Paper short abstract:

I attempt to compare the new behaviours that have spontaneously emerged following March 11, 2004 with a ritual, focusing both on their common characteristics as well as those which separate them. The aim is to find ways to observe the material aspects of oriented collective behaviours and to uphold the social and interpretive importance of these aspects.

Paper long abstract:

During the last century we have witnessed the development of principal theories that turn on collective actions. One of these types of action was named "ritual" by authors who cross the social sciences, from Durkheim to Rappaport. In my presentation, I consider ritual, from an ecological point of view, to be synonymous with the construction of the sacred. Within this perspective, the preferential element that constitutes a ritual is collective behaviour, as a way to modify the environment and to regulate the system. In this paper, I compare the new behaviours that arise in a spontaneous way around March 11th 2004 terrorists attacks in Madrid with a ritual, while proposing some ways of observing the material aspects of the collective orientated behaviour and of claiming the social and interpretive importance of these aspects. To do so, I will use some of Rappaport's methodological concepts in relation to the theory of the material signs in the ritual.