Ritual

Abstract Ritual, like kinship, has made a powerful comeback in anthropological theorizing and in ethnographic accounts. Beginning with an assessment of earlier studies on ritual, the chapter then moves on to the significance of rituals in peace and conflict studies, religious change, disaster studies, and nation-state politics. It goes on to discuss rituals as mediating between prelinguistic and linguistically articulated experiences. The chapter’s aim is to portray the versatility of ritual practices and their ongoing stochastic relevance to contemporary life.