Abstract
Parliaments are an important institution of democratic governance. They not only make laws and hold the executive accountable, but they also make claims. Alongside the claim to represent different constituencies, identity groups and interests within a nation is a broader claim (or aim) to mirror society and that nation at large. A parliament’s authority and legitimacy are derived from this claim of representativeness, which in turn has to be underpinned by institutional norms and performed by its members — the legislators, the representatives — and accepted by its citizens. This volume takes institutional claim-making as a starting point and explores how political and social hierarchies operate within parliaments through ceremonial spectacles, formal and informal rules and rituals, art and architecture.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Abeles, M. 1988. ‘Modern Political Ritual: Ethnography of an Inauguration and a Pilgrimage by President Mitterrand’, Current Anthropology, 29(3): 391–404.
Alexander, J.C., Giesen, B. and Mast, J. 2006. Social Performance: Symbolic Action, Cultural Pragmatics and Ritual. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Apter, A. 1999. ‘The Subvention of Tradition: A Genealogy of the Nigerian Durbar’, in G. Steinmetz (ed.) State/Culture: State Formation after the Cultural Turn. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press: 213–252.
Armitage, F., Johnson, R., Malley, R. and Spary, C. 2012. ‘Researching Gendered Ceremony and Ritual in Parliaments’, Feminist Theory, 13(3): 325–336.
Bevir, M. and Rhodes, R.A.W. 2006. Governance Stories. London: Routledge.
Bevir, M. and Rhodes, R.A.W. 2010. The State as Cultural Practice. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Bohman, J. and Rehg, W. eds. 1997. Deliberative Democracy: Essays on Reason and Politics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Butler, J. 1990. Gender Trouble. London: Routledge.
Butler, J. 1997. Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative. London: Routledge.
Celis, K. et al. 2008. ‘Rethinking Women’s Substantive Representation’, Representation, 44(2): 99–110.
Childs, S., Webb, P. and Marthaler, S. 2010. ‘Constituting and Substantively Representing Women: Applying New Approaches to a UK Case Study’, Politics & Gender, 6: 199–223.
Comaroff, J. ed. 1993. Modernity and Its Malcontents: Ritual and Power in Postcolonial Africa. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Crewe, E. 2005. Lords of Parliament: Manners, Rituals and Politics. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Crewe, E. and Müller, M. eds. 2006. Rituals in Parliaments: Political, Anthropological and Historical Perspectives on Europe and the United States. Frankfurt Am Main: Peter Lang.
Debord, G. 1967, translation by Donald Nicholson-Smith. The Society of the Spectacle, trans. 1994. London: Zone Books.
Drexler, J.M. 2007. ‘Politics Improper: Iris Marion Young, Hannah Arendt, and the Power of Performativity’, Hypatia, 22(4): 1–15.
Dryzek, J. 2000. Deliberative Democracy and Beyond: Liberals, Critics, Contestations. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Durkheim, E. 1915. The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, a Study in Religious Sociology. London: G.Allen and Un win.
Edelman, M. 1964. The Symbolic Uses of Politics. Illinois: Illinois Books.
Fraser, N. 1990. ‘Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy’, Social Text, 25/26: 56–80.
Geertz, C. 1980. Negara: The Theatre State in Nineteenth-Century Bali. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Giugni, M., McAdam, D. and Tilly, C. 1999. How Social Movements Matter. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Hawkesworth, M. 2003. ‘Congressional Enactments of Race-Gender: Toward a Theory of Raced-Gendered Institutions’, The American Political Science Review, 97(4): 529–550.
Hobsbawm, E. and Ranger, T. 1983. The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Johnson, R.E. 2014. ‘Haunted by the Somatic Norm: South African Parliamentary Debates on Abortion in 1975 and 1996’, Signs: Journal of Women and Culture, 39(2): 485–508.
Johnson, R.E. and Rai, S.M. Forthcoming. ‘Imagining Pasts and Futures: South Africa’s Keiskamma Tapestry and the Indian Parliament Murals’, in Arundhati Virmani (ed.) The Political Aesthetics of Power and Protest. London: Routledge.
Kertzer, D. 1988. Ritual, Politics and Power. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Krook, M.L. and Mackay, F. eds. 2011. Gender, Politics and Institutions: Towards a Feminist Institutionalism. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Lefebvre, H. 1974. The Production of Space, Trans by D. Nicholson-Smith 1991. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
Lowndes, V. and Roberts, M. 2013. Why Institutions Matter: The New Institutionalism in Political Science. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Lukes, S. 1975. ‘Political Ritual and Social Integration’, Sociology, 9(2): 289–308
Mackay, F., Kenny, M. and Chappell, L. 2010. ‘New Institutionalism through a Gender Lens: Towards a Feminist Institutionalism?’ International Political Science Review, 31(5): 573–588.
Manow, P. 2010. In the King’s Shadow. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Muir, E. 2005. Ritual in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Paley, J. 2002. ‘Towards an Anthropology of Democracy’, Annual Review of Anthropology, 31: 469–496.
Puwar, N. 2004. Space Invaders: Race, Gender and Bodies Out of Place. Oxford: Berg.
Rai, S.M. ed. 2010. ‘Special Issue on Ceremony and Ritual in Parliament’, Journal of Legislative Studies, 16: 3.
Rai, S.M. ed. 2014. ‘Political Aesthetics of the Nation’, Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies
Rai, S.M. ed. Forthcoming. ‘Political Performance: A Framework for Analysing Democratic Polities’, Political Studies.
Roach, J. 1996. Cities of the Dead: Circum-Atlantic Performance. New York: Columbia LIniversity Press.
Saward, M. 2006. ‘The Representative Claim’, Contemporary Political Theory, 5(3): 297–318.
Scheduler, R. 2006. Performance Studies: An Introduction, 2nd ed. London & New York: Routledge.
Seed, P. 1995. Ceremonies of Possession in Europe’s Conquest of the New World 1492–1640. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Spary, C. 2010. ‘Performing Ethno-Linguistic Representation: A Study of Indian Parliamentary Ceremony and Ritual’, Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, 16(3): 311–336.
Spary, C. 2013. ‘Legislative Protest as Disruptive Democratic Practice’, Democratization, 20(3): 392–416.
Spary, C. and Rai, S.M. eds. 2013. ‘Disruptive Democracy: Analysing Legislative Protest’, Special Issue Democratization, 20(3): 385–552.
Squires, J. 2008. “The Constitutive Representation of Gender”, Representation, 44(2): 187–204.
Turner, V.W. 1969. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-structure. London: Routledge and K. Paul.
Virmani, A. 2008. A National Flag for India: Rituals, Nationalism and the Politics of Sentiment. Delhi: Permanent Black.
Waylen, G. 2010. ‘Researching Ritual and the Symbolic in Parliaments: An Institutionalist Perspective’, Journal of Legislative Studies, 16(3): 352–365.
Weatherford, J.M. 1981. Tribes on the Hill: The US Congress Rituals and Realities. New York: Rawson.
Young, I.M. 2002. Inclusion and Democracy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2014 Rachel E. Johnson and Shirin M. Rai
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Johnson, R.E., Rai, S.M. (2014). Introducing Democracy in Practice: Ceremony and Ritual in Parliament. In: Rai, S.M., Johnson, R.E. (eds) Democracy in Practice. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137361912_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137361912_1
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-47244-4
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-36191-2
eBook Packages: Palgrave Political Science CollectionPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)