Week 1
Questions this week
I was thinking about how I can communicate my core research question without relying too heavily on the birthday story: why do people automatically maintain rituals or rules that they once disliked? I also started wondering whether there are other kinds of family knowledge or habits that are passed down in ways similar to rituals. Another question I kept thinking about is how a repeated behavior gradually becomes a rule or ritual, and what makes people continue following it even when they no longer actively think about its meaning.
Research discoveries
This week I read the foreword of The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. The author understands society as a process rather than a static system, and he suggests that rituals can create temporary spaces where fixed classifications and boundaries in everyday life become less stable. What surprised me is that I had been thinking about how rituals might be broken, but I had not considered that ritual itself could also become a space for breaking or questioning existing structures.
Other work
This week I also reflected on why this topic has stayed with me for so long. I first tried to explore a related idea in my undergraduate graduation project, but I could not develop it at the time and eventually changed directions. Looking back, I realized that I had been too focused on finding a final form instead of allowing the research question to develop gradually. I also wrote about other family rituals, such as being expected to give a speech during family dinners, and noticed that the same tension between guidance and expectation appears in more than one situation. This helped me understand why I want to return to this topic now and explore it more patiently.
Other questions or notes
No additional questions for now.