Networks in modern rituals: An ethnographic method for quantitative semiotics

The purpose of this paper is the introduction of a methodology for Quantitative Semiotics within a Systemic Approach and conjoined by the ethnohistorical method for studying one of Mexico’s most distinctive rituals: preparations of the cempaxuchitl flower (Tagetes erecta) for the Day of the Dead offerings as carried out by two families. The methodology consists of two steps: based in Soft Systems Methodology (Checkland, 2009), the first one is the definition of the problem-situation of study at a given moment and its goal focuses on the descriptions of the ethnographic methods used for data gathering and structuring, mainly, an economic history model by Braudel (1992) that addresses sociocultural changes an continuities. The second step involves the characterization of a communicative event through Quantitative Semiotics aided by adapted versions of Kinship Theory (Yanagisako & Collier 1996; Fortes 1949; Morgan 1871; Dziebel, 2006), Percolation Theory (Sahimi, 2009) and the tools provided by Graph and Network Theory. The results, though they remain only exploratory, allow for considerations of how the treatment of ethnographic data as the quantitative property in graph and network representations enabled the identification of meanings consolidating; chiefly the process by which a common object becomes a ritual object¹.