Victor Turner

Victor Witter Turner (1920–1983) was a cultural anthropologist best known for his work on symbols, rituals and rites of passage. His work, along with that of Clifford Geertz and others, is often referred to as symbolic and interpretive anthropology.

Born in Glasgow, Scotland, Turner initially studied poetry and classics at the University College London, but during World War II his interest in anthropology was sparked and he pursued graduate studies in anthropology at Manchester University. Turner's interest in 'social drama' has self-acknowledged roots in the precedent of Kenneth Burke and Erving Goffman.

During the period of 1950-1954, Turner studied the Ndembu tribe in central Africa with his wife Edith Turner. While observing the Ndembu, Turner became intrigued by ritual and rites of passage. He completed his PhD in 1955. Like many of the Manchester Anthropologists of his time, he also became concerned with conflict, and created the new concept of social drama in order to account for the symbolism of conflict and crisis resolution among Ndembu villagers. 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 that society. Liminality is a limbo, an ambiguous period characterized by humility, seclusion, tests, sexual ambiguity, and communitas. Communitas is defined as an unstructured community where all members are equal. (Wikipedia.)

 

grimes_on_turner_ritual.pdf — Ronald L. Grimes, Victor Turner's definition, theory, and sense of ritual, dans Kathleen M. Ashley (Ed.), Victor Turner and the Construction of Cultural Criticism, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1990, pp. 141–146.

schechner_sur_turner.pdf — Richard Schechner, Victor Turner's Last Adventure, dans Victor Turner, The Anthropology of Performance, New York, PAJ Publications, 1987 (Posthume), pp. 7–20.

turner_ritual_drama.pdf — Victor Turner, Images and Reflections: Ritual, Drama, Carnival, Film, and Spectacle in Cultural Performance, dans Victor Turner, The Anthropology of Performance, New York, PAJ Publications, 1987 (Posthume), pp. 21–32.

L'exemple privilégié sur lequel raisonne Turner est l'enquête anthropologique de Milton Singer en Inde du sud.