1 The Traditional Formation of the Discourse of Custom and Ritual

The subject of custom and ritual has a long history in China and has been discussed for thousands of years. As a form of self-representation in traditional Chinese society – that is, a perception and generalization of local social realities – it has been approached from multiple angles in different historical contexts.

As discourse phenomena, custom and ritual appeared regularly in pre-Qin era texts and the use of these terms continued into later generations. The two terms could be used separately or combined. When used separately, ritual (li) referred to systematized state rites and protocols; and custom (su) referred to the everyday habits that evolved organically among ordinary people. When used together, “custom and ritual” referred specifically to social situations or cultural peculiarities where traditional Chinese custom and ritual intersected. Tracing their origins, we find that li was originally a cultural construct of the pre-Qin upper class, while su developed over the long term as the cultural practices of ordinary people. In the context of Chinese society, however, the connection between the two never seems to have been severed; instead, they have always complemented each other. In the words of Peng Mu 彭牧:

The Confucian ritual was a tradition that became static and textualized on the basis of ancient custom, always echoing the custom from which it was derived. Over the course of history, elites used ritual to change custom on the one hand, while on the other, custom among ordinary people continually changed ritual.

Custom and ritual represented the parallel and mutually compatible social practices and behaviors of different social classes. The reason that elites looked upon custom with disdain was to maintain the purity and orthodoxy of ritual, because the former could easily influence the direction of the latter.

Historically, not only did custom give rise to and refine ritual, but ritual was always engaged in an intimate reciprocal relationship with the daily practices of local customs. Moreover, custom’s close relation to daily life lent itself easily to change. It also furnished ritual with a basic driving force. It can be said that in the mutual opposition and tension between them, custom and ritual depended on each other for growth.¹

Successive generations of China’s intellectual elite, with their foundation in Confucian thought, always gave equal importance to cultural development and life practices. In the development of a cultural configuration, they used daily customs as a cultural foundation. The intellectual elite took it as their duty to enlighten common people, believing that “changing old customs and habits”² and “using folk customs as the foundation for the development and implementation of the norms of etiquette”³ would lead to national prosperity and safeguard all living creatures, while also acting as a basis for personal conduct.

In commentaries on the Sanli 三禮 (The Three Confucian Classics on Ritual), we can see that custom and ritual were central topics in classical Chinese thought. Consider the following from the Zhouli 周禮: “According to the eight systems for governing the capital and the fiefs … number six is custom and ritual.”⁴ From the Zhouli we also read that “decrees, corporal punishment and prohibitions of the capital and its fiefs, tax and corvée exemptions, custom and ritual, funeral arrangements, sacrificial offerings are all applied according to the principle of land condition. An appropriate ban will be administered.”⁵ From the Liji 禮記, we read that “one cannot accomplish morality and benevolence without ritual; one cannot perfect instruction and guidance without ritual.” In the same volume we read such statements as “ritual follows appropriateness and custom” and “a person with moral integrity practices ritual without changing custom.”⁶ In the Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE), there was a belief, recorded in the Hanshu 漢書, that “Confucius said, ‘when rituals are lost, they need to be sought (once again) from among the people.’”⁷ We can see from these passages that as ritual tended toward ever greater systemization, custom gradually turned into a latent yet decisive contributing factor in the political life of the state. This has been a general rule in the course of world civilization. However, the realization of communal harmony under the rule of an efficient government was strongly interrelated to institutional planning encapsulated in the notions that “in ancient times, when the ruler inspected his vassal states, he ordered the Music Master to present local songs so as to understand the social atmosphere”⁸ and “to govern, a monarch had to steer custom by honoring exemplary behavior.”⁹ These are also examples of “Chinese characteristics” from the pre-Qin era that were inherited by later dynasties.

