Cognitive and Information Sciences' Mind, Technology, and Society (MTS) Speaker Series presents Nicolas Restrepo, Postdoctoral Researcher of Anthropology at the University of California, Davis.

Dr. Restrepo will present on "Explaining the Emergence of a New Ritual".

Description:

Pilgrimage has been the subject of longstanding scholarly attention, but we still lack a clear theory of how these collective rituals emerge. Building such a theory is particularly difficult because we rarely get to observe the birth of a collective tradition. In this project, we have the opportunity to follow the development of a nascent pilgrimage in the Peruvian Altiplano. We begin by arguing that the emergence of a new collective ritual can be understood through the lens of an assurance game. This model allows us to capture initial coordination involved in the emergence of a large-scale ritual, as well as to explore how the particularities of a site - e.g. whether it grants miracles or exerts demands on pilgrims - interact with the interests of the participants. Using our longitudinal data, we then test some of the specific predictions about the early adoption of new rituals that our theoretical model implies. We close by extending our theoretical framework, noting that a more complete model captures two simultaneous dynamics: ritual-goers who choose where to go partly based on how popular (and perhaps miraculous) a site is, and sites that are trying to capture a finite pool of visitors. Overall, our project presents a rare opportunity to study the emergence of a collective ritual, a phenomenon that far from being confined to the particularities of pilgrimage, has implications for key themes across the social sciences.
 

Students, faculty, and staff are welcome to attend!