Victor Turner

Victor Witter Turner ( born May 28, 1920 in Glasgow, † December 18, 1983 in Charlottesville, Virginia) was an ethnologist, a representative of the symbolic anthropology. He was of Scottish origin. His anthropological activity is attributed to the direction of the Manchester School of Anthropology. His main research work he did in southern Africa. Next he examined pilgrimages in Mexico, Brazil and Ireland. Best known is his exploration of the rituals and symbolism of the Ndembu in Zambia today.

Representatives of the symbolic anthropology

Turner represents the more ideal strand within the British Manchester School of Anthropology. Like all members of the Manchester school, he dealt primarily with change processes, with contradictions locally with the involvement of supra-regional, global contexts.

Together with Max Gluckman, he worked in southern Africa, but turned especially the symbolic areas. He examined voltage and processes of change in the religious sphere. Southern Africa the then British colonial period was marked by constant change processes that just showed drastically in Copperbelt. He saw in the mine area tens of thousands of former tribal farmers were to commuters and miners. He asked about symbols and rituals that occur in the processes of change of tribal groups towards mine workers, urbanization, Detribalisierung.

Theories

Turner found that in these uncertain times of change and change symbols and rituals are used to produce security in the face of uncertainty. A few decades after Arnold van Gennep concludes Turner at the great theories of ritual. According to Turner produced in a ritual among participants who pass together through the liminality ( the intermediate phase in the rite of passage according to van Gennep ), a commonality that can produce a common, new identity using the symbols and the dance and musical flow. This identity can be strengthened and emphasized by the ritual stands out as an event from everyday life and created an alternative world of everyday life.

This particular communality he called Communitas, featuring in particular that within a Communitas no clear social structures exist, but at least for the duration of the ritual " all are equal". Turner shows that especially in a ritual setting up of a chief, in which the otherwise generally conventional hierarchical rules are repealed. Here, players available within the liminality and thus outside of society, the power, things to do or say that would not be allowed in society.

Another observation is that people who pass together through a liminality, often remain linked to each other. If the traversed in the liminality change is particularly deep, this attachment may well last a lifetime.

Turner Arnold van Gennep follows in the model of rites of passage. Rites of passage regulate the status or change of position of individuals within societies and thus ensure the survival of the community. These rites take place in three phases, which are illustrated here by the example of an initiation ritual:

  • Phase separation: The initiate leaves his previous status.
  • Threshold phase or liminality: The initiate has no social features and is prepared for the duties and tasks of the next state.
  • Re: In the course of a ritual the initiate enters his new status.

Turner coined the term "social drama ." The social drama in four steps:

  • Break with the social norm
  • Crisis and conflict
  • Attempt at conflict resolution through a ritual
  • Reintegration or schism

Comments

Turner's work is for the modern ethnology and religious studies of considerable influence.

Works

German:

  • From ritual to theater. The seriousness of the human game. Fischer -Taschenbuch -Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1995, ISBN 3-596-12779-3.
  • The Ritual: Structure and Anti- structure. Campus -Verlag, Frankfurt / Main 2005, ISBN 3-593-37762-4.

Secondary literature

  • Peter Bräunlein: Victor Turner. In: Axel Michaels ( ed.): Classics in Religious Studies. Beck, Munich 1997, ISBN 3-406-42813-4, pp. 324-341.
  • Peter Bräunlein: Victor Turner. Ritual processes and cultural transformations. In: Stephan Moebius, Dirk Quadflieg (ed.): Culture. Theories of the present. VS - Publisher of Social Sciences, Wiesbaden 2006, ISBN 3-531-14519-3, pp. 91-100.
  • Kathleen M. Ashley (Ed.): Victor Turner and the Construction of Cultural Criticism. Indiana University Press, Bloomington, inter alia, 1990, ISBN 0-253-20594-8
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