Huang Zunxian 黃遵憲 (1848–1905), regarded as “the first modern Chinese person to venture into the world,”¹⁰ expressed his ideal of saving China from its social ills through the language of custom and ritual. Huang believed that “transforming social traditions” and “governing the people and transforming the people” were means by which Chinese politics would be able to modernize; that the most important aspects of Chinese society were human relationships and habits; and that “custom and ritual are derived from these.”¹¹

The continued exploration of folk songs, stories, and customs by the intellectual elite at the heart of the modern Chinese folksong movement, which was exemplified by the Peking University journal Geyao zhoukan 歌謠周刊, sparked the modern reform of traditional Chinese custom and ritual. Those folk songs, stories, and customs, once regarded as common in traditional China, entered history’s stage as alien to (or as the Other of) orthodox culture, and became an important cultural resource in the construction of the modern Chinese nation. In a preface to Minsu zhoukan 民俗週刊 in 1928, Gu Jiegang 顧頡剛 (1893–1980) stated: “We must break free from history centered on the elite, and from history anchored in the lives and culture of sages. We must bring the history of all people into the light.”¹² Gu’s appeal to public sentiment was intended to rouse criticism of the cultural traditions of the sages and elevate the historical perspectives focusing on ordinary people. Leading intellectuals who received a modern education were driven by a strong sense of historical mission to save China from disaster and ensure its survival, and to awaken the Chinese people; they sought, by a “rediscovery” of folk values, to construct a narrative of revolution and reform. With this in mind, these intellectuals logically understood the society and culture of their time such that “custom” and “ritual” were separate or even opposed to one another. Take for instance the Vernacular Movement in opposition to wenyanwen 文言文 (classical literary language), the traditional writings of classical Chinese. The launch of the literary revolution sought to subvert the old literature of the elite. The traditional discourse of custom and ritual was now being defined clearly in terms of a duality. Terms such as “the people,” “folk custom,” and “folk literature and art” referred to the lives or culture of common people, and concepts such as “the popular mood,” “the education of the people,” and “people’s livelihood” served as foundations for social revolution or reform. As Lü Wei 吕微 said, the nationalist ideology on which modern nations are founded is the structural result of the renewed exploration and transformation of certain cultural traditions. Moreover, the cultural community of an imagined nation-state can be invented via the exploration of popular cultural traditions. Ideas of the exploration of “the people” during the May Fourth period were first used to express a belief in society and modernity; when scholars and revolutionaries discovered that the ideas and beliefs attached to “the people” could transcend narrow-minded historical concepts of the nation, folk culture naturally came to be regarded as a source of strength for cultural constructs for the modern nation-state.¹³

It is not difficult to see that the Confucian tradition, which laid equal stress on the unity of knowledge and practice as well as that of cultural constructs and life practices, formed a continuous link with the intellectual elites of the May Fourth generation, and took on a new dimension. On the one hand, these elites bid farewell to the traditional scholar identity by aligning themselves with the people; in this modern social context, they forged a role for themselves as the new elite. On the other hand, custom and ritual were traditionally dichotomous, and were not absolutely equivalent to officialdom and “the people”; nonetheless, based on the need for enlightenment, the new elite intentionally placed custom and ritual as cultural categories in diametric opposition to one another and “officialdom” and “the people” as diametrically opposed social classes. The modern meanings of custom and ritual thus came into being, along with a sense of opposition or antagonism between them. An overview of the Republican era reveals that the remaking of custom and ritual was a matter of great interest among both the government and the intellectual elite. The scholarly inheritance of the tradition of applying theories of governance was focused more on actual social problems and was the subject of scholarly works. By reflecting on the relationship between themselves and ordinary people, and between scholarship and politics, a minority of scholars also attempted to understand and present an overall sense of the lives of ordinary people and folk culture. Yet, because this was not sufficiently in step with the political demands of the era, it merely occupied a marginal position – in both the social movements of the time and in academic discourse.¹⁴ Over time, this may be seen as a new variation in the traditional discourse of custom and ritual in modern society, the so-called “new wine in old bottles.”

