Editing Ritual (section)

===Rites of affliction===
{{further|Shamanism|Exorcism|Ritual purification}}
Anthropologist Victor Turner defines rites of affliction actions that seek to mitigate spirits or supernatural forces that inflict humans with bad luck, illness, gynecological troubles, physical injuries, and other such misfortunes.{{sfnp|Turner|1973}} These rites may include forms of spirit [[divination]] (consulting [[oracles]]) to establish causes—and rituals that heal, purify, exorcise, and protect. The misfortune experienced may include individual health, but also broader climate-related issues such as drought or plagues of insects. Healing rites performed by [[shamans]] frequently identify social disorder as the cause, and make the restoration of social relationships the cure.{{sfnp|Turner|1967|p=9ff}}

Turner uses the example of the Isoma ritual among the Ndembu of northwestern [[Zambia]] to illustrate. The Isoma rite of affliction is used to cure a childless woman of infertility. Infertility is the result of a "structural tension between [[Matrilineality|matrilineal]] descent and [[Virilocality|virilocal]] marriage" (i.e., the tension a woman feels between her mother's family, to whom she owes allegiance, and her husband's family among whom she must live). "It is because the woman has come too closely in touch with the 'man's side' in her marriage that her dead matrikin have impaired her fertility." To correct the balance of matrilinial descent and marriage, the Isoma ritual dramatically placates the deceased spirits by requiring the woman to reside with her mother's kin.{{sfnp|Turner|1969|pp=20–21}}

Shamanic and other ritual may effect a psychotherapeutic cure, leading anthropologists such as Jane Atkinson to theorize how. Atkinson argues that the effectiveness of a shamanic ritual for an individual may depend upon a wider audiences acknowledging the shaman's power, which may lead to the shaman placing greater emphasis on engaging the audience than in the healing of the patient.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Atkinson|first=Jane|title=The Effectiveness of Shamans in an Indonesian Ritual|journal=American Anthropologist|year=1987|volume=89|issue=2|page=342|doi=10.1525/aa.1987.89.2.02a00040}}</ref>