Ritual

A ritual is a repeated, structured sequence of actions or behaviors that alters the internal or external state of an individual, group, or environment, regardless of conscious understanding, emotional context, or symbolic meaning.

As a professor at the University of Chicago in the late 1950s, Turner began to apply his study of rituals and rites of passage to world religions and the lives of religious heroes.

Furthermore, Douglas recognized that there exists a strong resemblance between European rituals and primitive rituals in principle, omitting the differing foundations that separate European rituals based on hygiene and primitive ones on symbolism, European rituals of cleanness seek to kill off germs, whereas primitive rituals of cleanness seek to ward off spirits.

Ortner's doctoral research, ethnography conducted between 1966 and 1968 in the Khumbu region of Nepal focused on rituals of religion and ordinary social life of the Sherpa community.

Barth shifted to studying meaning and ritual as developed in ethnic groups, and conducted research in Papua New Guinea, where he conducted fieldwork with the Baktaman.

When persons take part in a ritual, they are able to signal that they are the authority of the ritual, thus reinforcing the social contract in place.

Tell My Horse (1938) documents her account of her fieldwork studying spiritual and cultural rituals in Jamaica and vodoun in Haiti.

Alexander claims that in tribal societies the various elements of cultural performance were tightly fused, and were employed in collective rituals in which the entire tribe partook and its members experienced first-hand.