Introduction

What Is Ritual?
Its Definition and Characteristics

As Glenna began the opening conjuration of the ritual, a silence fell overthe circle. Through the castings and chargings of the circle, through the
invocation of the Goddess, it grew, and as Albion and Loik and Joaquin
Murietta hammered out a dancing rhythm on their drums, as we whirled
in a double sunwise ring, that silence swelled into waves of unseen lightness, flooding our circle, washing about our shoulders, breaking over ourheads. Afterwards we wandered about the gardens, laughing and clowning, drunk on the very air itself, babbling to each other: it worked!
—Margot Adler, Drawing Down the Moon

A common misconception in the industrialized world holds ritual to besomething that goes on in more primitive societies, while we, in our scientific enlightenment, lead rational, non-ritualistic lives. But the facts areotherwise. All human cultures, including our own, use ritual as the physicaland metaphysical means for dealing with everyday life and the mystery andunpredictability of the physical, psychological, social, and cosmic realms.
Ritual plays significant roles in the social behaviors of most animal species—
its pervasiveness in human life reflects ancient biological programming thatallows members of a species to communicate and coordinate their lives
through behavioral symbols.
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What is ritual? What elements does it consist of—what characteristics
constitute its anatomy? What does it do and how does it work? What doanimal and human rituals share in common? Why does human ritual often
produce an experience of the sacred, spiritual, and supernatural? And why
does it just as often work toward secular, practical ends? Why does ritual
constitute what anthropologists call a cultural universal (meaning that it isfound in every culture and society)? Where does its power come from, andhow can societies and individuals tap that power?
We will address these questions from an anthropological point of viewthat integrates biological, psychological, neurological, sociocultural, andspiritual perspectives on ritual. Anthropology is the study of humans intheir myriad manifestations. It includes comparisons of human and animal
behaviors, and studies ranging from the fossilized bones and habitats of ourancestors that provide clues about human evolution (called physical anthropology), to the ruins of ancient societies (archaeology), to the developmentof languages across cultures (linguistic anthropology), to the complexities
of historical or contemporary cultures (cultural anthropology)—and manyother subfields of these.
For the past century and a half, cultural anthropologists have left thefamiliar surroundings of their own homelands to study other cultures andto try to make sense of them in terms that non-members can understand.
In every culture they have studied—including their own—anthropologists
have encountered rituals. These range from the ritualized daily behaviors of
an individual to the group dynamics of a crowd, from the simple prayers ofa family sitting down to eat to a Jewish Passover Seder to lavish large-scale
ceremonies like feasts and seasonal holidays. And today we can speak evenof global rituals in which billions of people across the planet participate in
the same experience at the same time, including, for examples, the celebrations marking the dawning of the Third Millennium, the funeral of Princess
Diana, the wedding of Kate Middleton to Prince William, the Olympic
Games and football’s (soccer’s) World Cup, and, very specific to the UnitedStates, the large-scale rituals performed to honor the dead of 9/11 andto commemorate the deeply felt national experience of being attacked on
homeland soil (for the first time since the British attack in 1812).
Many of the individual elements of these rituals seem incomprehensible at first glance. Why, for example, do the So people of Uganda havea ritual in which they smear themselves with gray clay and march aroundin formation waving their walking sticks in the air? Why does a Catholic
priest wear long white robes? Why do shamans dance ecstatically for hours
to “heal their community,” and why are their practices remarkably similar
around the world? Why have some of the ancient spiritual healing ritualsof shamans been adopted by modern educated professionals? Why is it
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important to perform the rituals of your religion—if you have one? Why doactors, before performing a play, often gather together in a circle and chant?
Often it is only after months or years of fieldwork that the anthropologist
manages to figure out the meanings of such practices. Yet anthropologists
have found that this effort to “decode” the rituals of other cultures—andtheir own—is always worth the struggle, for such rituals often embody themost essential elements of the culture. Rituals are performances in which
cultures—and individuals—describe and display their deepest values andbeliefs. Performing these rituals is a part of human nature and biology thatis deeply embedded in genetic evolution.
