Degra­da­tion rit­u­als are a sug­gest­ed so­cio-cul­tur­al uni­ver­sal found in trib­al to mod­ern so­ci­eties. In the 1950s and 60s North Amer­i­can so­ci­ol­o­gists Erv­ing Goff­man and Harold Garfinkel il­lus­trat­ed what they called degra­da­tion rit­u­als and cer­e­monies in mod­ern in­sti­tu­tions like pris­ons, men­tal hos­pi­tals, and courts.

They de­scribed these cer­e­monies and rit­u­als as pub­lic acts, de­signed to trans­form the pub­lic iden­ti­ties of peo­ple to bring them down a peg or two, shame them and ul­ti­mate­ly–if the de­nun­ci­a­tion were suc­cess­ful enough–to ex­pel them from their sta­tus po­si­tion in the group.

To be most ef­fec­tive, the ac­cusers in a degra­da­tion cer­e­mo­ny need to demon­strate, among oth­er things, that the ac­cused has done dam­age to the com­mu­ni­ty and that the ac­cuser has the right­eous weight of the com­mu­ni­ty be­hind them. As Garfinkel de­scribed it: a degra­da­tion rit­u­al is a com­mu­nica­tive pro­duc­tion, "where­by the pub­lic iden­ti­ty of an ac­tor is trans­formed in­to some­thing looked on as low­er in the lo­cal scheme of so­cial types."

In an­thro­pol­o­gy, a rit­u­al is un­der­stood as cen­tral to the cre­ation and main­te­nance of so­cial in­te­gra­tion. By pub­licly iden­ti­fy­ing a per­son as neg­a­tive–not just in their be­hav­iour but al­so in the mo­ti­va­tions be­hind that be­hav­iour–degra­da­tion rit­u­als pro­voke moral in­dig­na­tion that can en­hance wider so­cial co­he­sion and group sol­i­dar­i­ty.

In a sim­i­lar way to rites of pas­sage de­signed to mark pos­i­tive per­son­al changes–like a grad­u­a­tion, or two in­di­vid­u­als be­com­ing a mar­ried cou­ple–degra­da­tion rit­u­als can be­stow neg­a­tiv­i­ty on­to a per­son's iden­ti­ty that brings peo­ple to­geth­er too. For ex­am­ple, in pris­ons a strip search is a degra­da­tion rit­u­al be­cause it is de­signed to hu­mil­i­ate the pris­on­er and so­cial­ly in­te­grate the prison guards as su­pe­ri­or.

And in a court of law a crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion is de­signed to not sim­ply pun­ish crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty but al­so to pub­licly shame the crim­i­nal and re­store so­cial or­der.

An­oth­er field where degra­da­tion rit­u­als are com­mon is pol­i­tics. In fact there are days when one might as­sume pol­i­tics has noth­ing to do with ne­go­ti­a­tion and ser­vice to the pub­lic but rather is all about who can dis­cred­it and de­grade their op­po­nent best.In pol­i­tics one avail­able degra­da­tion rit­u­al is a mo­tion of no con­fi­dence.

It is an op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­de­fine the moral char­ac­ter of the ac­cused. It is a chance to do this where all can see. And to pub­licly chas­tise a gov­ern­ment and its mem­bers for not act­ing in the best in­ter­est of the so­cial good or main­tain­ing ap­pro­pri­ate pro­fes­sion­al con­duct.Now one of the things about degra­da­tion rit­u­als is they are not al­ways suc­cess­ful. Along­side the per­for­mance of ac­cu­sa­tion and de­nun­ci­a­tion, the rit­u­al of­ten pro­vides a space for the ac­cused to face up to their de­nounc­ers.

So when Dr Row­ley went af­ter the Gov­ern­ment with "e-mail­gate," his job was on­ly half done. Yes, he made his de­nun­ci­a­tion in the name of the pub­lic, which, in a rit­u­al of pub­lic ac­count­abil­i­ty, is what dri­ves the pow­er of the degra­da­tion cer­e­mo­ny. And yes, this sense of right­eous­ness and prop­er con­duct in of­fice al­so worked to cre­ate so­cial co­he­sion and sol­i­dar­i­ty among many mem­bers of the pub­lic.

We might even dare to say that on the Mon­day his ac­cu­sa­tion seemed to trans­form the char­ac­ter of the Gov­ern­ment. Be­cause for an af­ter­noon, the Gov­ern­ment wasn't just ac­cused of un­ac­cept­able be­hav­iour; in the pub­lic court of moral opin­ion it seemed to stick as moral in­dig­na­tion swept so­cial me­dia and every­day con­ver­sa­tions. It was al­most as though many peo­ple all at once were nod­ding, "I told you so."

Yet the ac­cu­sa­tion and speak­ing in the pub­lic's name is on­ly a part of the rit­u­al per­for­mance. For the moral in­dig­na­tion to stick and for the pub­lic iden­ti­ty of the peo­ple ac­cused to be trans­formed and dis­cred­it­ed, the ac­cused can­not be al­lowed to re­pair the per­ceived breach. In this sense Dr Row­ley failed in mak­ing the degra­da­tion rit­u­al ef­fec­tive.

By Tues­day morn­ing he seemed to be los­ing the co­he­sive­ness of pub­lic opin­ion which, like him and some of his col­leagues who were now ab­sent from Par­lia­ment, didn't look like re­turn­ing (al­though maybe he has more ev­i­dence). And by Wednes­day af­ter­noon, when he walked out of Par­lia­ment with his par­ty in tow, Dr Row­ley was no longer speak­ing right­eous­ly for the pub­lic as things had fall­en back in­to par­ti­san pol­i­tics.

As a study in the cul­ture of pol­i­tics he had lost the moral high ground and with it the degra­da­tion rit­u­al fell apart. The pub­lic was no longer whole in its moral of­fence and it might even be said that the Gov­ern­ment fought ef­fec­tive­ly to turn the degra­da­tion cer­e­mo­ny back on its au­thor.We wait to see.

�2 Dr Dy­lan Ker­ri­g­an is an an­thro­pol­o­gist at UWI, St Au­gus­tine