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The Ritual Process

DOI link for The Ritual Process

The Ritual Process book

Structure and Anti-Structure

The Ritual Process

DOI link for The Ritual Process

The Ritual Process book

Structure and Anti-Structure
ByVictor Turner, Roger D Abrahams, Alfred Harris
Edition 1st Edition
First Published 1969
eBook Published 5 July 2017
Pub. location New York
Imprint Routledge
DOI https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315134666
Pages 232 pages
eBook ISBN 9781315134666
SubjectsSocial Sciences
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Turner, V., Abrahams, R. D., Harris, A. (1969). The Ritual Process. New York: Routledge, https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315134666

In The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure, Victor Turner examines rituals of the Ndembu in Zambia and develops his now-famous concept of "Communitas." He characterizes it as an absolute inter-human relation beyond any form of structure.

The Ritual Process has acquired the status of a small classic since these lectures were first published in 1969. Turner demonstrates how the analysis of ritual behavior and symbolism may be used as a key to understanding social structure and processes. He extends Van Gennep's notion of the "liminal phase" of rites of passage to a more general level, and applies it to gain understanding of a wide range of social phenomena. Once thought to be the "vestigial" organs of social conservatism, rituals are now seen as arenas in which social change may emerge and be absorbed into social practice.

As Roger Abrahams writes in his foreword to the revised edition: "Turner argued from specific field data. His special eloquence resided in his ability to lay open a sub-Saharan African system of belief and practice in terms that took the reader beyond the exotic features of the group among whom he carried out his fieldwork, translating his experience into the terms of contemporary Western perceptions. Reflecting Turner's range of intellectual interests, the book emerged as exceptional and eccentric in many ways: yet it achieved its place within the intellectual world because it so successfully synthesized continental theory with the practices of ethnographic reports."

TABLE OF CONTENTS

chapter 1|43 pages

Planes of Classification in a Ritual of Life and Death

WithVictor Turner, Roger D. Abrahams

chapter 2|50 pages

Paradoxes of Twinship in Ndembu Ritual

WithVictor Turner, Roger D. Abrahams

chapter 3|37 pages

Liminality and Communitas

WithVictor Turner, Roger D. Abrahams

chapter 4|35 pages

Communitas: Model and Process

WithVictor Turner, Roger D. Abrahams

chapter 5|38 pages

Humility and Hierarchy: The Liminality of Status Elevation and Reversal

WithVictor Turner, Roger D. Abrahams
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