Since I love social puzzles, I was pleased to discover the book The Problem of Ritual Efficiency: Ritual has come to be thought of in popular discourse as a kind of action that is ineffective, superficial, and/or purely formal, and this view is the unexamined premise behind much of ritual studies. This attitude explains why …we “know it when we see it” – and what we know to be rituals when we see them are acts that are apparently non rational, in which the means do not seem proportionate to the ends, the intended objects of human action are non empirical beings, or the theories of efficacy that ostensibly explain the ritual acts are inconsistent with modern, scientific paradigms. This reaction is similar to what an archaeologist does when he discovers a structure whose purpose is unclear – he calls it a temple. … The notion that ritual is ineffective is false. … Shamatic rituals heal, legal rituals ratify, political rituals unify, and religious rituals sanctify. Rituals transform sick persons into healthy ones, public spaces into prohibited sanctuary, citizens into presidents, princesses into queens … One of our most important tasks as scholars is to explain how rituals accomplish these things. (pp.6-7)