Inaugural meeting of the SIEF working group on the Ritual Year
An inaugural meeting proposing the establishment of a SIEF working group on “The Ritual Year” was held in the Conference Room, Department of Celtic and Scottish Studies, University of Edinburgh, 27 George Square, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK, on Sunday, 11 July 2003, at 10 am.
The meeting had been announced in association with a conference of the Traditional Cosmology Society on "The Ritual Year" organised by Dr Aude Le Borgne, which had been held on 7-10 July. Some members of that conference who were interested in the new working group were unable to attend the meeting, but eight members were present.
The meeting was convened by Dr Emily Lyle who had previously prepared a proposal with others interested and had made an approach to the President of SIEF, Professor Regina Bendix. Dr Lyle read out her response at the start of the meeting. Professor Bendix welcomed the idea of a working group on “The Ritual Year” and advised about the process of putting the proposal for its formation forward at the first opportunity which would be in April 2004 when the next SIEF conference would be held in Marseilles.
A provisional committee was formed pending the decision of the Marseilles conference about the establishment of the proposed working group. It was agreed that the proposer and seconders of the proposal should become members of the committee and Dr Emily Lyle, the proposer, was elected President. Dr Irina Sedakova of the Russian Academy of Sciences was elected Secretary and Dr Aude Le Borgne of the University of Edinburgh was elected Treasurer. The other signatories of the proposal, Dr Terry Gunnell of the University of Iceland, Professor Patricia Lysaght of University College, Dublin, and Dr George Mifsud-Chircop of the University of Malta, were invited to join the committee. In addition, Marcus Baly of University College, Cork, who was present at the meeting, and Professor Birgitta Skarin Frykman of the University of Gothenburg were elected committee members.
In advance of the Edinburgh meeting, it had been announced that presentations could be made on behalf of those unable to attend as well as by those who were there and interesting statements received beforehand were read out from: Professor Birgitta Skarin Frykman, Professor Thomas A. DuBois, of the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and Molly Carter, of the University of Sheffield. Dr Aude Le Borgne then made a presentation that included a web-based tutorial that she had prepared for students studying Scottish calendar customs. This led into discussion of establishing a website for the working group and it was agreed that this would be a good idea.
These presentations, and the papers at the preceding Traditional Cosmology Society conference, made it abundantly clear that there was a very active interest in the field and that there were many ideas to be explored. It was accordingly agreed that the proposed working group would aim at holding an annual conference. The Secretary announced that George Mifsud-Chircop was prepared to organise a conference in Malta on 20-24 March 2005. Other potential organisers who had suggested possible venues for the future were Irina Sedakova, on a boat on the Volga, Russia, Birgitta Skarin Frykman, at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, and Marion Bowman, at the Open University, Milton Keynes, England.
Thought was given to the format of the conferences with a view to their being both well focussed and open to new ideas. It was suggested that each conference should include: (1) papers on one or two topics relevant to the location of the conference and/or any festival it features, the topics to be chosen by the local organiser; (2) papers and a discussion panel on the hypothesis of the life-cycle parallel; (3) papers on any additional themes agreed by the committee; and (4) papers offered on any aspect of the ritual year that are accepted by the local organiser.
The working group on “The Ritual Year” was established under the following bylaw of SIEF (Société Internationale d'Ethnologie et de Folklore): "Bylaws Art. 13: Scholarly commissions shall be established to foster special areas and fields of European ethnology and folklore. Every member of the Society can suggest to establish new commissions, seconded at least by five (5) other members of the Society. The Executive Board may decide to create scholarly commissions to undertake special tasks or to investigate certain problems connected with furthering the field of European ethnology and folklore."
The proposal for the working group was accepted at the SIEF conference held at Marseilles in April 2004, and the following statement was formulated about its proposed activities.
The SIEF working group on "The Ritual Year" will be able to serve as a most valuable forum for discussion. We would expect our initial meeting to begin to map out the possibilities for the immediate future and to decide on the venue for the first extended gathering. There is a considerable choice among materials and approaches and the focus might well change from time to time and from conference to conference. We would plan to be flexible and in particular to make sure that we hear presentations from scholars representing a wide range of countries and approaches. Some possible aspects are: 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.
