This article is an analysis, based on school textbooks, of the norms governing literacy practices in elementary education. These latter are treated as a kind of ritual: the symbolic behaviour impacting not so much the manner of the mental representation of reality as the corporeal-perceptive organization of experience. The aim of the article is to show that (1) contrary to classic literacy theory, writing is not always a tec because in many situational and institutional contexts writing practices are not instrumental but ritual practices, and (2) writing is not solely a tool of the intellect corresponding to a set manner of conceptualizing the world, language, and the self, but also a kind of social tool for the discipline of the body: the acquiring of a certain corporeal-perceptive disposition.
This article examines how migration to Wales modifies Polish Catholic families’ religious practices. It focuses on how the First Communion ceremony is performed. Within the Polish migrant community I witnessed three distinct ways of arranging this. Some families travelled to Poland to their parish churches of origin. Of those who celebrated it in Wales, some did so in a Polish church, others in their children’s Catholic school’s church. These choices had different effects. Holding First Communion in Poland confirmed children’s Polish identity and home-country bonds. It exemplified both the fluidity of the families’ intra-European migration experience and the strength of transnational networking. Hold-ing it in the local Polish parish reinforced both families’ and childrens’ identification as Polish Catho-lics. In the school’s church, it strengthened migrant families’ negotiations of belonging and their children’s integration into the Welsh locality. Mothers’ active involvement in all settings led some to contest Polish religious customs and revealed emerging identifications related to children’s wellbeing and belonging. Unlike arrangements traditional in Poland, families’ religious practices in Wales seem to have become more individual, less collective.
This paper invites not to reflect on festivals as a celebration or a transgression but to observe them as «a play with» meaning and communication. The author considers the folklore as a genuine laboratory of observation of everyday life. He illustrates his analysis with the examples of the Binche Carnival (Belgium) and of Labour Day (1st of May) and gives an interpretation with G. Bateson’s concept of «play», as the English anthropologist had used to describe the play of animals at fighting. This leads the author to strongly insist on the small details of behaviours always imprinted with a “not” characteristic of ritual contexts.
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