Symbols and Ritual Action

Victor Turner
1920 (Glasgow) 1983 (Charlottesville)
PhD Manchester (Max Gluckman)
Ndembu (NorthernRhodesia, Zambia)
3 years of fieldwork with family

Ritual is religion in action

Ritual is the primary phenomenon of religion.
What is the problem the ritual is intended to solve?
What goes on at the ritual that solves the problem?

What are the visible elements of the ritual for

the anthropologist?
What are the invisible elements of the Ritual?

What is religion?
Explicit definitions chase away the
implicit ones
Specific forms? Specific content?
Certain functions?

Clifford Geertzs definition

A religion is a (1) system of symbols which
acts to (2) establish powerful, pervasive, and
long-lasting moods and motivations in men by
(3) formulating conceptions of a general order
of existence and (4) clothing these
conceptions with such an aura of actuality that
(5) the moods and motivations seem uniquely
realistic.

Durkheims problem of solidarity

How do social groups work? Why dont they fall apart?
Mechanical solidarity - primitive societies are simple. All
the people are similar, and this shared similarity
keeps them together
Organic solidarity - advanced societies have a
developed division of labor. The baker depends on
the butcher who depends on the cobbler. Just as
advanced mammals have differentiated organs.
Society is a whole not reducible to the sum of its parts.
It exists sui generis.

Durkheims take on ritual

collective action is more powerful, invigorates
the individual beyond what he can achieve alone
Rituals of biological fertility are really about
social (re)generation
people come away from a ritual feeling better,
stronger
"... they reforge their moral nature in it."
this feeling is represented in the belief of totemic
species reproducing themselves and well-being
of the clan.

Religion includes
1. attempts to explain, interpret, predict and control
phenomena and events
2. emotional responses to the awesomeness of the
universe and to the impact of illness, death and
ones own mortality
3. mechanisms for the release of psychological
stress
4. symbols of unity of a society and its distinction
from other groups
5. models for explaining the world

Manifestations

Beliefs
Practices, routines
Myths
Rituals

Turners definition of ritual

"... prescribed formal behavior for
occasions not given over to
technological routine, having reference
to beliefs in mystical beings or powers."
Kinds of rituals
Calendrical, crisis, rites of passage

Calendrical Rites
Regular, annual celebrations
Passover, Christmas, Eid-ul-Fitr

Hawaiian calendrical cycle of arrival

and departure of Lono and Ku

Crisis Rites
Healing
Emergencies
Personal or social crisis

Ritual Symbols
condensation - "Many things and
actions are represented in a single
formation"
unification of disparate significata connected by virtue of analogous
qualities
polarization of meaning - ideological
pole (social psychological stuff )and a
sensory pole (physical stuff)

Rites of Passage

Arnold Van Gennep (1909) defined

rites of passage as rituals which
accompany passage from one place,
state, social position and age
Three stages
1. Separation
2. Marginality, transition (liminality)
3. Incorporation, aggregation (post-liminal)

Liminality
enduring category of people who are betwixt &
between
tricksters, clowns, poets, shamans, court jesters,
monks, cult members

Characteristics of liminal beings

neophyte
betwixt and between
symbols modelled on biological processes (death, birth)
structurally invisible
ritually polluting
sexually ambiguous
authorial relationships vis a vis elders
egalitarian relationships among initiates
communitas

Communitas
Equality, undifferentiated humanness,
androgyny, and humility
neophytes are symbolically represented as a
kind of tabula rasa, of pure, undetermined
possibility
the converse of social structure, which
emphasizes differentiation, hierarchy, and
separation.

Sacra

Knowledge, things, actions

Powerful, sacred (set apart)
Common characteristics of the sacra:
1. their frequent disproportion
2. their monstrousness
3. their mystery

Edith Turner on Experiencing

Ritual
Anthropological data is generated from
intersubjective perspective
You are a cultured person and you have
experiences

Take all experiences seriously

Ritual and symbols go beyond language
Difficulty of analysis and representation in text