Process, System, and Symbol: A New Anthropological Synthesis Author(s): Victor Turner Source: Daedalus, Vol. 106, No.

3, Discoveries and Interpretations: Studies in Contemporary Scholarship, Volume I (Summer, 1977), pp. 61-80 Published by: The MIT Press on behalf of American Academy of Arts & Sciences Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20024494 Accessed: 24/08/2010 01:29
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VICTOR TURNER

Process, System, Synthesis

and Symbol: A New Anthropological

Just beyond our present horizon, I like to think, lie the Delectable Islands. But I think that anthropologists will reach them only if they reverse the process of fission into awesome jargon, which has characterized the history of subdisciplines, each with its or so, and move toward a renewed in the decade past anthropology fusion which will lead to discussion an sort animated the say, among, of biological, ecological, structural, semiotic, semiological, "etic," "emic," ethno-this and ethno-that, kinds of anthropologists. Our expulsion from various colonial research Edens may be an opportunity rather than a
loss. We other can now take sciences stock?and and also assess our relationship, in this breathing space, to entrenched humanities.

Anthropology should notflinch from looking at creative art and literature in complex societies, but always as these reflect upon the "Hides of history' which form their processual
contexts. Texts not only animate and are animated by contexts but are processually

inseverable from them. The arts are germane to the ebbs andflows of human understand? as these awaken or ing fade at given moments on the scale of global history; the sciences show anthropology the constraints of the human condition. In terms approvable by William Blake, we oscillate between "single" and fourfold" vision, but neither is
inappropriate to us, exhausts us, or cannot be seriously studied.

My personal view is that anthropology is shifting from a stress on concepts such as a structure, equilibrium, function, system to process, indeterminacy, reflexivity?from a to a with tender the "being" "becoming" vocabulary?but perpetuative regard for marvellous findings of thosewho, teachers of thepresent generation, committed themselves " to the discoveries of "systems" of social relations and cultural "items" and "complexes. The validly new never negates the seriously researched immediate past in any science; it incorporates it in "a wider orbit of recovered law." As Tom Kuhn and others have shown, the sociopolitical situation in any disciplined a as or not, exhibits the whether science field of knowledge, classified conflicts of our Italian (as processuality colleagues, literally translating, put it). Actual persons represent theoretical stances. Older persons command stronger positions in the micro comographia acad?mica?persons trained and working valuably in earlier periods than the present. Younger persons are doing the experiments, thefieldwork. Paradigms supported by the "good old boys" are challenged by new facts, new hypotheses grounded in them. Anthropology ispresently experiencing this stress rather sharply. The discipline of anthropology undoubtedly shares this crisis with other academic disciplines. To my possibly naive European eye, stress on the individual as the grant 61

62

VICTOR

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on "chaps rather than maps," has virtues certainly, but it also makes for seeking unit, theoretical fragmentation. And behind it is often a covert, unhealthy collectivism. For certain of the major departments of anthropology in the United States show a kinship to the city states of antiquity. Each department specializes in a certain kind of anthropology (ethnoscience, symbolic anthropology, ecological anthropology, applied anthropology, etc.), and it would be a bold student who successfully obtained supportfor what his tutors considered an "adversary position" in terms of his grant proposal or thesis research. This combination of a myth of individualism and a reality of departmental theoretical orientation often tends to createfor imaginative students the classical Batesonian double bind situation. Their best thoughts may be tabooed and their integrity undermined by to state" in shibboleths the and which way of concepts "city styles they must render at least to service obtain and supportfrom nationally lip locally prestigious departmental faculty. Students often seem to sufferfrom theguilt of "self betrayal"?which pursues them even into theirfieldwork infar places. I am sure this is not an optimal condition for fieldwork. For they have to process their fieldwork into Ph.D. dissertations acceptable by their sponsoring departments. One remedy would be to seekmeans to overcome the overspecialization of departments a new and the atomism of funding. My paper indicates that breakthrough in anthropology a serious sustained the proponents of severely segregated subdisci? effort by depends upon on as bestow their students the emblems plines (who of this segregation "professional to relate the best their The competence") findings of separated years. major funding S SRC, Ford Foundation, etc., should be approached to agencies, the NSF, NIMH, a "summit" the series the leaders of the various modes basis provide for of meetings among None the think-tanks (Palo Alto, Princeton, etc.) has of "anthropologizing." of major Not collective that conferences alone can do this immense work of promoted refiexivity. a are but that the reconstitution this, of anthropology at higher level under the signals they is under Otherwise the way. aegis of processualism centrifugal drift, indeed, the suicidal
sparagmos, will go on and on.

