The Role of the Media in Shaping and Propagating May Day Rituals

The Communist Party of Yugoslavia’s (CPY) rise to power in 1945 was followed by a period of fundamental socio-political changes that encompassed all aspects of life. In order to establish a complete political and ideological authority, the government attempted to suppress all elements which, in their view, were not aligned with the doctrine of the Communist Party. As a result, everything that was perceived as remnants of the old socio-political order was marginalised, such as religion, tradition and customs. Moreover, reinterpretation of the past also took place, as well as creation of new rituals and Tito’s cult of personality. Accordingly, a completely new calendar of official, state holidays was established, deprived of any national or religious tradition. One of those holidays was May Day, which was celebrated for two days and whose purpose, like most other holidays of that period, was to create uniqueness of feelings and actions in society, focusing on the working class, socialism, CPY, Yugoslavia and Josip Broz Tito. Besides, celebrations of major anniversaries and holidays, including May Day, presented an opportunity for transmission of ideological and political messages, most often articulated through numerous slogans which clearly defined the direction in which the society should move. The media played a key role in this process. Therefore, the central part of the paper consists of the analysis of newspaper articles from Glas Slavonije in order to understand its role in the implementation of those new political rituals and social values.

Whether conservative Nicholas II? The political views of the last autocrat and his political ritual

For the first time in historiography, the article examines the nature of the political views and political ritual of Nicholas II and the correlation of these factors, which had a decisive influence on the internal political situation of the Russian Empire in the late 19th - early 20th centuries. The author comes to the conclusion that in modernizing societies, political rituals do not so much reveal, but hide the true political views of the modernizing ruler.

The Politics of Worship

Cases of politically oriented rituals used to maintain the kingdom of Judah and its successor societies are surveyed from the beginning of the Davidic monarchy through to the Hasmonaean era. Preference is given to the concept of “national religion” instead of “official” or “state religion” to describe attempts to centralize worship on Jerusalem during this period. Challenges were posed to these efforts by Judah’s internal religious pluralism. Social configurations at the family and local levels were maintained by forms of worship not always amenable to subordination to centralized authority. After a general discussion of the concept of political rituals, interactions between the impulse towards a national religion and forms of family and local cultic practices are described. The ideology of kingship (especially in the royal psalms), and the politics of sacrifice in the post-exilic era receive particular attention.

Made in Bharat

This chapter evaluates neoliberal spirituality in India and its relationship to public space and dominant political values by evaluating prime minister of India Narendra Modi’s 2015 inauguration of the International Day of Yoga with a vast public ritual. Drawing on Steven Lukes’s suggestion that political rituals manipulate an agenda in order to make it appear that community power is at play when in fact they empower a select few, the author argues that Modi’s Yoga Day demonstration demarcated out-groups and empowered a heteropatriarchal Hindu elite. Yoga was an instrument of domination through which Modi mainstreamed Hindutva, the position that the strength and unity of India depend on its “Hindu-ness,” and that therefore unorthodox or foreign social practices and religions should be resisted.

Katyń Anniversaries in 1990–2010. The Position and Functions of Political Ritual in the Polish Culture of Remembrance. Research Report

The main goal of the research is to show the functional dimension of the political rituals associated with the celebrations of the Katyń massacre anniversaries in 1990-2010. Using the method of political linguistics, the study makes it possible to identify ten topoi organizing the Katyń anniversary discourse. They include the topos of “an innocent victim”, “violated justice”, “compensation”, “fair Russians”, “friends Muscovites”, “elite”, as well as the topos of “a shared field of remembrance, reconciliation” (“from foes to friends”), the topos of mutual forgiveness and the anniversary as a special occasion, or the topos of “inhuman land”. The pragmatic-semantic analysis of the contents of media reports accompanying the Katyń celebrations allows the author to show a number of functions that the Katyń ritual performed in the Polish culture of remembrance in 1990–2010. The study of functions proceeds from emotional, through normative, legitimization, integration and educational functions, to the performative function.

Construction of symbolic equality in Norwegian political rituals

How is equality expressed in political rituals? How do we know whether we are witnessing equality? How is equality connoted symbolically? Such questions consider the appearance of a phenomenon that, probably, does not yet exist. This article aims at exploring symbolic constructions of equality in Norwegian political rituals from the theoretic standpoints of intersectionality and democratic equality. To achieve this aim, I analyze symbolism of three ritual dimensions: surroundings, participants’ actions and time (use and division). The methodological tools are ethnographic observation and interpretation. My analysis indicates that, in the Norwegian political context, equality manifests in symbols of transparency, openness, availability, solidarity, care, love and access to power possessors for citizens. These symbols are embedded in habitual forms of punctuality, physical contact, singing and emotional expression.