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Verbum et Ecclesia

versión On-line ISSN 2074-7705
versión impresa ISSN 1609-9982

Verbum Eccles. (Online) vol.31 no.1 Pretoria  2010

http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/ve.v31i1.407 

ORIGINAL RESEARCH

 

Snert: Ritual-liturgical measurements and recipes for social capital

 

 

Cas Wepener

Department of Practical Theology, University of Pretoria, South Africa

Correspondence

 

 


ABSTRACT

The questions of how social capital is measured and how it is generated have received ample attention in recent years. This article is an attempt at making a modest contribution towards addressing these issues and specifically also as a contribution from the fields of Liturgical and Ritual Studies. It is argued that commensality can be taken as both lens/barometer with regard to the presence or absence of social capital, as well as being a potential generator of social capital. In order to arrive at this conclusion regarding food and the eating habits of humankind, the phenomenon of commensality and its relation to social capital is approached here from three different angles, namely Social Anthropology, New Testament Studies and Ethnography.

Keywords: liturgy; ritual; social capital; commensality; table fellowship; Luke


 

 

Full text available only in PDF format.

 

 

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Correspondence:
Cas Wepener
Department of Practical Theology, Faculty of Theology
University of Pretoria
Pretoria 0002
South Africa
Email: cas.wepener@up.ac.za

Received: 17 June 2010
Accepted: 02 Sept. 2010
Published: 03 Nov. 2010

 

 

Note: This material is based upon work supported by the South African National Research Foundation (NRF) under grant number 65620. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author and therefore the NRF does not accept any liability in regard thereto. This article was previously published in 2009 in the Dutch Jaarboek voor liturgie-onderzoek 25, 229–246 and is reprinted here with permission.

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