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Rituals, Ceremonies, and Cultural Meaning in Higher Education
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Book Code: H504
ISBN: 0-89789-504-5
ISBN-13: 978-0-89789-504-0
184 pages, tables
Bergin & Garvey
Publication: 5/30/2000
List Price: $98.95 (UK Sterling Price: £57.95)
Availability: Print on demand
Media Type: Hardcover
Also Available: Ebook
Trim Size: 6 1/8 x 9 1/4
Subjects: Reviews:
  • ...makes an important contribution to the higher education and educational anthropology literature....Manning has prepared a scholarly work that will attract a diverse readership. It promotes a much-needed discussion about the role of anthroplogy, qualitative inquiry, and rituals in higher education. Hopefully it will serve as an inspiration for colleagues to continue to fill this void and enhance cultural learning.
    —The Journal of Higher Education
    July 2002
  • Kathleen Manning's book targets important phenomena that we often take for granted.
    —Anthropology & Education Quarterly
  • This is a good and important book, and it deserves a wide readership.
    —Community College Journal
Description: College students and graduates have fond memories of campus events such as commencement, founder's days, convocations, and baccalaureate. These events, defined as rites of passage, secular ceremonies, or cultural performances, create a special feel to a campus remembered for years to come. Borrowing from interpretive anthropology, the author spotlights the following ideas: culture is revealed and forms of life are expressed through the actions and words of community members; human communities are dynamic, complex, and ever-changing environments revealed though analysis of cultural events; and commonplace rituals and ceremonies play a central role in the cultural work of human meaning. The purpose of the book is to explore campus culture as revealed through rituals and ceremonies. While rituals are unique to each campus, this book discusses higher education ceremonies and traditions and offers explanations about the roles they play in building and maintaining campus culture. Dr. Manning combines educational research methodology, higher education and anthropological theory to vividly describe college rituals. In a readable fashion, case studies describing the rituals are interspersed between chapters discussing the theory of rituals. The cases include convocation, presidential inauguration, junior show, charter day, founder's birthday celebration, baccalaureate, and laurel chain and alumnae parade.
Table of Contents:
  • Foreword
  • The Rituals of Higher Education
  • Presidential Inauguration
  • Rites of Passage: Structuralism
  • Charter Day
  • Secular Ceremonies: Action, Order, and Evocation
  • Second Semester Convocation
  • Structure, Communitas, and Liminality
  • Baccalaureate
  • Cultural Performances: Rehearsals and Informality
  • Junior Show
  • Messages, Meanings, and Root Paradigms
  • Mary Lyon's Birthday Celebration
  • Old Traditions in New Places: The Oxymoron of "New" Rituals
  • Alumnae Parade and Laurel Chain
  • Constructivist Inquiry and Higher Education Rituals
  • References
  • Index
LC Card Number: 99-055887
LCC Class: LC191
Dewey Class: 306
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