In summary, it can be seen that a society based on custom and ritual took shape in China from an early time; a social formation emerged in which national politics and civil autonomy functioned jointly. First, as a social reality, “ritual” integrated with national politics to form a cultural system that would gradually coalesce. In the realm of “custom,” meanwhile, various social models of people’s “micro governments” emerged as a function of local lives. On this basis, the interaction between custom and ritual, which had long been present in Chinese social history, juggled the roles of maintaining both “national unity” and local community advancement. Second, in terms of discourse development, custom and ritual gradually became important discursive tools in traditional Chinese society involving officialdom, the scholarly elite, and ordinary people and assumed various functions among different social classes. Among the ruling class, the discourse of custom and ritual was the art of governing the country and keeping the people under control; among the groups of the scholarly elite, it was the art of settling down and getting on with one’s life;¹⁵ for ordinary people, in contrast, it was a means of social interaction. A cultural identity centered on a so-called “society of custom and ritual” thus formed, and was internalized as an inherent rule by which “insiders” could manage their livelihood, understand society, and conduct government affairs. It is also important to note that although traditional society viewed “the control of custom through ritual” and “the intersection of custom and ritual” as socio-political ideals, within the framework of how society operated, such ideals were frequently premised on each social strata acting voluntarily and in its own way. This means that only with “custom” and “ritual” separate and secure in their own traditions was there a guarantee that the two could interact systematically under the effective control of a social order. By the time “changes not felt for millennia” had befallen modern China, a group of intellectual elites dedicated themselves to “placing ordinary people at the front and center of academic history”;¹⁶ with that, the modern relevance of the traditional narrative of custom and ritual had been discovered, while the traditional political framework of a “society based on custom and ritual” was dealt a violent and unprecedented shock.

2 Uncovering the Modern Implications of “Custom” and “Ritual”

Traditional China boasted a complex social system. A complicated and deep-seated symbiotic relationship existed between the lives of ordinary people and the politics of the state, which is of interest to the academic community. Yet, in existing research on the nature of Chinese society (“social nature”), those who focus on the nation as a “unified domain” frequently lay too much emphasis on the social direction of the “rites of passage”; those who focus on local communities lay too much emphasis on the development of systems of local autonomy and how they operate. From this, they formed certain biased observations of Chinese society. When examining the relationship between officials and ordinary people, or between the centralization of state power and popular will, these absolutists thoroughly disregard the interrelation between the two. They even go so far as to emphasize the opposition between the two, while neglecting the former social realities of custom and ritual-based Chinese society, its political wisdom, and discursive forms.¹⁷ Chinese society has long had a highly stable structure. It is a misrepresentation to overemphasize alienation and opposition between officialdom and ordinary people; it is likewise a misrepresentation to neglect the various forms of cooperation between the power held by ordinary people and the centralization of state power. As for the complex, deep-seated symbiotic relationship between these two forms of power, one group of scholars have in recent years taken fieldwork as a starting point from which they have synthesized research methods from historiography, folklore, anthropology, and other disciplines. They have aimed to “treat culture as a set of dynamic elements in which the individual is a historical subject, and in which the individual’s impact on the course of history is examined via their daily life over extended periods.”¹⁸ By exploring the details of life in regional China, they seek to understand and interpret Chinese social traditions in their entirety and via a bottom-up approach, which is certainly innovative. Simultaneously, and unlike the objectives of the researchers outlined above, a group of so-called “modern Neo-Confucian” scholars, one that seeks to benefit mankind and put Confucian traditions into practice and is committed to combining knowledge and practice, tends toward a top-down approach as they seek to interpret Chinese traditions. In the multiple interactions between ideology and practice stretching over a century, these have been highly influential socio-cultural movements both in China and abroad.¹⁹ Both movements focus on the details of social life as evidence of the construction of the social order. Each had its own origin and, in objective terms, formed a complementary relationship with echoes of the other. Due to space considerations, the main object of enquiry in this paper is the former group.

