and hate, which control each person’s behavior’ (Bell 28).

Thus, taking the above-mentioned information into consideration, it is possible to draw a conclusion that the library of the University of Washington is one of the most popular libraries in the United States that includes a wide collection of cataloged volumes, serial titles, and other print and electronic formats available for many students, faculties, and staff.

As for the ritual through the lens of the theories, it is possible to say that Victor Turner and Alfred Radcliffe-Brown are extremely attractive figures in science. Indeed, their ideas were included in the works of many historians, theologians, religious scholars, sociologists, art, and theater researchers. Turner’s concept of liminality, his researches of schismatic movements and protest events were formed within the theoretical and methodological ‘turning’ of social sciences and humanities during the 1950s and 1960s and had a great impact on many research practices of that period. In return, Alfred Radcliffe-Brown as one of the widely known sociologists and representatives of symbolic anthropology became very popular with the crowds because of his ideas on the ritual. One of Radcliffe-Brown’s major contributions to science was a systematic approach to the study of primitive societies. As a result, social anthropology has become a theoretical and empirical discipline, and thus, it became involved in a comparative analysis of stable and changing social structures.

 

Works cited

Bell, Catherine M. Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.

Graeber, David. Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology. Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press, 2004.

John, Graham. Victor Turner and Contemporary Cultural Performance. New York: Berghahn Books, 2008.

Stocking, George W. After Tylor: British Social Anthropology, 1888-1951. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1995.

The terms offer and acceptance. (2016, May 17). Retrieved from

[Accessed: March 29, 2024]

"The terms offer and acceptance." freeessays.club, 17 May 2016.

[Accessed: March 29, 2024]

freeessays.club (2016) The terms offer and acceptance [Online].
Available at:

[Accessed: March 29, 2024]

"The terms offer and acceptance." freeessays.club, 17 May 2016

[Accessed: March 29, 2024]

"The terms offer and acceptance." freeessays.club, 17 May 2016

[Accessed: March 29, 2024]

"The terms offer and acceptance." freeessays.club, 17 May 2016

[Accessed: March 29, 2024]

"The terms offer and acceptance." freeessays.club, 17 May 2016

[Accessed: March 29, 2024]
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