Ritualization is a behavior that occurs typically in the member of a given
speciesIn biology, a species is:* a taxonomic rank or* a unit at that rank ....
in a highly
stereotypeA stereotype is a commonly held public belief about specific social groups, or types of individuals.The concepts of "stereotype" and "prejudice" are often confused with many other different meanings. Stereotypes are standardized and simplified conceptions of groups, based on some prior...
d fashion and independent of any direct physiological significance.
Ritualization is also associated with the work of the
religious studiesReligious studies, or Religious education, is the academic field of multi-disciplinary, secular study of religious beliefs, behaviors, and institutions...
scholar Catherine Bell. Bell, drawing on the Practice Theory of
Pierre Bourdieu
Pierre Bourdieu was an acclaimed French sociologist.Bourdieu pioneered investigative frameworks and terminologies such as cultural, social, and symbolic capital, and the concepts of habitus, field or location, and symbolic violence to reveal the dynamics of power relations in social life...
, has taken a less functional view of
ritualA ritual is a set of actions, performed mainly for their symbolic value, which is prescribed by a religion or by the traditions of a community. The term usually excludes actions which are arbitrarily chosen by the performers, or dictated purely by logic, chance, necessity, etc..A ritual may be...
with her elaboration of ritualization. More recently scholars interested in the
cognitive science of religionThe Cognitive Science of Religion is the study of religious thought and behavior from the perspective of the cognitive sciences. The field employs methods and theories from cognitive psychology, evolutionary psychology, cognitive anthropology, artificial intelligence, cognitive neuroscience,...
such as
Pascal BoyerPascal Boyer is an anthropologist who advocates the idea that human instincts provide us with the basis for an intuitive theory of mind that guides our social relations, morality, and predilections toward religious beliefs...
, Pierre Liénard, and William W.
Ritualization is a behavior that occurs typically in the member of a given
speciesIn biology, a species is:* a taxonomic rank or* a unit at that rank ....
in a highly
stereotypeA stereotype is a commonly held public belief about specific social groups, or types of individuals.The concepts of "stereotype" and "prejudice" are often confused with many other different meanings. Stereotypes are standardized and simplified conceptions of groups, based on some prior...
d fashion and independent of any direct physiological significance.
Ritualization is also associated with the work of the
religious studiesReligious studies, or Religious education, is the academic field of multi-disciplinary, secular study of religious beliefs, behaviors, and institutions...
scholar Catherine Bell. Bell, drawing on the Practice Theory of
Pierre Bourdieu
Pierre Bourdieu was an acclaimed French sociologist.Bourdieu pioneered investigative frameworks and terminologies such as cultural, social, and symbolic capital, and the concepts of habitus, field or location, and symbolic violence to reveal the dynamics of power relations in social life...
, has taken a less functional view of
ritualA ritual is a set of actions, performed mainly for their symbolic value, which is prescribed by a religion or by the traditions of a community. The term usually excludes actions which are arbitrarily chosen by the performers, or dictated purely by logic, chance, necessity, etc..A ritual may be...
with her elaboration of ritualization. More recently scholars interested in the
cognitive science of religionThe Cognitive Science of Religion is the study of religious thought and behavior from the perspective of the cognitive sciences. The field employs methods and theories from cognitive psychology, evolutionary psychology, cognitive anthropology, artificial intelligence, cognitive neuroscience,...
such as
Pascal BoyerPascal Boyer is an anthropologist who advocates the idea that human instincts provide us with the basis for an intuitive theory of mind that guides our social relations, morality, and predilections toward religious beliefs...
, Pierre Liénard, and William W. McCorkle Jr. have been involved in experimental, ethnographic, and archival research on how ritualized actions might inform the study of ritualization and ritual forms of action. Boyer, Liénard, and McCorkle argue that ritualized compulsions are in relation to an evolved cognitive architecture where social, cultural, and environmental selection pressures stimulate "hazard-precaution" systems such as predation, contagion, and disgust in human minds. Furthermore, McCorkle advances the hypothesis that these ritualized compulsions (especially in regards to dead bodies vis-à-vis, mortuary behavior) were turned into ritual scripts by professional guilds only several thousand years ago with advancement in technology such as the domestication of plants and animals, literacy, and writing.