During the 20th and early 21st centuries, anthropologists have madeenormous strides in understanding ritual, and ethologists (scientists who
study animal behavior) have expanded our knowledge about the broad evolutionary basis of ritual through studies of other species of social animals. Yet
much of what these scholars have written about ritual is highly technical andits implications are inaccessible to the general public. This book synthesizes amyriad of anthropological and ethological discoveries about ritual in what wehope is a straightforward and useful format. Its purpose is to explain ritual topeople who use it, to people who are interested in it, and to students engaged
in its study, and most definitely not to explicate the multiple and complex
theories that anthropologists have developed about ritual over time. This
book is not about ritual theory but about ritual itself—what it is, what it
can do, how it works, what makes it powerful, what makes it dangerous, andmost of all, what makes it useful to contemporary humans.
We also intend this book to serve students of various social sciences—
especially anthropology, sociology, comparative religion, religious studies,political science, and others—as a comprehensive textbook, a single sourcethat can complement and draw together the myriad of articles and bewildering tomes professors presently use to teach about ritual. For the generalpublic, our principal purposes in writing this book are to: (1) help ourreaders to understand why so many people feel the need for rituals and what
exactly they are doing when they create or participate in rituals (we include
an Appendix on “How to Create and Perform an Effective Stage 4 Ritual”);(2) explain why, when people try to change ritualized behaviors (their own
or those of others), they may discover that it is harder to accomplish thanthey imagined; and (3) draw public attention to ritual’s power and potential
to be used both for good and for ill—what William Sax (2010) called theefficacy of ritual. Public awareness of ritual tends to focus on its positive
aspects, but the shadow side of ritual is as powerful as the light. Ritual may
be used for the good of individuals, communities, and even corporations, aswell as manipulated by politicians, religious and cult leaders, and others tosway people’s perceptions, emotions, and behaviors in harmful ways.
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Animal and Human Ritual as Behavioral Coordination
and Communication
We recognize when an animal is on alert by its taut body posture because
when we are on alert, ours is in much the same state. An elephant troop
forms a protective circle around a female giving birth, just as do medicalor midwifery teams and family and friends. Baby bears mimic the battlesof their elders in play just as human children do. The alpha gorilla beats hischest, the male stag vies for a female’s attention by stomping on the groundto challenge his rival, the guy in the bar flashes his cash when paying the billwhile glaring at his potential rival. Similar behaviors in other animals shedlight on the underlying causes and functions of human ritual, helping us tosee how those behaviors are linked to basic brain functions.
Ritual addresses an adaptive problem encountered by all species: how
to coordinate the actions of individuals into collective, socially coherent
and coordinated patterns. All large-brained social animals exhibit ritualized
behaviors (Schechner 1993: 229). Studies have shown that both the social
play of animals and human rituals are formats for instilling and developing altruism—a requisite for cementing social bonds (see Chick 2008). At
times, individual desires and behaviors must be superseded in order for group
activities to be coordinated. This coordination requires controlling the information transmitted among members of the same species, and the meaningsof that information. Studies of ritualistic behaviors in non-human animals
indicate their fundamental importance in communication—these ritualistic
display signals were selected through evolution to enable members of animalgroups to provide information to each other. Animals and birds use often
complex rituals in order to warn each other of danger or prepare themselves
to mate—rituals we call “foreplay” when humans are concerned (see Spomer
1996 for North American herd animals; Léveillé 2007 for birds).
Animal rituals are techniques for both communicating and coordinating
behavior. Ethologists have called these animal rituals fixed action patterns,
because they are basically instinctual and once begun, are usually carried out
to completion. Animal ritual displays are a type of fixed action pattern known
as “intention movements”—in this case, actions that signal a readiness forcertain activities (e.g., a set of movements preparing birds for flight or formating). These stereotyped, patterned, and repetitive bodily movements orsounds communicate basic messages and synchronize cognitive processes
and movements across individual participants to coordinate the behavior of
the group (d’Aquili, Laughlin, and McManus 1979: 156; W. J. Smith 1979,
1990; Salzen 2010).
Humans also manifest fixed action patterns—like sucking, grasping, crawling, and walking—that are genetically “wired-in” to our body’s organization.
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In other words, animals and humans alike have the capacity to ritualize
behaviors—to learn to sequence one behavior after another to get something
done (see d’Aquili, Laughlin and McManus 1979: 28–41; Bell 1997: 80–81).
As among animals, ritual in humans serves a primary biological function in
facilitating coordinated group action. For example, the formalized displaysof animals are continued in the nonverbal communication—body language(Rowlands 2006)—of humans, such as behaviors for greeting and challenging others. Animal uses of ritual to establish, maintain, and recognize differences in social status—like that of the alpha female or male—also remainprevalent in humans, who find ritual essential to asserting and maintaining
social roles or “face” (see Goffman and Best 2005).
