The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (Foundations of Human Behavior)
Language: English
Pages: 213
ISBN: 0202011909
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
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."
societies, in preindustrial society, with its strong stress on kinship as the basis of many types of group affiliation; sexual continence has additional religious force. For kinship, or relations shaped by the idiom of kinship, is one of the main factors in structural differentiation. The undifferentiated character of liminality is reflected by the discontinuance of sexual relations and the absence of marked sexual polarity. It is instructive to analyze the homiletic of Kafwana, in seeking to
chiefly stool], that he may be strong. H e must continue to pray well to you. He must look after the children, he must care for all the people, both men and women, that they may be strong and that he himself should be hale. Here is your white clay. I have enthroned you, O chief. You 0 people must give forth bounds of praise. The chieftainship has appeared. I 06 The Ritual Process T h e powers t h a t shape t h e neophytes in liminality for t h e incumbency of new status a r e felt, in rites
slaven-just as a chief-elect is treated like a slave before his installation. Moreover, the senior instructor in the seclusion lodge is chosen partly because he is father of several boys undergoing the rites and becomes a father for the whole group, a sort of "abbot," though his title Mfumwa tubwiku, means literally "husband of the novices," to emphasize their passive role. MYSTICAL DANGER A N D T H E P O W E R S OF T H E W E A K One may well ask why it is that liminal situations and roles are
superiors; and they, in their turn, must accept with good will their ritual degradation. Such rites may be described as rztuals of status re~lersal.They are often accompanied by robust \ erbal and nonverbal behavior, in which inferiors revile and even physically maltreat superiors. A common variant of this t j p e of ritual is when :nfer:zrs affect the rank and style of superiors, sometimes even to the extent of I 68 The Ritual Process arraying themselves in a hierarchy mimicking the secular
and received the greatest marks of respect from all who had just now abused him (pp. 43-44). This account not only illustrates the humbling of a candidate in a rite of status elevation; it also exemplifies the power of structural inferiors in a rite of status reversal in a cycle of political rituals. I t is one of those composite rituals that contain aspects of status elevation along with aspects of status reversal. I n the first aspect, a n individual's permanent structural elevation is