How can ritual theory reinforce our understanding of celebrity culture? Please refer to at least one example.

Order Description

This essay has to refer to the course key readings. I will list the 15 most important below.

(Those sources are about historic debates about the media’s overall impacts on society (positive and negative) James Carey’s analysis of media ‘ritual’ aspect that is media’s role in sustaining or not, a social ‘order’, media’s value of ‘liveness’ )
1) Couldry, Nick (2003) Media Rituals: A Critical Approach, London: Routledge.
2) Carey, James (1989) Communication as Culture. Boston: Unwin Hyman.Chapter 1.

Those sources explore key concepts from sociology and anthropology useful in theorising the media’s social impacts. It examines ‘sacred’ and ‘profane’, symbolic power, framing and liminality.
3) Durkheim, Emile (1995) The Elementary Forms of Religious Life tr. K. Fields. Glencoe: Free Press. pp. 34-39, 208-225.
4) Turner Victor (1974) Dramas… and Metaphors. Cornell University Press, chapter 6, pp 231-242
5) Lazarsfeld, P. and Merton R. (1969) ‘Mass Communication, Popular Taste and Organised Social Action’ in W. Schramm (ed) Mass Communications 2nd edition. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
6) Martin-Barbero, Jesus (1997) ‘Mass Media as a Site of Resacralisation of Contemporary Cultures’ in S. Hoover and K Lundby (eds) Rethinking Media Religion and Culture. Thousand Oaks: Sage

Those sources talk about the key issues from sociology and anthropology: ritual, ritual boundary, symbolic power and ritualisation.
7) Couldry, Nick (2003) Meida Rituals: A Critical Approach, London: Routledge. Chapter 1 secion headed ‘ Understanding the “Order” of Mediated societies.
8) Elliott, Philip (1982) ‘Press performance as political ritual’ in H. Christian (ed) The Sociology of Journalism and the Press. University of Keele, especially pp. 141-155 and 168-177.
9) Bourdieu, Pierre (1990) ‘ Rites of Institution’ in Language and Symbolic Power, Cambridge: Polity, chapter 4.
10) Bell, Catherine (1992) Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice. New York: Oxford University Press, chapter 9.
11) Chaney, David (1986) ‘ The symbolic form of ritual in mass communications’ in P. Golding et al (eds) Communicating Politics. New York: Holmes and Meier.
12) Couldry, Nick (2003) Media Rituals: A Critical Approach, London: Routledge, Chapters one, two and three.

Those sources talk about media events – that is, ritualised public events centred on media production and ask to what extent the most influential, and noe- Durkeimian, model of media events (Dayan and Katz) can account for their complexity.
13) Dayan, Daniel and Katz. Elihu (1992) Media Events: The Live Broadcasting of History, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, Chapter 1 “Defining Media Events”.
14) Hepp, Andreas and Couldry, Nick (2009) Introduction: Media Events in lLobalized Media Cultures in N. Couldry , A, Hepp and F Krotz (eds) media events in a GLoval Age, London: Routledge, pp 1-13.
15) Chaney David (1983) ‘A Symbolic mirror of ourselves: civic ritual in mass society’ Media Culture and Society, 5(2): 119-136.