Victor Turner
Legacy
"My work as an anthropologist has been the study of cumulative interactions over time in human groups of varying span and different cultures. These interactions, I found, tend to amass toward the emergence of sustained public action, and given my Western background,it was difficult to characterize these as other than "dramatic."
Symbols and Turner
How is that a Symbol?!
- Turner's work on liminalty draws from Van-Gennep's triadic model of the Rite of Passage, which he elaborates to include other cultural phenomena. Van Gennep described the process of shifting from one social status to another in three stages: 1.disengaement in which the individual is symbolically removed from society and his own identity. 2. The luminal stage in which the individual is secluded from society and is under constant supervision. 3. The reunion or post-liminal stage in which the individual is reintegrated into society with his new statues.
- Turner took an interest is the second phase of Van Gennep's model – that of liminality. Liminalty, in terms of social structure and time, is an intermediate state of being "in between" in which individuals are striped from their usual identity and their constituting social differences while being on the verge of personal or social transformation. Turner's perception of liminality, it should be noted, is in many respects an addition or correction to Mary Douglas' somewhat dichotomic and static description "ritual uncleaness".
- According to turner, liminality brings about a state he calls "communitas". Communitas according to Turner is a relatively structureless society which is based on relations of equality and solidarity and which is opposed to the normative social structure. Communitas gains it meaning through the deconstruction of this normative order. The communitas is according to Turner the ultimate vision of a culture. However, liminality and communitas are usually temporary and structurally defined and limited, thus dialectically serve to reaffirm the existing social order.
- What are symbols?
- How do we use symbols in our own culture?
http://culturalstudiesnow.blogspot.com/2012/03/victor-turner-on-liminality-and.html
Drama video
Let talk about the Drama
Social Drama
4 part sequence:
- Breach
- Crisis
- Regressive action
- Reintegration
He is eventually is lead to theatre.
Let's talk about these? what are situation that are called social dramas now a days?
bonus question: What do you call a social process that isn't dramatic?
Back"Ground"
- Born in Glasgow, Scotland
- Did not become a captive of his own metaphors
- Inspired by Radcliff-Brown
- Studied the Ndembu of Zambia
- pilgrimages in Mexico
- Communitas: transitional states experienced during "out-of-the-ordinary situations"
- His writing is vivid and dense
- Who enjoyed his writing?