ABSTRACT
A sociology of ritual action cross-cuts a number of substantive areas in the sociology of social institutions, for it deals in part with religion, with art, and with politics. Ritual can integrate bodily feelings and emotions with rational social purposes, and can thus go some way to healing the splits between the body and the intellect. Social groups in any given society use rituals for their own ends and purposes, however. The category, then, of ritual action as used here will include religious ritual, but also other types of ritual. The fact that ritual action continues in modern industrial society is an important fact in itself, but is only a surprising one to those whose model of man underplays the importance of the non-rational elements in human beings. Ritual action can involve members of groups, small and large, and does so by working with the whole of a person—his body, reason, unconscious needs and desires.
