Abstract
What purpose do secular rites serve?
In a functionalist perspective, too much importance has gene rally been given to the integrating function of political rites, and too exclusive an interest has been shown in those which extol order and which aim to show a national society's cohesion around common reference values expressed through symbols.
It could well be that instead of contributing to the integration of the overall community, they reinforce a specific group which is trying to exercise power. Thus some rites appear above all in con flict situations, whether they mime hostility in order to get rid of it through catharsis, or dramatize and therefore exacerbate antago nisms.
Just as religious rites tend to justify belief in the sacred and to reinforce related behaviour, political secular rites fulfil with regard to the modern sacred (i.e. that which could not be challen ged in principles, in ideology, and in power), important functions of power legitimation of asserting a hierarchy of roles, values and priorities, and of moral guidance and intensive change which is both playful and mobilizing.