Since participation in ritual requires coordination of individual processes
with group patterns, ritual serves biologically as a mechanism for socialization.
Ceremonial rituals found in all human societies are analogous to certain
animal behaviors and displays, from gatherings of wolf packs to the seasonal
migratory patterns of birds. Ritual is fundamental to the adaptation of all
big-brained social animals, and we humans inherited our ritual proclivities
from our pre-human animal past. Indeed, ritual is so integral to humansocial and cognitive evolution that, as Tom Driver (1991: 10) wrote, “tostudy humanity is to study ritual.” Concordantly, Ronald Grimes (1996a: 1)
notes that “Ritual is one of the oldest human activities—often consideredas important as eating, sex, and shelter,” and asks: “Why has it persisted solong? Why does every attempt to suppress it result in creating it anew? Whatmakes ritual seems at once so foundational that even the animals do it andso superfluous that Protestants once imagined they could dispense withit altogether?” Popular conceptions often generally characterize rituals as
ineffective, repetitive, meaningless actions or as merely symbolic statementsthat produce no results in the world—as just “habits,” “customs,” or “traditions.” Yet on the contrary, as we will show throughout this book, rituals canbe instrumental, producing effects at multiple levels. Understanding ritualrequires perspectives that address the multiple instrumental dimensions of
its effects; we will provide these perspectives in the following pages.

Our Definition of Ritual
There are many, many definitions of ritual from which one may choose (seeBell 1992; Grimes 1990, 2014: 193–94). There are also many views on
the nature, functions, meaning, and efficacy of ritual in anthropology (seeHandelman 1998:10–11; Snoek 2006). Most anthropologists concentrate
upon the role of ritual in religion (e.g., Stewart and Strathern 2014), formany of the rituals we anthropologists encounter involve magic and the
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include the secular, nonreligious use of ritual.
We will use a definition that Robbie developed ([1992] 2003a: 8): “a ritualis a patterned, repetitive, and symbolic enactment of cultural (or individual)
beliefs and values.” Since Robbie’s formulation is a foundational concept forour book, we now consider each of its components.

Patterning, Repetition, and Symbolism:
Coordination and Communication
A quick run-through of events that have long been called rituals in boththe scholarly and popular lexicons immediately makes obvious the reasons
why we say that patterning and repetition are two of the definitive characteristics of ritual. Events consensually labeled rituals include, among manyothers: church services, parades and processions, greetings and farewells, folk
dances, pilgrimages, certain types of healing, bar and bat mitzvahs, graduations, initiation ceremonies, and presidential inaugurations. We think thereader will grant us that everything on this list is immediately recognizable
as ritual and also as highly structured behavior that entails a distinct pattern. One recognizes a parade as different from normal traffic on the street
because of the distinctive pattern of the parade—a pattern that repeats itself
over and over in the various groupings that constitute the parade, from thebands that march by to the clowns and the floats.
Normal traffic on the street is also patterned and repetitive of course—
most of cultural life is (see Schechner 1993). This is where the third adjectivein the definition comes in: ritual is patterned, repetitive, and symbolic
behavior. This notion of “symbolic” emphasizes that ritual is a form of communication (Rothenbuhler 2006; Senft and Basso 2009). Normal traffic on
the street does not symbolize or communicate anything in particular. People
on the road generally are not trying to make a statement by driving—
they just want to get where they are going. The instrumental goal—getting
there—is the most important reason for driving. A parade, on the other
hand, is intentionally designed to be symbolic. Through parades, communities enact and display their values and celebrate their unity and diversity.
Thus, parades are rituals: patterned, repetitive, and symbolic enactmentsthat communicate cultural beliefs and values.
But wait, you say! When people drive, they are not just driving, they arealso making symbolic statements. The kind of car they drive and the way
they drive convey messages to others about the kind of people they are, theirsocioeconomic status, and so forth. And the endless flow of traffic on city
streets is powerfully symbolic of the “rat race” of technocratic life.1 So rightRitualWhat It Is, How It Works, and Why
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plagued all those who have tried to write about and explain ritual: it is often
hard to separate ritual from everyday life.
