Rituals in Parliaments: Political, Anthropological and Historical Perspectives on Europe and the United States

By bringing together three different academic disciplines - anthropology, political science and history - and covering a variety of different parliamentary assemblies, both in Europe and in the United States, this book aims to offer a fresh approach to parliamentary studies. The authors assess the importance of ritual and symbolic communication in different parliamentary settings. The underlying question that each practitioner and scholar addresses is: Do parliamentary rituals really matter? Some of the contributors argue that legislative procedure is more telling of the role and reputation that a parliament has in a given society than its rituals and ceremonies. Others stress the relevance of these ritual expressions for conveying political sense and meaning to the public.

The Editors: Emma Crewe is an Honorary Research Fellow at the Department of Anthropology of University College London. In 2005 she published the results of her field research in the British House of Lords.
Marion G. Müller is a Professor of Mass Communication at International University Bremen (IUB) in Germany. A political scientist by training she has worked and published extensively on symbolic, ritual and visual communication.