a lot of noise. Where resources allow, using visual pageantry is another
common way of making sure the new union is noticed by all and
sundry. To consider marriage a "private" arrangement between two
individual parties is the exception rather than the rule.
A simple reason is that any marriage produces a situation that
changes the whole sexual and reproductive landscape for the rest of the
group, by removing two persons from the pool of possible mates and
by creating a unit where sexual access and parental investment as well
as economic cooperation are bundled up together in a stable pact. This
means that people's cooperation with each of the individuals con-
[248] cerned, in terms of sexual access, economic cooperation, social
exchange or coalitional loyalty, must be "realigned" to take account of
this situation. This creates problems of coordination. First, at what
point should other members of the group change the way they interact
with the individuals concerned? Stable couples may be the outcome of
a long and gradual process, so there is no clear cutoff point at which
others should start to reorient their behavior. Also, if other members of
a group modify their behavior to take into account the new solidarity
that exists between two people, they should all do it at the same time
and in the same way. If you start treating the newlyweds as a family
when others are still treating one of the members as if there were no
marriage, you may for instance miss out on sexual opportunities. Or if
you mistakenly think a person's resources will now be principally
geared to their stable monogamous union you may miss out on occa-
sions to borrow or use some of these resources. So it is convenient that
there should be a clear-cut distinction between before and after, as well
as a convention that the group's behavior should change at that precise
moment. Even in the West, people immersed in an intensely individu-
alistic ideology still have the intuition that social interaction is what
makes the ritual relevant.
The interaction that occurs during a ritual is quite strange and cre-
ates social effects for which people have no ready description. But this
raises a very difficult question: Why do people resort to ritualperfor-
mance in such circumstances? Again, why all this ceremonial noise
around social relations, if social relations are our most familiar envi-
ronment? What makes the ritual gadgets relevant? To understand all
this we have to take into account a most surprising fact about human
beings. Although they have constant experienceof social life they just
do not understandit, or do not understand it very well.
RELIGION EXPLAINED