In the early stages of research into custom and ritual in the modern era, “custom and ritual” was frequently used on a conceptual level as a generic term for folklore, or specifically referred to “folk beliefs,”²⁰ while “a society based on custom and ritual” was used as a characterization of Chinese society.²¹ In terms of research orientation, although the connection between ritual and custom was generally considered, this connection was often broadly stated in terms of ritual being derived from custom, ritual being undergirded by custom, and the changes that ritual and custom underwent. This approach stopped short of providing a wider overview or understanding of Chinese society and cultural history. Since the 1980s, certain scholars have attempted to probe the nature of Chinese society from the perspective of officialdom and the people working in tandem, as well as the intermingling of ritual and custom. Although Chang Jincang’s 常金倉 “Research on Custom and Ritual of the Zhou Dynasty” concentrated on the development and evolution of the Zhou dynasty (ca. 1046– 256 BCE) system of rites and protocols, his assessment that “ritual was derived from custom,” “custom and ritual were complementary,” and that “ritual was hierarchical, while custom was arbitrary” can be said to be well-founded.²² Yang Zhigang 楊志剛 was among the first to focus on how “in Chinese culture, custom and ritual coupled with one another to form a unique system and served a crucial function; they influenced and regulated historical development through the dynamics of contradictory movements.” Mainly, however, the integrative, guiding functions of his chronological survey offer no discussion of the corresponding social system or its mechanisms.²³ On the emergence of the term “custom and ritual” in Chinese history, Wang Guimin 王貴民 offers insight into its split status. He provides a broad overview of Chinese cultural history as a starting point; his understanding of custom and ritual is such that it constituted “a form of movement involving reciprocal absorption of learning and integration,” thereby laying a foundation for political rule and society in traditional China.²⁴ Wang’s insight is enlightening. Shao Fengli’s 邵鳳麗 attention to the discourse of “custom” and “ritual” is a reflection of the nature of Chinese society. For Shao, “the words ‘custom’ and ‘ritual’ encapsulate traditional Chinese culture. They represent cultural patterns in which ritual is embedded within custom, in which life is lived by rites and customs.” Simultaneously, Shao also draws attention to the intimate link between custom and ritual concerning lived reality.²⁵ Liu Zhiqin 劉志琴, by contrast, advocated the difference between “custom” and “ritual” as a point of departure. For Liu, “a study of the necessities of life of the Chinese people from the point of view of the interaction between custom and ritual helps us to gain a deeper understanding of China’s national conditions and the nature of its people.” His highly pertinent observation that “the history of Chinese thought ought to extend beyond the limits imposed by the history of ideas; expounding the sequences of ideas behind Chinese thought in terms of the interaction between custom and ritual is a means of re-evaluating the value of Chinese intellectual history” is even more important.²⁶

Generally speaking, the research outlined in the preceding paragraphs takes Chinese social history and discursive forms related to custom and ritual, as well as social realities, as its starting point. It holds that the division and interaction between custom and ritual are related to the general nature of Chinese society, a point of view that is quite innovative. Its focus remains essentially on top-down interpretations of Chinese history in which “ritual is used to change local custom, and elite ideas undergo socialization”;²⁷ nonetheless, it underestimates the cultural creativity of regional or local communities, and as a result, it struggles to capture the overall landscape of the traditional interaction between custom and ritual in Chinese society. Other scholars, who constitute a minority, no longer view the panorama of Chinese history through the lens of “custom” and “ritual”; rather, their focus lies on specific historical periods in an attempt to explain the relationship between the overall political structure of Chinese society and the nation’s social mechanisms. Luo Zhitian 羅志田, for instance, believes that beginning in the Southern Song dynasty (1127–1279) and in light of the “emptying of the counties” that took shape under a unified domain, scholars launched sustained efforts to develop lower social classes via methods centered on “the courtesy of the common people,” and reminded people that “we do not always need to focus on the opposition or even the confrontations between ‘the regions’ and ‘the nation’; we should also see that the two complement each other.”²⁸ Geng Bo 耿波 has traced the source of the Zhou dynasty politics of ritual, viewing “the interaction between custom and ritual” as a form of political connection and social practice between villagers, scholars, and the sovereign, and elaborating on the capacity of traditional Chinese custom and ritual to appeal to all citizens.²⁹

Distinct from the research paths described above, a certain number of scholars have in recent years used field research as a starting point for their work to connect the Chinese social discourse of “custom” and “ritual” and their reciprocal practices with the process of national unification and the political traditions, large and small, of regional social development, demonstrating the vitality of broader academic perspectives and empirical research. In this regard, it should first be noted that David Faure has dedicated himself over the long term to fieldwork investigations of communities in various regions of China, viewing local religions, sacrificial offerings to ancestors, the creation of community festivals, popular textual traditions, temple construction and so forth as “meaningful signifiers of ritual.” Faure’s purpose has been to “re-establish the process by which local communities integrated into the Chinese empire” by explaining how local communities acquired and identified with the characteristics of their own history, as well as how they accepted and integrated into the history of a national unified cultural domain.³⁰ By conducting case studies in the field, Zhao Shiyu 趙世瑜 has devoted himself to the integration of macro history and micro history, stating that this is “because history was originally one, just as life was originally one.”³¹ This leads to the suggestion that “top-down” and “bottom-up” research angles may be integrated. Zhao also cites the example of Jin temples in Taiyuan 太原, Shanxi province; he describes in meticulous detail the circumstances broadly shared by the state and local communities after “custom” had become part of “ritual.”³² This relationship between custom and ritual, resulting from a combination of social forces, was one of the practical forms of the cultural and political model characterized by the “interaction between custom and ritual” within Chinese society. In the same vein, the present author believes that the structure of traditional Chinese society, characterized by the interaction between custom and ritual, could be established and endure only via a historical process founded on the mutual absorption and constant negotiation between the diversity of regional communities and a national unified domain. Furthermore, the cultural identity of folk society was the foundation for the political framework of “custom” and “ritual.”³³ Liu Tieliang 劉鐵梁 believes that the reciprocal relationship between state politics and civil autonomy not only gave social organizations their fundamental shape, but also led to cross-cultural phenomena in social life.³⁴

