Editing Ritual (section)

===Rites of feasting, fasting, and festivals===
[[File:Carnaval Venecia 14feb2009.jpg|thumb|Masquerade at the [[Carnival of Venice]]]]

Rites of feasting and fasting are those through which a community publicly expresses an adherence to basic, shared religious values, rather than to the overt presence of deities as is found in rites of affliction where feasting or fasting may also take place. It encompasses a range of performances such as communal fasting during [[Ramadan]] by Muslims; the [[Moka exchange|slaughter of pigs]] in New Guinea; [[Carnival]] festivities; or penitential processions in Catholicism.{{sfnp|Bell|1997|p=[https://archive.org/details/ritualperspectiv00bell/page/n137 121]}} Victor Turner described this "cultural performance" of basic values a "social drama". Such dramas allow the social stresses that are inherent in a particular culture to be expressed and worked out symbolically in a ritual catharsis; as the social tensions continue to persist outside the ritual, pressure mounts for the ritual's cyclical performance.<ref>{{cite book|last=Turner|first=Victor|title=Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors: Symbolic Action in Human Society|url=https://archive.org/details/dramasfieldsmeta00turn|url-access=registration|year=1974|publisher=Cornell University Press|location=Ithaca, NY|pages=[https://archive.org/details/dramasfieldsmeta00turn/page/23 23–35]}}</ref> In Carnival, for example, the practice of masking allows people to be what they are not, and acts as a general social leveller, erasing otherwise tense social hierarchies in a festival that emphasizes play outside the bounds of normal social limits. Yet outside carnival, social tensions of race, class and gender persist, hence requiring the repeated periodic release found in the festival.<ref>{{cite book|last=Kinser|first=Samuel|title=Carnival, American Style; Mardi Gras at New Orleans and Mobile|year=1990|publisher=University of Chicago Press|location=Chicago|page=282}}</ref>