Zygmunt Bauman takes this further:.
"In an encounter with that familiar world ruled by habits and reciprocally reasserting beliefs, sociology acts as a meddlesome and often irritating stranger. It disturbs the comfortingly quiet way of life by asking questions no one among the "locals" remembers being asked, let alone answered."(Bauman, 1997:14-15).
In other words, questions disturb a comfortable life and defamiliarise the familiar, daily life comes under scrutiny and devaluation. To illustrate this idea Bauman uses a famous short story by Rudyard Kipling:.
"A centipede walked effortlessly on all her hundred legs until a sycophantic courtier began to praise her exquisite memory, which allowed her never to put down the thirty-seventh leg before the eighty-fifth, or the fifty-second before the nineteenth Brutally made self-conscious, the hapless centipede was unable to walk any more." (Bauman, 1997:15).
However, although resentment may be caused by this defamiliarisation, there may well be benefits on offer. It may open up previously unrealised possibilities of a person living with more self-awareness, freedom or control. Because ritual may alter and be clearly seen to alter over time, this can actively help society expand and move to the future, bringing order to lives. Ritual can create a sense of community amongst its participants and reinforce "communitarian values" to hold people together (Turner, 1974:298). Ritual means that we do not need much self-scrutiny or self-analysis, when things are repeated often enough they become familiar and because they are familiar they present no problem and are self explanatory (Bauman, 1997:13-16).
To understand just what ritual can mean to various societies we need to look briefly at some examples. Most native societies had three common characteristics; a rich ceremonial and ritual life, an intimate, conscious relationship with their place and finally a stable "sustainable" culture which may well have gone on for hundreds of years.
