focusing as it does on this and related issues, is thus a very welcome contribution. At least in this aspect, it should also be of interest to an anthropological audience, though the latter will probably miss some of the elasticity and ethnographical flavor character- istic of other scholarly works dealing with the political uses of folklore in former Yugoslavia (e.g. I. Colovic, I. Éanic). Bojan Baskar University of Ljubljana [email: bojan.baskar@ff.uni-lj.s] Nick Couldry. 2003. Media Rituals: A Critical Approach. London: Routledge. pp. xii + 173. IBSN: (hbk) 0 415 27014 6, (pbk) 0 415 27015 4. Prices: £55.00 ($96.25), £15.99 ($27.95). Recently, a number of anthropologists have taken an interest in the relationship between ritual and media. Some of this work can be found in a 1998 edited volume entitled Media, Ritual and Performance edited by F. Hughes-Freeland. In her introduction Hughes-Freeland engages with the problem of defining ritual. In post-structuralist fashion, she does so by eschewing ‘essential’ definitions in favour of an ad-hoc, relational approach. The term ritual becomes ‘an odd-job word’. In stark contrast, Media Rituals, by the media theorist Nick Couldry, pursues a stable definition of ‘media ritual’ from beginning to end. Couldry describes his approach as ‘post-Durkheimian’ and ‘anti- functionalist’. His starting point is Victor Turner’s understanding of rituals as actions that embody and betoken transcendent values rather than as texts that ‘express’ cultural ideals (Geertz). Media rituals are actions that reproduce the ‘myth’ of the media as privi- leged access points to the centre of society – the ‘myth of the mediated centre’. This mythical reproduction takes place through tacit categories (e.g. media vs. non-media person) as well as values that engage and direct our attention. Media rituals ‘condense’ these implicit categories and values into frames of performative action (Goffman). For instance, in the presence of a celebrity, most ordinary people will act in extraordinary, ritualized ways. Another example of a media ritual would be clapping when directed by the staff at a quiz show, or having pictures of oneself taken when on ‘pilgrimage’ to a soap opera set. This extensive mesh of rituals helps to sustain the myth of the mediated centre. Couldry applies the concept of media ritual to three main media research areas: media events, reality television, and media pilgrimages. He takes issue with Dayan and Katz for subscribing to the myth of the mediated centre in their influential book, Media Events (1992). Describing their assumptions as functionalist, he doubts that media events such as the funeral of Princess Diana really enhanced social cohesion in Britain, let alone abroad. Instead, Couldry redefines media events as occasions when ‘particularly intense’ claims about accessing the social centre are being made. He then analyses reality TV as another genre that sustains the myth through its promise of taking audiences ‘live’ to the social centre with a minimum of fuss. The chapter on media pilgrimages reworks Turner’s theory of pilgrimage. It offers a superb example of the media vs. non-media person categorization at work. While the attempts Book reviews 89 at RMIT UNIVERSITY on June 7, 2015 ant.sagepub.com Downloaded from