Ceremony and Ritual in Parliament

Ceremony and Ritual in Parliament breaks new ground in the study of legislatures. It combines mainstream historical and social science approaches with cultural theory to consider how parliamentary ritual is constructed through ceremony, space and socialisation. The focus is on the marginalised groups especially women and members of ethnic minorities who seek inclusion as representatives in democratic legislatures.
This book assesses aspects of the role that ceremony and ritual in legislatures play, especially but not exclusively, in their gendered and racialised dimensions. Within this broad frame, it considers the impact of space, identity, ritual and/or ceremony on the institutional form of parliament, how power is shaped within it, how the behaviour of members is facilitated, constrained and shaped, how power and rituals interact to and how they impinge upon the relationships between representative institutions and citizens. Contributions are theoretical and empirical, comparative or single-country studies of national or sub-national legislatures. They have interdisciplinary, historical, or postcolonial perspectives that contribute to this emerging field in the study of parliaments.
This book was previously published as a special issue of the Journal of Legislative Studies.

Shirin M. Rai is Professor in the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Warwick, UK.

1. Ceremony and Ritual in Parliament: Preface Shirin M. Rai 2. Analysing Ceremony and Ritual in Parliament Shirin M. Rai 3. The Archi-Texture of Parliament: Flaneur as Method in Westminster Nirmal Puwar 4. An Anthropology of the House of Lords: Socialisation, Relationships and Rituals Emma Crewe 5. The Speaker, Parliamentary Ceremonies and Power Faith Armitage 6. Disrupting Rituals of Debate in the Indian Parliament Carole Spary 7. Researching Ritual and the Symbolic in Parliaments: An Institutionalist Perspective Georgina Waylen 8. Rules and Rituals: The Case of South Africa’s New Committee System Victoria Hasson 9. Pinning the Butterfly: Women, Blue-Collar and Ethnic Minority MPs vis-à-vis Parliamentary Norms and the Parliamentary Role of the Group Representative Karen Celis and Bram Wauters 10. The Gendered Dimensions of Rituals, Rules and Norms in the Chilean Congress Susan Franceschet