Disaster Ritual: Explorations of an Emerging Ritual Repertoire

People increasingly look to rituals after a disaster. A silent procession

and a memorial service are carefully and observantly organised,

preparations are begun for a lasting monument in memory of the victims, or

people keep up the tradition of an annual commemoration. Remarkably

enough, this ritual repertoire has received hardly any attention from

researchers. This book is a report on the first exploration of these

rituals which emerged particularly in the 1990s. The exploration focuses

on the situation in the Netherlands. From the case studies analyzed a

strikingly coherent and well-organised repertoire comes to light, which

has become established in a rather short time. There appears to be

interaction with both Dutch and international contexts (i.e., influence

from the memorial rites after the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, the

'Dutroux affair' in Belgium, and the rites after a series of episodes of

street violence in the Netherlands), as well as with previous, more

divergent ritual traces of a Christian-liturgical, general-religious and

profane-secular nature. This study more particularly looks at disaster

ritual from the perspective of contemporary ritual dynamics. As such, it

makes a contribution to gauging the ritual-liturgical milieu today. To

this end, the central concepts of disaster and ritual are first defined.

Next follows an assessment, first in general through a survey of disasters

in the Netherlands and other countries, then on the basis of five Dutch

case studies, each of which illuminates a particular theme in disaster

ritual, and two international case studies (the 'Estonia' ferryboat

disaster and September 11). Then comes a more broadly conceived contextual

and analytic chapter in which the general context of contemporary ritual

developments is elaborated. The closing chapter has the nature of the

familiar 'synthesis and perspective'.