Estimated Costs and Benefits of Extreme Rituals in Mauritius
Why do people willingly engage in painful or exhausting rituals with no obvious material reward?
Why do people perform rituals?
While researchers often try to answer the question of ritual participation from an outside (etic) point of view, the inside (emic) perspective is no less important. Dimitris Xygalatas together with Peter Maňo investigated the local understanding of various rituals performed by Mauritian Hindus.
Though the results lend support to an old anthropological observation that rituals are performed because "it has always been done that way", it seems that more demanding rituals trigger a wider spectrum of emic explanations. These explanations often relate to pressing and specific concerns and needs of performers.
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