section_path: Anthropological theories/As a form of social solidarity
section_name: As a form of social solidarity
paragraph_text: As a form of social solidarity
  
  Ethnographic observation shows ritual can create social solidarity. Douglas Foley Went to North Town, Texas, between 1973 and 1974 to study public high school culture. He used interviews, participant observation, and unstructured chatting to study racial tension and capitalist culture in his ethnography Learning Capitalist Culture. Foley refers to football games and Friday Night Lights as a community ritual. This ritual united the school and created a sense of solidarity and community on a weekly basis involving pep rallies and the game itself. Foley observed judgement and segregation based on class, social status, wealth, and gender. He described Friday Night Lights as a ritual that overcomes those differences: "The other, gentler, more social side of football was, of course, the emphasis on camaraderie, loyalty, friendship between players, and pulling together". In his ethnography Waiting for Elijah: Time and Encounter in a Bosnian Landscape, anthropologist Safet HadžiMuhamedović suggests that shared festivals like St George's Day and St Elijah's Day structure interfaith relationships and appear as acts of solidarity against ethno-nationalist purifications of territory in Bosnia.