Rite of passage

The concept of rites of passage (also: passages rites, French rites de passage ) refers to an ethnological concept that was introduced in 1909 by the French anthropologist Arnold van Gennep. Van Gennep had observed that in the course of social life of an individual numerous transitions between two life stages or social conditions must be accomplished, for example, between childhood and adulthood, Ledigkeit and marriage, Outdoor Standing - being and one dedicated member, outer alien world and domestic familiar surroundings. It seems these transitions, which are mainly used in non-industrial societies integral part of social life, to have been regarded as a potential danger, and accordingly they could not be completed individually, but had to be overcome ritual.

This ritual performances which served to protect, above all of the unprotected because undefined intermediate state between the two positions (start and end of transition), van Gennep " rites of passage " called. He analyzed their structure based primarily on the subset of initiation rites non- industrialized, segmentary, indigenous societies. He has worked a three-phase model out, follow all rites of passage structurally: first, the separation phase ( separation), then an undefined and malevolent to the influence of forces particularly prone intermediate phase ( liminality ) and finally the integration phase in which the new identity is assumed. All three phases correspond to certain isolable subgroups of rites that can occur weighted differently throughout the transition ritual: rites of separation (French rites de séparation ), emerging or transition rites ( rites de marges ) and Angliederungsriten ( rites d' agrégation ).

Van Gennep's influential theory was developed primarily by the British anthropologist Victor Turner.