The study of ritual and more of religion did not stop here. In the following decades other scholars added their own theoretical perspectives.
Marcel Mauss, a younger relative and follow scholar of Durkheim, looked at rituals in terms of exchange systems.
He documented elaborate ceremonies among some tribal groups, such as Native Americans, in which the leader of one group would host the community of a rival leader in a huge feast.
In Marcel’s theorization, this kind of action was a way of indebting the other group, since they were then bound to return the favor of the host.
In this way, the concept of “the gift,” and more broadly exchange, was theorized as a way in which society maintains a certain balance in the power of different groups controlled by opposing leaders.
Public displays of wealth, as in hosting a feast and providing gifts to guests, was a way of impressing others with one’s own wealth and ability to control the labor of one’s community.
Like Durkheim, Mauss thus saw public ritual as a means for maintaining the stability of society.