Academic investigations of ‘ritual’ and ‘religion’ have at times conflated each with the other. Within modern academic study, there is emerging research that attempts to decouple this association by underscoring the importance of processes of ritualization—the specific ways humans elevate actions and thought processes to importance—on identity-making and social participation. Through a combination of literature review and analysis of current social and legal issues, this thesis looks at the construction of space on three levels—the experienced, perceived, and imagined—in an effort to show that ritual, community, and identity are shaped and constrained more by economic and social influence and the administrative adjudication of the state than by authority invested in the religious sphere. This suggests that the historical pattern of linking ‘ritual’ with ‘religion’ erases perceptions of how ritualization occurs in other social areas and affects the ability to recognize new forms of ritualization as they develop. This thesis begins with an effort to trouble the historical association between ‘ritual’ and ‘religion’ through an investigation into how human cognition shapes language, which in turn shapes human expectation and experience. The second chapter offers an analysis of intersections of law, church, and state to illustrate how exercises in authority legitimate forms of ritualization that perpetuate existing hegemonic structures. The third chapter comprises an investigation of how the politics of marginalization and exclusion shape the accessibility of the ritualizations of the public sphere. The fourth and final chapter explores how highly customizable corporate spaces can be rented and transformed into temporary sites of ritualization that serve to both segregate and spur social identity-making. This project concludes that ritualizations serve to arbitrate social space and the status quo and do so whether or not an individual is aware they are occurring. As a result of this, I propose the investigation and comprehension of ritual use and emergence may benefit from reconceiving the categories employed to structure such undertakings. Such reconstruction could assist with decoupling the historical association of ‘ritual’ with ‘religion’, invite further consideration on the social value of ‘ritual’ and ‘religion’, and stir interest in emerging and evolving ritualizations. While I suggest some categories that may facilitate different entry points into reclassification, further research would be necessary to see if this strategy would be provocative.