Recasting Ritual explores how ritual behaviour changes in response to varying cultural, political and physical contexts. The contributors from Spain, Sweden, Norway and the UK examine how globalization and technology affect ritual performance.
Wide ranging examples based on original research from the Pacific, Europe, East and West Africa, Latin America and Indonesia illustrate the relationships between ritual and social identity.
These include:
* how married Muslim women in Kenya admire new brides in a style influenced by US soap operas
* how the Olympic Winter Games in Norway contrasted the femininity of the athletic cross-country skier with the fragile figure skater
* how shoulder callouses from carrying statues in rituals are a prestigious form of identity for Catholic men in Malta.
The book includes a thorough introduction which puts the chapters in context and brings out their implications and importance for anthropology.

Recasting Ritual explores how ritualized action diversifies in response to varying cultural, political and physical contexts. The contributors look at how issues such as globalisation and technology affect ritual performance and how minorities often utilise performances to affirm their own identites while also speaking to outsiders.
The contributors examine the relationship between ritual meaning and social identity through case-studies drawn from the Pacific, Scandinavia, the Mediterranean, Latin America, Indonesia, and East and West Africa. Study of the theoretical underpinnings of social action affirms the independence of anthropology as a discipline from cultural, media and performance studies, according it a distinctive role in elucidating contemporary and emergent human conditions.