ABSTRACT
This chapter is based on the understanding of ritual. It focuses particularly on the element of transformation and thereby on a very specific type of ritual, namely, the so-called “rite de passage,” the transition ritual. French social anthropologist Arnold van Gennep published the results of his studies in 1909 in his major academic work, Les Rites de Passage, that has since become one of the classic social anthropological studies of rituals. In this work, van Gennep shows that a large proportion of the ritual practices in all cultures accompany status passages in the life cycle. Two interlocking processes are involved in the transformative process: the affective and cognitive communication of the specific threshold experiences, i.e., the feelings and “vitality affects” associated with the life transition, and the “hyperarousal” generated repeatedly through rituals as well as the physical and mental stress that they frequently induce.
