In this seminal contribution to the field of ritual studies, Catherine Bell does not, in fact, put forward a generalizing theory of what ritual is or does. Indeed, the first part of the book is devoted to deconstructing the very practice of such theorization as one of self-deception on the part of the theorist, circularly constructing the object of analysis through the very selection and application of a particular analytic method - a pattern of misrecognition which Bell later discerns within the operation of ritual practice itself. Instead, through an ongoing engagement and critique of theories prominent within ritual studies, she argues for an understanding of ritualization as a distinct way of acting, with an internal structural pattern which can be deployed within various contexts to achieve ends both salient to its actors and constitutive of its own reproduction.
Bell delineates ritualization as a strategy for enacting power relations through the symbolic ordering of a particular social environment. Drawing upon Althusser's theory of practice, she argues that rituals are not directed at addressing independently constituted social concerns. Rather, in projecting a ritualized environment, they transpose the terms of a problematic objective context into the terms of the ritual, and then proceed to resolve an orchestrated tension among those terms. Thus, the object to which a ritual actually addresses its activity is in fact a product of its own reframing of reality.
The hierarchical distinctions through which ritual effects its ordering of a social environment are internalized by its participants as schemes which can later be reprojected in other contexts, to ends advantageous to themselves. It is in this way that ritualization, not in specific ritual components but as a distinct, strategic way of acting, reproduces itself.
Bell also nuances, but does not reject, the notion of ritual as a means of social control, delineating the ways in which participants must be free to contest and appropriate for their own ends the schemes employed by a ritual, if the ritual authority is to actually engage them in a legitimating relation of power, and not simply one of coercion.
Bell's construction of ritualization and its implications involve complex social formulae of circularity, mutual definition, and the translation of relations across different fields of signification and action. It is a demanding read, constantly thought provoking, and valuable for both the heuristic frame it offers, and its inducement to greater self-awareness on the part of socio-cultural theorists.