The device of encouraging representation on thefaculties of certain departments of all themajor subfields of current anthropology tends to be a palliative rather than a remedy if it is not cognizantly and authoritatively reinforced by the shared understanding of the discipline that such specialization must be accompanied by authentic integration under a major paradigm whose lineaments have been indicated by the acknowledged creative leaders of the total discipline. it may not be possible to point to a definitive exempli? breakthrough, fied by a single book or article, in the past decade or so in world anthropology, one can make a fair case for a drift toward a theoretical general disciplinary to which studies have However, largely contributed. processual synthesis no as in its earlier is process theory heyday, with Gumplowicz's longer linked, it now notion that "man's material need is the prime motive of his conduct"1; of and its meaning symboling. Furthermore, recognizes the critical importance studied in a theoretical focus is now "an individual and specific population a stress on and with frame of reference multidisciplinary specific human Although
behavior rather than generalized norms or averages."2 Processes of conflict and

of the social Darwinian (accommodation, type, or of cooperation competition on "mutual aid," are no longer assimilation) modeled Kropotkin's zoological core of social as Material need is development. regarded being at the dynamic

PROCESS,

SYSTEM,

AND

SYMBOL

63

not rejected but is rather viewed as part of "the simultaneous some anthropologists and culture" which ecology, biology, ogy*
In rather, this an junctural intersystzmic analysis of various analysis?culture systems?not to be has a seen

interaction among call biological ecol?

but, systems analysis as because processual,

on the biotic and ecological in interaction and imposes meaning it emerges it interacts. I should not say "it," for this is systems (also dynamic) with which an endless series of negotiations to reify what is, regarded processually, among to the acts in which of meaning actors about the assignment they jointly is assigned verbally speech and nonverbally through Meaning participate. action and is often stored in symbols which and ritual ceremonial through situational contexts. But the assign? indexical counters in subsequent become as processes in the of meaning must be investigated ment and reassignment to be itself each domain of resilience possessed recognizing by population to are periodically human For subjected populations culturally perduring. to shocks and crises, in addition to the strains and tensions of adjustment involve These from the biotic and social environments. challenges quotidian structures as well as of institutional determinate of maintenance of problems creative adaptation to sudden or persisting environmental changes, making for
indeterminacy.

Processual critique
social

gained from the phenomenological analysis has undoubtedly held that of positivist anthropology. Whereas anthropology positivist
are qualitatively the same as natural phenomena, that the

phenomena

in the natural sciences are applicable with little techniques of analysis developed should and that anthropology to anthropological modification investigation, which would strive to develop empirically based theoretical propositions sup? the phenomenologists, statements about social phenomena, port predictive insisted that the social world is in many important respects a notably Schutz, in the form of what Harold cultural construct, an organized universe of meaning a it. Garfinkel of the of series calls Garfinkel objects within "typifications" in their view that "by naming an experienced follows Schutz and Husserl to pre-experienced things of similar object, they are relating by its typicality to we future experi? horizon its and open accept referring typical structures, ences of the same type."4 Garfinkel argues that when a member of a collectivity accounts for his unique actions he is at the same time typifying them in terms of all other members. This a framework he shares with which of meaning
framework is what the phenomenological social scientists call common sense,

of activities of members Garfinkel argues that even the practical, mundane sense level, because common are at the the "reflexive" sociocultural groups social existence of amember's experiences can be established only through their to the world of effort of relating their uniqueness the through typification, For these the transmitted scholars Durk and group. by generated meaning as to treat social heim's famous attempt phenomena "things" is misdirected. to to the is shared do fails What Durkheim processes, analyze involving an social interaction generates and language, by which gestures, symbols, to that of the individuals who emergent social reality distinct from and external produce collective it. Processual like phenomenological dereifies anthropology, analysis, into of the and actions cross-purposive purposive representations

