Organizational Rituals

Conceptual Overview

Rites and rituals are associated with other cultural forms—symbols (objects, performers, heroes), language and semiotics (jargon, signs, jokes and humor, gossip, metaphor, slogans), and narratives (myths, legends, and stories). The terms originated in the sociology of Emile Durkheim and the social anthropology of Arnold Van Gennep, who introduced the idea of rites of passage in relation to maintaining order through transition and change. Durkheim was concerned with the magical and religious significance of social practices and the integrating function of culture.

In anthropology, ritual behavior relies on mimesis, whereby actions and behaviors that are associated with states of magico-religious grace are copied and repeated in ritual forms such as dance in order to reinduce such states of elevation. They are incorporated into staged, sometimes sacrificial, rites, both to bind together communities and to appease external forces, bring good fortune, and ward off evil. Ritual always has some magico-religious connection in the sense that it is intended to maintain and improve, or manage, something important and with material consequences but insubstantial in itself—such as luck. Sportsmen, for example, often have a series of superstitious behaviors that they must perform before they go out on the field. There is no necessary rational connection between these behaviors and what ensues, but they are positively sustained by belief, negatively by habit.