--- layout: module title: Ritual permalink: /modules/ritual/ summary: A repeated cultural practice builds solidarity and community. type: culture --- Ritual is a repeated practice that a given culture deems significant, either implicitly or explicitly. It typically has the effect of binding the community that practices it together and of reinforcing certain governance habits. **Input:** community, culture, artful norm formation **Output:** self-reinforcing common habits ## History Ritual is among the "[human universals](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Universals)" that anthropologist Donald Brown argues can be found in every human society. It is a phenomenon frequently associated with religion, but it is by no means religion's exclusive purview. Rituals appear widely in childrearing, sports, the arts, and political life. ## Feedback loops ### Sensitivities * Establishes and protects norms at lower cost of effort than other enforcement mechanisms, such as [judicial](judiciary.md) sanctions * Connects and embeds governance processes organically into broader cultural systems ### Oversights * Imposes expectations and habits that can be hard to change when change is necessary * Can defy rational explanation and thus reduce the rationality of the governance system as a whole ## Implementations ### Communities * [Beating the bounds](https://books.google.com/books?id=2kx7KiTEZCsC&lpg=PA74&pg=PA74#v=onepage&q&f=false), an ancient practice of collectively surveying community boundaries * Courtroom practices of respect and costume for judges * Inauguration ceremonies for public officials ### Tools ## Further resources * "[Rituals]," Wikimedia Commons * Smith, Jonathan Z. _To Take Place: Toward Theory in Ritual_. University of Chicago Press, 1987.