The working group on The Ritual Year was established at the 8th SIEF congress in Marseille, on 29 April 2004. Initiated by Dr Emily Lyle, the inaugural meeting was held on 11 July 2003, in the Department of Celtic and Scottish Studies, at the University of Edinburgh.
Topics discussed include: civic ritual and processions, community identity, masking and drama, carnival and reversal, reciprocity and exchange, computerised aids to calendrical research, sports, dance and music, contemporary popular use of religious images, cosmological roots, interfaces between the secular and the religious and between different religions, festival foods, and symbolism linked to the economic bases of society, especially as concerns agriculture.
The field of study that often relates to this one rather closely in
teaching students is that of life cycle customs, and the perceived
connections between the year cycle and the life cycle seem likely to
strengthen so that it may seem more and more appropriate to consider
parallels between them. As in other ethnological areas of enquiry,
members will take account of continuity, change and meaning, but the
thing that is unique to this working group is the framework of the year.
ISSN 2228-1347
2016-