Clearly a church, mosque, or temple service is a ritual—it is patterned,
repetitive, and highly symbolic—but in some ways so is an ordinary conversation. Conversations generally observe rules for turntaking, employ
repetitive elements, begin with greeting formulas and close with formulaic
farewells, stipulate appropriate social space, and can symbolize many things(Tannen 2005). Everyday acts like doing the laundry, cooking a meal,and getting dressed in the morning can also be patterned, repetitive, andsymbolic. This fact reflects the deeply embedded nature of ritual withinhuman behavior. Human behavior is ritualized at many different levels,
some of which are shared with other animals, like grooming and greeting
rituals and the sequencing of everyday activities. But humans have ritual
behaviors that are unique to humans, and reflect the different adaptive needsof human communities. Consequently, understanding ritual requires that
we distinguish among different forms of ritual behavior.
We suggest that ritual should not be thought of as something fixed,
concrete, and discrete, but rather can most usefully be understood as existing
on a spectrum from loosely patterned and thinly symbolic (like conversation)
at one end, to highly patterned and densely symbolic (like a Catholic massor a presidential inauguration) at the other. Human greetings (“Hi, how
are you?” “I’m good, you?”) and conversations are ritualized in mundane
forms similar to those seen in other animals, while we also engage in behavioral routines that are organized into very complex fixed patterns such as
the Mass, which uses formal ritual to evoke a human relationship with thecosmos. Conversations, daily routines, and the Mass can all be productively
analyzed as ritual. But to understand why the Catholic Mass is more of aritual than a conversation is, we must recognize the bases underlying thespectrum of ritual behaviors.
To recap, ritual can usefully be thought of as existing on a spectrum that
ranges from simple patterned and repetitive behavior, like habitually getting
dressed the same way every morning, to complex patterned and repetitive
behaviors, like participation in a Mass. The symbolic meanings attached toand conveyed by the ritual increase toward the complex end of the scale.
Yet there is some meaning in every ritualized act. When you get dressed
every day, the clothes you choose to wear will reflect your individuality
and personality and some of your values (are you wearing pure cotton orpolyester?) When you habitually brush and floss your teeth, you are symbolically enacting your personal value on good dental hygiene. Putting ona uniform will symbolically show that you are part of a certain profession
and therefore must act a certain way. Exchanging that uniform for regular
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But there is a great deal more meaning in the Catholic Mass that has taken
many pages of written text to fully describe (see, e.g., Murphy 1979). To
understand what both simple and complex rituals share in common, as wellas what distinguishes them, requires that human ritual behavior be placedin comparative perspective, related to the behaviors of other animals, as wehave seen above.

Rituals as Enactments of Beliefs and Values
Again, a ritual is a patterned, repetitive, and symbolic enactment of cultural(or individual) beliefs and values. We place “individual” in parentheses toindicate that most rituals are developed at the level of social groups, but it
is also quite common for families and individuals to develop idiosyncratic
and personal rituals that have meaning to them, like making an annual
pilgrimage, saying daily prayers before a meal or at an altar, or taking yourchild for a walk by the river every day, complete with peanut butter andjelly sandwiches (thereby enacting the high value you place on the parentchild relationship) (see Sherman and Sherman 1990: 95–100; Feinstein andKrippner 2009). Yet on the whole, and to put it most simply, rituals mostoften enact cultural beliefs and values, establishing linkages among beliefs,
values, and behaviors (see Handelman 1998). Anthropologists figured out
this relationship of ritual to beliefs and values a long time ago, and for a
century now have been using ritual to gain insights into understanding agiven culture or sub-cultural social group. (A “sub-culture” is a group thathas social, economic, ethnic, or other traits distinctive enough to distinguishit from others within the same overall culture or society.) If you study theirrituals in a search for their meaning, you will arrive at the most importantand deeply held beliefs and values of that culture or group.
In most cases, cultural rituals are inherently conservative—in otherwords, because rituals enact and display a culture’s most basic beliefs andvalues, they also serve as mechanisms for transmitting and thus reinforcing and preserving those beliefs and values. Thus rituals usually work toenhance social cohesion, as their primary purpose in most cases is to alignthe behavior, values, and belief system of the individual with those of thegroup. The more a belief system is enacted through ritual, the stronger it is. The
less it is enacted, the weaker it becomes. That’s why your minister (if you haveone) so often exhorts you to come to church every Sunday—and prayer
group or Bible study every Wednesday night. If you stop going—if you
cease to enact the rituals of your religion—over time your religion will haveless and less meaning and significant attachments for you. Now we will
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it with its performative power.

