Ritual and its meaning

We do need more than "thick descriptions" of the social embeddedness of rituals, unless we assume that external bells and whistles are all there's to a ritual or a belief.

Thing is that the Dreaming (the primary process thinking) is always present within the mind, albeit unbeknownst to or ignored by the conscious. Initiation ceremonies provide an immediate experience of it, connecting the individual to their unconscious mind and its timeless archetypes. Monotheistic religions and later scientific rationality have ruthlessly uprooted those under the rubric of paganism, thus depriving us of an essential human experience, necessary to experience one's life meaningfully.

That said, many rituals have been hollowed out, become mere motions to go through, acquired or were assigned a different meaning to serve purposes different to the original ones, or are experienced as mere cultural/social conventions even by those who are put through them.

Global South vs. Western Canon

This is an epistemologically flawed political project. First they denounce Orientalism: there's no Other, we're all same humans. But then they say but The Global South is different and cannot be understood by outsiders.  So essentially, it's self-Orientalisation now re-branded in the Global South packaging. If you push for universalism, stay consistent at least about the basics and think through how you are going to resolve your logical fallacies.

Besides, any theory without empirical evidence is unfalsifiable arm-chair pontification. It cannot be proved neither right, nor wrong:and hence has nothing to do with science. Theory need to be grounded on studying a particular object by applying a particular method to it. Both the object and the method should be laid open and clear for critical scrutiny. When the object is something as vague as "culture" (in fact, ANYTHING) and the only method is Homi Bhabha-style projectile verbal vomiting, the critical scrutiny is but one likely guess against another, and the resulting theory is not worth the paper its written on.

Bogus "science" alert!

Most published research findings are false. 

Ioannidis (2005) goes into a deep and nuanced argument to show how that keeps happening time after time again. However, more often thant not, it simply glares straight into your face.

For example, a recent article on the scholarly debate about the minutiae of the Neanderthal diet includes this passage.

"Many hunter-gatherers, including the Inuit, Cree and Blackfeet, eat the stomach contents of animals such as deer because they are good source of vitamin C and trace elements," said Stringer. "For example, among the Inuit, the stomach contents of an animal are considered a special delicacy with a consistency and a flavour that is not unlike cream cheese. At least, that is what I am told."

So first, we are told that the prime drive behind hunter-gatherers' consuming some very iffy foodstuffs is their anachronistically enlightened awareness of the health benefits of vitamin C. And then we discover that that insight is based on unconfirmed hearsay. Keeping in mind that 2/3 of what fieldwork informants tell you is a lie (source: H. Russell Bertrand, Research Methods in Anthropology: Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches), if this is not downright random inconsequential bogus nonsense peddled as scientific truth by an ostensibly liberal media outlet, then what is?