Towards a Global Ritual: Diffusion of Culture in Unsettled Times

Can we speak of a society without rituals? Rituals create a group's identity by way of collective categories, emotion, and beliefs. The many extensions to the concept of the ritual often have focused on local and national contexts. Given that scholars of rituals tend to miss globalization, and those studying globalization tend to miss rituals, we have a less clear understanding of if and how increasing globalization produces global rituals, or vice versa. Using a global crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic, we investigate new ritual forms which are globalized. One of the most recognized collective actions during the early months of lockdown involved people clapping for healthcare workers. Our thesis is that this phenomenon constituted a ritual starting locally with near global reach, made possible by the perception of menace of COVID-19, in addition to the performance’s form and meaning, and several channels of diffusion.