The Characteristics/Anatomy of Ritual and the Contentsof This Book
Here we present and examine eight major characteristics of ritual that are
integral to its myriad roles in human cultural life and central to the way it
wields its power. These characteristics constitute what we call an anatomy ofritual (see also Grimes 2014). They include:
1. the use of symbols to convey a ritual’s messages;
2. a cognitive matrix (belief system) from which ritual emerges;
3. rhythm, repetition and redundancy: ritual drivers;
4. the use of tools, techniques, and technologies to accomplish ritual’s
multiple goals;
5. the framing of ritual performances;
6. the order and formality that often separates ritual from everyday life,
identifying it as ritual;
7. the sense of inviolability and inevitability that rituals can generate;
8. the acting, stylization, and staging that often give ritual its elements ofhigh drama, the fact that it is performed and that it often intensifies
toward a climax.
Not all rituals exhibit each of these characteristics; however, they are allsalient features of ritual in general, all part of the anatomy of ritual and its
capacity as a powerful communicative form. Understanding these characteristics of ritual—in other words, deconstructing its anatomy—is essential
to understanding how it accomplishes its work in the world. So the early
chapters of this book address these eight characteristics and how they workinside the human brain.
Chapter 1, on symbolism and ritual, describes the organization of thehuman brain and shows how the symbols through which rituals work
“penetrate” to different areas of the brain, accomplishing their effects byentraining (synchronizing) physical sensation, emotion, meaning, andintellect. We also describe “core symbols” and how to interpret them, andgive some entertaining and illustrative examples of symbolic interpretation, including Darth Vader, an Indigenous ancestor named Naro, and acontemporary debate among midwives over a kettle and what it symbolized
for them.
Chapter 2 describes some of the cognitive matrices/belief systems thatrituals enact, display, and transmit to their participants, including myths
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Woman, dream incubation, and what Robbie calls “the technocratic,
humanistic, and holistic paradigms of medicine.” We describe the humancognitive imperative to know and understand the world we live in, the cycleof meaning that cultures develop to meet that cognitive imperative, and theways in which rituals make that cycle of meaning come alive—feel real—for
its participants.
Chapter 3 focuses on the varying relationships of myths, paradigms, andother belief systems to reality and truth, explaining that these belief systems,
while only partial pictures of larger realities, serve to “true” those pictures—to make them reflect enough of reality to ensure that the cultures that create
and live through them will be able to function effectively in the world.
We describe the differences among “sensate,” “idealistic,” and “ideational”
cultures and how these different cultural types enact their beliefs and values
through ritual, how they may use ritual to accommodate themselves tocultural and environmental change—and how, if they don’t, they may beunable to adapt to such change. The Native American Sun Dance and the
US space program provide examples here.
Chapter 4 points out the wide range of rhythmic and repetitive stimuli—
called ritual drivers—through which rituals act on the human body andconsciousness and analyzes their neurological effects. We describe statesand “warps” of consciousness and how information is transferred between
them, “monophasic” and “polyphasic” cultures (can you already guess what
we mean by these terms?), and how ritual can “drive,” or control, states ofconsciousness among its participants. We look at “portals” as doorways toalternative states of consciousness, and ask and answer the question, “Whyare ritual drivers so compelling?”
Chapter 5 describes some of the many techniques and technologies usedin ritual performances that enable ritual to do its work in the world and in
the human brain and body. We ask: How do technologies serve as implements of ritual practice, and how on earth did the ritual diviner find thepurloined pots? What is “spooky causation,” and how can ritual serve as avehicle for “divine inspiration” and “psychic power”? And how, and in whatways, can the ancient technique called “ritual” manifest itself in the contemporary high-tech and virtual worlds?
Chapter 6 illustrates the ways in which ritual is framed—set apart fromordinary life, the order and formality that characterize ritual performances,and the sense of inviolability and inevitability they work to establish. We
describe physical and non-physical ritual frames in terms of energy andpower, and the meaning, purpose, and power of shrines and altars of all
types and kinds. Questions of why order and formality matter so much tothe anatomy and effectiveness of ritual are answered through examples from
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the Trobriand Islands, the experiences of Bolivian tin miners (which will
resonate for miners and factory workers of all types and in all countries),and from contemporary obstetricians, who use ritual in entirely predictableand formalized ways to control the process of birth. And we ask, how can the“ritual train” lead a young woman who really does not want to get married
to go through the ceremony anyway? What happens when someone chooses
to “break the ritual frame,” purposefully disrupting the ritual? And how
does the “ludic” dimension of ritual—play and laughter—manage not tobreak the ritual frame, but only enhance it, thus making it more powerful?