Although clear discursive differences existed between state ritual and folk custom, the two should not be juxtaposed as two different cultural entities, but rather as two closely related but different forms of expression within the one culture. It is just that the former tended strongly toward institutional rules and regulations at the national political level, and the latter tended toward a kind of spontaneous transmission in the lives of common people.³⁵ It is not difficult to appreciate why Zheng Zhenman 鄭振滿 has summarized the research paradigm used in historical anthropology as one that “emphasizes (the role of) folk literature and of fieldwork investigation, endeavors to return to historical sites, and researches history via folklore.”³⁶ Nonetheless, to fully realize “the research of history via folklore,” it would be vital to undertake comprehensive studies encompassing folklore and the administrative functions of the state, as well as the growth of regional communities; that is, studies that would integrate long-term, broad, and micro-political perspectives.

It may be said that actively contributing to national politics and the construction of local communities was one of folk custom’s political orientations, and that with its characteristic stability and reproducibility, it had a sustained effect on local social life; it endowed individual citizens with a sense of belonging and a sense of meaning in life, which was the root of folklore. In terms of social practices, major tension existed between the statutory nature of national institutions, as represented by ritual, and the spontaneous nature of everyday people’s lives, as represented by custom, leading to mutual benefit and complementarity, but also mutual restriction and exclusion. “Mutual benefit and complementarity” meant that the governance of the nation altered the space available to folk custom, promoting constant change. To a certain extent, the development of folk custom also influenced the formulation and amendment of national governance strategies. “Mutual restriction and exclusion,” on the other hand, refers to the relation of control and counter-control between custom and ritual. The Chinese socio-political tradition always drew on the interaction between custom and ritual as a link between national politics and nongovernmental “micropolitics,” and as a means by which to build the legitimacy of state power on the sanctity of folk traditions. Thus, any possible mutual restriction and exclusion in the relation between the two were lessened or circumvented.

3 Findings from the Field on the Interaction between Custom and Ritual

During our fieldwork investigations in rural northern China, we found the aforementioned “interaction between custom and ritual” to be not merely a social phenomenon with ample expression in different locations; it is also a concept that has been universally internalized by ordinary people. In their dealings with other people, villagers frequently combine the two sets of rules from custom and ritual, being mindful of “respecting reason” (ritual) but also of the need for “the common touch.” When combined, the two elements form a whole in the culture of everyday life. In rural public opinion, the appropriateness of a person’s words and deeds and the suitability of their social interactions often hinge on whether they observe reason and understand ritual. Behind this discourse, an implicit logic of ritual and a public mechanism are at work.

For instance, in Wazicun village 窪子村 in Shandong province, the construction of historical memory embodies multiple interactive practices involving numerous people at various times and in various places, manifesting a process in which individual memory is integrated into collective memory. Many older villagers, whether on the main street on a warm winter’s day, at banquets held by family and friends, in the fields or the marketplace, or in small factories and groceries, spend extended periods of time “shooting the breeze” over topics both old and new,³⁷ savoring the mood over long and repeated expressions, and adding remarks to the conversation between constant sipping and tasting. Their conversations appear to be highly discursive, but ultimately always point to a differentiation between “ritual” and “reason.” These villagers, who mainly use colloquial language as their means of interaction, do not discriminate between “ritual” and “reason”; they merely borrow from the national discourse of the norms of ritual, to emphasize the legitimacy and transcendence of local ethics. I also noted that those people who were mindful of “ritual” or “old ritual” upheld each idea of “national orthodoxy” that was dear to them in the face of “people who push the envelope” and were very fond of community performances or family-based ritual activities – a simple case of divergent understandings of what constituted “national orthodoxy.” Citing the example of a dragon society in Fanzhuang 范莊, a town in Zhao county in the south of Hebei province, Stephan Feuchtwang believes that peasants who participated in martial arts performances at temple fairs did so in accordance with how they imagined state-derived norms of ritual, using symbolic performance techniques to strengthen the social order, not to challenge the state for political resources.³⁸ It is evident that against the backdrop of “state authority in late imperial China” and cultural concepts that stretched across the globe, “ordinary Chinese people possessed their own means of applying imperial metaphors to assert their status as members of their community.”³⁹

