RAPPAPORT, ROY A. (1926–1997). The American anthropologist Roy A. Rappaport's writings, which span ecology, systems theory, and religion, address the large issues of ritual and religious logos in human survival and evolution. After helping to conceptualize the field of anthropological human ecology in the 1960s, Rappaport did fieldwork among the Maring of highland New Guinea and crafted a truly innovative "systems" ethnography, in what became the classic Pigs for the Ancestors: Ritual in the Ecology of a New Guinea People (1968), which explores the ritual regulation of environmental relations in their local ecosystems. Rappaport followed up on his analysis of what religion does by probing—through cybernetic studies of the sacred and in essays that link adaptation, the structure of human communication, and ritual life—why ritual should order ecosystems and human life. While conducting his religion research, he also consulted with government agencies on the...