Victor Turner - Definition and Overview

Victor W. Turner (May 28, 1920 - 1983) was a renowned anthropologist. Turner was born in Glasgow, Scotland. He initially studied poetry and classics at the University College, London, but during World War II his interest in anthropology was sparked and he returned to university to begin pursuing anthropology.

During the period of 1950-1954, Turner studied the Nbemu tribe in central Africa. While observing the Nbemu, Turner became intrigued by ritual and rites of passage. Turner spent his career exploring rituals. As a professor at the University of Chicago, Turner began to apply his study of rituals and rites of passage to world religions and the lives of religious heroes.

Turner gained notoriety by exploring Arnold van Gennep’s threefold structure of rites of passage and expanding theories on the liminal phase. Van Gennep's structure consisted of a pre-liminal phase (separation), a liminal phase (transition,), and a post-liminal phase (reincorporation). Turner noted that in liminality, the transitional state between two phases, individuals were "betwixt and between": they did not belong to the society that they previously were a part of and they were not yet reincorporated into another society. Liminality is a limbo, ambiguous period characterized by humility, seclusion, tests, sexual ambiguity, and communitas. Communitas is defined as an unstructured community where all members are equal.

External links

• http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/information/biography/pqrst/turner_victor.html
• http://www.indiana.edu/~wanthro/turner.htm
• Victor Turner (http://www.shadowdrake.com/folklore/turner.html) : brief introduction to symbolic anthropology using the techniques of Victor Turner.