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Ritual as resource management

M. Rossano

Published 2020 in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Biological Sciences

ABSTRACT

This paper argues that rituals are mechanisms of resource management. The argument is based on four observations: (i) over the course of hominin evolution, fitness became contingent on psychological states; (ii) these psychological states can be understood as ‘resources’, not unlike material resources such as energy, food or fuel; (iii) ritual ‘manages’ these psychological resources—meaning that it cultivates, builds and directs them; and (iv) ritual management can be analytically decomposed, providing a new descriptive tool for understanding rituals and predictions about ritual survival. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Ritual renaissance: new insights into the most human of behaviours’.

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