Ritual, Religion, and Meaning

Humans are suspended in webs of meaning they themselves have spun; we call these webs "cultures".  Cultures are grounded in sets of ideas, beliefs, and commitments concerning the meaning, value, and purpose of existence and about the sort of cosmos we inhabit. 

Cultural anthropology tries to describe and understand these systems of meaning, represented in rituals, myths, religions, arts, and other forms of expression that each culture produced. 

We study how religion both enables social cohesion while also being deeply involved in social conflict, and how ritual behavior is central to healing and coping with the inevitability of disease and death.  We consider how religion is performed, whether in everyday life or in more formal rituals and ceremonies, and how culture represents, reveals, and enacts those basic concepts and conflicts that make us who we are, both in our own culture and in the many other cultures around the world.