It is also common to hear expressions such as “first the temple, then the village” in rural areas of northern China. Behind statements such as this are implicit demands for the people to be able to establish villages in the name of the sacred and for integration into the national system. In village discourse, the act of building a temple is analogous to the ritual of “separate stoves” in a family separation. “Separate stoves” does not refer simply to economic behavior such as the distribution of household utensils or household debts between a father and son; it also refers to the need to invest the new household with a stand-alone identity through social interaction. For the same reason, an inhabited area without a temple, regardless of population size, is viewed merely as a settlement rather than an independent village community. A settlement can only qualify as a village after construction on a temple has started, and a cosmic system of humans, ghosts, and gods is enshrined. Even more vital is the ability to have direct contact with the national polity via the construction process, allowing the people to be “within reach of civilization.” Even if they are located in a remote region, people still establish a space-time order of heaven and earth in the name of imperial power and the gods, and a value system. Moreover, almost all of China’s legends, traditional operas, and colloquial huaben 話本 stories that deal with historical themes relate to imperial power and deities. The reasoning is the same.

Doubtless, the state always had “a profound influence on daily life in rural society,”⁴⁰ but in the rural context, “the state” was also often viewed as a cultural resource that could supply discussion, exchange, repackaging, and the adaptation of ideas. Acceptance of top-down state institutions was mandatory, but ordinary Chinese people possessed a corresponding path of their own which frequently sought improvement in their lives via a process of acceptance, replacement, and reconstruction. This interface between the “state” and the “people” thus has multiple implications. Clearly, the national government’s pursuit of the integration of custom and ritual can only be realized with broad-based cooperation from across society, and thus it must reserve space for a society in which micropolitics can operate.

4 Conclusion

In traditional and modern China, an interactive, symbiotic relationship has always existed between national politics and popular society. This proposition has always been neglected by Western political tradition. China possesses a social tradition in which “custom” and “ritual” merge, which guides and regulates people’s behavior and speech. This is distinct from the emphasis on the absolute rule of law in Western societies. Folk culture is, after all, suffused with the life wisdom and collective will of a region’s ordinary people; it is sustained by folk society’s moral and ethical concepts, spiritual needs, and value system formed over thousands of years, forming comparatively stable norms for group behavior. Both separation and cooperation existed between the state’s will to power and folk society’s self-generated “normative” power; there was disagreement between the two, but also dialogue, and a striving, via cooperation and dialogue, to elevate everyday norms into the realm of public values.

There is, in other words, an aspect to the two discourses of “custom” and “ritual” lacking general agreement. However, another way of approaching it is to say that the value and vitality of the traditional Chinese interaction between custom and ritual lie precisely therein.⁴¹ The essential point about this interaction is support in the form of wide-ranging social involvement, and the linkage between national politics and civil “micropolitics,” which ensured that society’s internal mechanisms functioned smoothly and eliminated real or potential social crises through cultural identity. This tradition has been severely challenged by the advent of modern civilization, and appears, on the surface, to have withdrawn from mainstream Chinese civilizational heritage. However, the legacy of this tradition has not truly been lost; rather, it has been maintained as part of local social life. A resurgence began in the 1980s, echoing in the social sphere the sustained and deep national reforms of the period. Particularly now, in the present era, with a social landscape characterized by “space-time compression,” a situation of unprecedented complexity has emerged amid international trends, national politics, and local communities. Topics related to custom and ritual touch upon not only the construction of national and local life, but international geopolitical issues as well. In a time of accelerating globalization and informatization, connections across space and time have become simple and direct, putting “the interaction between custom and ritual” further in the spotlight. As every country faces multiple considerations of international regulations, national legal rights, and civil governance, the traditional political wisdom and social mechanisms embedded in the interaction between custom and ritual may be useful.