Ethnographers of Congo Basin hunter-gatherers have emphasised ritual as a levelling mechanism that strengthens community spirit and mediates power evenly between individuals and subgroups. Pursuant to recent research with a Baka community in Cameroon, now largely abandoning the hunter-gatherer lifestyle, I analyse the mutual causal interactions between ritual alterations and other markers of social change. I argue that there is a positive feedback loop between ritual change and general social transformation towards a less egalitarian mode of sociality. Increasingly pressed into convening with globalising forces and integrating into the capitalist economy, the rhetoric of development has been adopted by the Baka. This community talk of a history of isolation, as a public road was extended to the district as late as 2007 by a mining corporation. The result of the new road and burgeoning mining activities is that the community has been exposed precipitously to new peoples, lifestyles and technologies. ritual...