The symbolism of rituals creates a shared understanding of events among group members. In the context of romantic relationships, a shared understanding of relationship status transitions may be associated with greater commitment and higher quality relationships. We argue that couples with differing retrospective accounts of their premarital courtship may not have had clear discussions or ritual...

Background Works of artistic and cultural expression have been celebrated, censored, deplored and

The purpose of this paper is to gain insight into the effects of practicing short, frequent and structured reflection breaks interspersed with the learning material in a computer-based course. To that end, the study sets up a standardised control trial with 2 groups of secondary-school pupils. The study shows that, while performance is not affected by these embedded “reflection rituals”, they s...

This paper examines the relationship between architecture and civil participation by specifically looking at the formal attributes of Rabin Square in Tel Aviv, its development as a public urban space, its nationally symbolic meaning, and its civic role. A major conclusion of this study is that public assembly and the physical space in which it occurs are indivisible, revealing architecture’s un...

In his Tree of Knowledge (ToK) System, Henriques (2003) posits that the human ego or "self" has evolved because human beings are the only animals that have had to justify their behavior to others. This essay provides evidence for this Justification Hypothesis (JH) from everyday life sociology, starting with the work of George Herbert Mead and Charles Horton Cooley, and focuses on research relat...

This paper reviews the literature on the religion–technology nexus, drawing up a research agenda and offering preliminary empirical insights. First, I stress the need to explore the new politics of space as a consequence of technological development, emphasizing questions about the role of religion in effecting a form of religious (neo)imperialism, and uneven access to techno-religious spaces. ...

This article is a qualitative review of 32 publications appearing since J. Bossard and E. Boll's (1950) seminal work on family rituals was conducted. Definitions are offered whereby a distinction is made between family routines as observable practices and family rituals as symbolic representations of collective events. The relative occurrence of family routines, as described in the literature, ...