RELIGST 2EE3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 21: Collective Effervescence, Ancient Olympic Games, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
12 Dec 2017
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Document Summary
Communitas arises in liminal situations, especially rituals. Catherine bell - ritual is separated from everyday behaviour, with its own rules. Sports - like rituals of institutional religion = liminal experience that generates collective effervescence, communitas, and binds social groups together. Sport, like institutional religion offers individuals opportunity to transcend isolation, be part of external community. Seek immortality through our works (what we do) Transcendence when an individual joins a team. Sense of complete loss of ego, union between self and activity and surrounding environment. Pushing our limits, belonging to a community overcome mortality. In mythology of indigenous people of the americas, to win a game = to kill one"s opponent. It is clear that it is only the living who win in the great biological and social game which is constantly taking place between the living and the dead. High steaks - you don"t want to lose/die. In today"s sports, symbolically, to lose is to die.
