Rituals are among the most effective forms of human communication and interaction. We may think of rituals as actions in which staging and performing the human body play a central role. By means of rituals, communities are created and the transitions within and in between them organised. In contrast to purely linguistic forms of communication, rituals are social constellations, in which communal social action and its interpretation produce orders and hierarchies.
Which role do rituals play in the genesis of the social dimension in people's lives in contemporary society? Answering this question is what the Berlin study of ritual (Berliner Ritualstudie) aims to contribute to, a study which has been conducted over the past eight years and conceived for a total duration of 12 years. The research focuses upon the importance and meaning of rituals for the learning and education processes of children and adolescents, drawing on rituals from four areas of socialisation, namely family, school, children's and youth culture as well as media. Empirically, the study's main focus is on the children of an inner-city Berlin elementary school and their families, where the research is confronted with the usual conditions prevalent at such inner-city schools: about 300 pupils from 25 different ethnic communities. The school in question is a reform-oriented UNESCO model school with an outstanding Schoolmistress and a very active teaching body.
Methodology: In the field of research thus constructed we are working with qualitative methods, allowing us to address the kinds of question the study asks while sticking closely to the objects of inquiry. At the same time, we aim to adapt and develop these tools in the very process of reconstructing and analysing the empirical data.
As the performative character of ritual-based processes of learning and education is our central focus, we have chosen methods of inquiry which on the one hand shed light on the mise-en-scène and the staging of ritual actions while at the same time yielding information about the meanings which the participants ascribe to the rituals and about the way they grasp and interpret the learning and education processes embodied within them. In order to attain the first goal, we undertake participatory observation as well as video-based observation. In order to do justice to our second aim, large-scale groups discussions and interviews are conducted. Each methods yields different kinds of information, which is accordingly coded and interpreted differently. Given the fundamental limitedness of all methods of inquiry and the known advantages and drawbacks of each one, we attempt in many instances to investigate the same ritual actions with the aid of overlapping methodological tools. In the various constituent parts of our study, the methods are combined and weighted differently according to the structure of the specific field of research and the nature of the questions posed within it.
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