Background Human cultures are at once structured and structuring. As the result of prior human actions, our culture comes to us already organized in some arbitrary and conventional fashion. As we draw on our culture in our own actions, we structure our own experience and that of those with whom we interact. Together with language, rituals are among the human activities in which the structured and structuring character of culture is readily apparent. In the view of anthropologist Sherry Ortner, rituals have the following characteristics.
Rituals are distinct from the normal activities of social life.
That is to say, they are structured. That is to say, they also are structuring. An informant is someone with whom an anthropologist can have conversations about the sociocultural system to which the informant belongs and about which the anthropologist is trying to learn. How will you explain your request. The ritual may be, but does not have to be, a religious service.