In this chapter, we also describe the altered state of consciousness called“flow,” making it clear that flow most often happens inside of a clearlydelineated ritual frame—the stronger the ritual, the deeper the sense of flow—
an experience so powerful that some people change their lives in an effort
to achieve more of that experience. This chapter also describes how rituals
enhance courage, enabling humans to do what they could not do without
the sense that the rituals they perform will somehow see them successfully
through the dangers they face. Finally, this chapter acknowledges that while
rituals do have some degree of power (when believed in by the participants
and performed correctly according to the participants), they are not allpowerful and they sometimes—or often—do not work, meaning that they
do not accomplish the symbolic and/or instrumental work in the world thatthey were intended by their leaders and/or participants to do. So, we ask inthis chapter, what happens when rituals fail?
In subsequent chapters, we focus on the effects that ritual can have on its
participants and the multiple roles ritual plays in social and individual life.
These include, among others:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
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facilitating daily living
transmitting knowledge
acquiring informationtransforming individual consciousness
engendering and solidifying belief
maintaining religious vitality
enhancing courage
effecting healing
cohering communities
initiating individuals into new social groups or new ways of being
preserving the status quo in a given society
and, paradoxically, effecting social change

These uses of ritual are evident in many domains of social life everywhere.
Particularly emphasized in this book are the roles of ritual in the domains ofcommunity, business, sports, religion, the military, spirituality movements,
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In Chapter 7, we integrate our earlier descriptions of the anatomy ofritual into a focus on how ritual is performed—the acting, stylization, andstaging that characterize ritual performances, their climactic nature, andthe roles that charismatic ritual leaders, from cult leaders to priests to politicians, play in making these performances effective through generating
emotional buildup and catharsis and achieving psychological transformation in their participants. No matter what the end goal is, very similar rituals
are used to achieve that goal.
In Chapter 8, we investigate “4 Stages of Cognition” and the roles thatritual plays in each Stage. We make a clear distinction between rigid andfluid ways of thinking, delineate the 4 Stages of Cognition, and more orless equate them with their anthropological equivalents. We explain each ofthese 4 Stages of Cognition in relation to each other, and demonstrate how
ritual can be employed to reinforce each way of thinking, and to reducemany kinds of stress by solidly grounding individuals in their belief system
and worldview, giving them a sense of safety and stability in an uncertain
world, and preventing them from regressing into “Substage”—in otherwords, from “losing it” and taking out their stress on others.
In Chapter 9, we address ritual’s paradoxical roles: as noted above, ritual
can work both to preserve the status quo and to effect social change. We
provide examples of ritual failure and ritual success in both endeavors, anddiscuss various cultural revitalization movements—some of which failed toachieve social change, and some of which succeeded or are in the process of
succeeding. We examine the contemporary invention of ritual by holisticobstetricians in Brazil and by Herb Kelleher, the founder of Southwest
Airlines, who intentionally created a consciously alternative corporate culturethat was long hailed as an exemplar of how to run a successful business.
In Chapter 10, we describe what it is like to design and carry out yourown ceremonial rituals, and give examples of how such contrived affairs
either work well, or don’t, from memorial ceremonies to weddings topuberty rites and “dream incubation.” And in our Conclusion, we sum up
our findings and leave you with room for further thinking about ritual, how
it can work in the world and in your brain/body, and how you might use it
for the most positive possible effects in your own life.
In the pages that follow, we will stick mostly to standard English, but will
ask our readers to bear with us as we introduce (as we have already started
doing above) a few anthropological terms, perspectives, and concepts that
we find particularly useful for talking about and understanding ritual—what it is, how it works, and why.
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Ritual is a complex subject—the anthropological writings on it could
fill a library. And as we have seen, its cultural uses are myriad. Ritual is a
powerful didactic and socializing tool, but often its power and influence
go unrecognized because most people are not generally aware of its innerworkings. To grasp these inner workings is to have a choice in our responseto the rituals that permeate our daily lives.

Note
1. Robbie (Davis-Floyd [1992] 2008, 2018a, 2022) has long defined a technocracy as acapitalistic, hierarchical, bureaucratic, and (still) patriarchal society organized around an
ideology of progress via the development of ever-higher technologies and the global flowof information through those technologies.

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