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# Ritual
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+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.
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+
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+**Input:** community, culture, artful norm formation
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+
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+**Output:** self-reinforcing common habits
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+
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+## History
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+
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+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.
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+## Feedback loops
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+
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+### Sensitivities
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+
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+* Establishes and protects norms at lower cost of effort than other enforcement mechanisms, such as [judicial](judiciary.md) sanctions
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+* Connects and embeds governance processes organically into broader cultural systems
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+### Oversights
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+
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+* Imposes expectations and habits that can be hard to change when change is necessary
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+* Can defy rational explanation and thus reduce the rationality of the governance system as a whole
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+
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+## Implementations
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+
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+### Communities
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+
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+* [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
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+* Courtroom practices of respect and costume for judges
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+* Inauguration ceremonies for public officials
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+
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+### Tools
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+
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+<!-- what software, methodologies, or organizations are available to facilitate implementation -->
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+
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+## Further resources
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+
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+* "[Rituals]," Wikimedia Commons
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+* Smith, Jonathan Z. _To Take Place: Toward Theory in Ritual_. University of Chicago Press, 1987.
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