4 Social Rituals
Social rituals are habituated patterns of activity that carry significant meaning. They must include both habitual patterns of activity and be imbued with meaning that exceeds everyday life activities. Funeral services (including celebrations of life, rosary, memorial, and traditional services) are a social ritual. The importance of funeral rituals is monumental. These rituals provide survivors and the community with essential moments for reflection, closure, honoring the deceased, and assurance that the community will survive beyond losing one of its members.
The funeral director/embalmer plays a vital role in this social ritual. Understanding how to convey this process’s importance and significant meaning is a skill learned throughout their career. Client families have different values, symbols, attitudes, and norms about funeral rituals. The role of the funeral director/embalmer has shifted throughout the past 50 years and continues to shift with the constant change in the world. Technology and customer education have a great deal to do with these changes.
List of definitions of the important foundations of sociology to keep in mind when serving client families:
Ceremony (Ritual): An action conducted during a rite which may or may not have symbolic meaning to the participants or witnesses of the rite.
Culture Shock: The feelings of disorientation, uncertainty, and even fear experienced when one encounters an unfamiliar cultural practice.
Cultural Relativism: The viewing of people’s behavior from the perspective of one’s own culture.
Cultural Universal: A common practice or belief shared by all societies.
Diffusion: The process by which a cultural item spreads from group to group or society to society.
Ethnocentrism: The propensity to believe that one’s own culture and way of life represent what’s normal or are superior to all others.
Innovation: The process of introducing a new idea or object to a culture through discovery or invention.
Religion: A culturally embedded configuration of behavior made up of sacred beliefs, emotional feelings accompanying the beliefs, and overt behavior seemingly executing the beliefs and feelings.
Religious Ritual: A practice required or expected of members of a faith.
Example: Catholic Mass
Social Function: An event that allows people to share something they have in common.
Sociobiology: The systematic study of how biology affects human social behavior.
Symbol: A gesture, object, or word that forms the basis of human communication.