The examination of nationalist rituals in terms of theory of interaction ritual chains

Religion and religious elements looses their firmness over social life with the modernization and the space it is created is now filled with different institutions. The power which is produced from unity and solidarity within the social life has firstly appeared as God. Societies have strengthened the relations between the members via rituals which were practiced for God. With modern life, individual has been articulated as a new sacred in social life, and the rituals have started to take shape around his/her self. Modernization has deduced individuals from being a disciple of religion and started to establish social order, unity and solidarity via rituals which were accomplished around the created sacred. Within the groups that individuals became the members. These rituals produce and reproduce society by generating particular ritual behaviors and symbols which resemble religious rituals and this rituals bring the members together around a sacred.One of the best examples of this situation in modern life appears in nationalism. Within the context, the aim of this thesis is to examine the concept of ritualization by looking at nationalist rituals. A fieldwork was carried out in Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi (Nationalist Action Party) in Aydın to realize the research objective.