A.M. Hocart on Ritual: On the Quest for Life, Ceremony, Governance and the Bureaucratic State

Arthur Maurice Hocart (1883-1939), better known as A.M. Hocart, was a British sociocultural anthropologist and ethnographer who was one of the first fieldworkers to study South Pacific societies in depth. While he wrote about many aspects of culture and social organization, his work on the central role of myth and ritual in human affairs stands out as the most enduring and insightful. And yet his work has never received the attention it was due because of his effective alienation from mainstream British academic anthropology. Hocart argued that all people desire the same thing—the good life—and they organize themselves around "life-giving" ritual activities that assure that goal. Ritual organization led eventually to the institution of divine kingship, and the more primitive acephalous tribal organization gave way to social hierarchy and eventually to the bureaucratic state. But the fundamental psychology of people everywhere remains the same—the desire for longevity, vitality, prosperity, health and contentment. The irony is that social reorganizations were transformed into the modern bureaucratic state in which few are able to attain the good life.