64 persons
social

VICTOR

TURNER

in sequences
even,

of

negotiations
in some cases,

to maintain
to change

or retain, modify,
the character and

or subvert
structure of

meanings,

sense. By focusing attention on processes of it assignment meaning to be the and which locate what D. E. rules may generate possible principles Brown has called "presumptively perpetual social units."5 Brown refers specifi? cally to corporations, which he regards as more readily classifiable than many
noncorporate statuses, but like many structural-functionalists, he regards as

common

and other "surface struc? the processes by which corporations unproblematical tures" come into existence, are maintained and processes, against disintegrative are cannot be taken for reevaluated by actors. Social meanings constantly granted. It is not enough to make taxonomies or inventories of jurai norms and cultural values, based on formal statements by informants. We have to develop strategies for ascertaining how the actors deal with discrepant norms: what are their standards of how they assess the respective weighings of appropriateness, to their transac? stated and unstated rules, in short, how they assign meaning
tions and interactions.

Moore's

advanced by Sally Falk analysis has recently been considerably to Symbol and Politics in Communal Moore proposes "Epilogue" Ideology .6 to be one of that "the of social life should be considered quality underlying

Processual

is only partially Such indeterminacy absolute indeterminacy." theoretically reduced by culture %x\A "the life, social patterned aspects of which are organized of inconsistency, contain elements and temporary, incomplete, ambiguity, She goes, in fact, further conflict."7 and contradiction, paradox, discontinuity, seem to than Schutz, Garfinkel, and other sociologists, who phenomenological sense. Here they share find some system, vocabulary, and syntax in common some notion of the with the structural-functionalists priority of determinacy.
Moore, however, argues that even where rules and customs exist, "in?

of the internal con? may be produced by the manipulation determinacy the universe of relatively and ambiguities within tradictions, inconsistencies, not and fixing are processes, determinate elements."8 For Moore, determining states. is renewed. This the The permanent really continuously seemingly fixecj model assumes that social reality is "fluid and indeterminate," although regular? or systematic forms. it into organized transform izing processes continually can and their lose never These, however, slip back indeterminacy, completely into an ambiguous or dismembered condition unless vigilantly attended. Moore calls the processes in which persons "arrange their immediate situations (and/or of the their the indeterminacies express by exploiting feelings and conceptions) or by or redefin? situations or by generating such indeterminacy reinterpreting "9 A or relationships, major 'processes of situational adjustment.' ing the rules of advance made by Moore in process theory is her proposal that processes of each have the effect and situational adjustment "may processes regularization an existing social situation or order." Both should be or of stabilizing changing social life and the complex relationships between taken into account whenever are is which the continuously culture renewed web of meanings being analyzed. Both types of process contain within of becoming themselves the possibility if often their schematic opposite^, for strategies used in situational adjustment, of of Per become contra, if new processes part repeated, may regularization.
rules are made for every situation, such rules cannot be said to "regularize" and

PROCESS,

SYSTEM,

AND

SYMBOL

65

The process of creating "legal of situational become elements adjustment. between processes of regular? fictions" miiy perhaps be regarded as mediating ization and situational adjustment.10 A caveat should be interpolated here. It has sometimes been forgotten by for processualism that process is those caught up in the first enthusiasm an structure that with and of social life bound up adequate analysis intimately a rigorous consideration of the relation between them. Historical necessitates a diachronic profile, a temporal structure in events, but often reveals hindsight in isolation from the series of synchronie this structure cannot be understood a social field at every significant point of structure the which of compose profiles arrest of the time flow. Processual has shown us, do not studies, as Moore
replace a research focus on regularity and consistency. They may, however,

us clues to the nature of forces of systemic maintenance even as they shed give structure I speak o? here I am forces of change. When light on the countervailing that it well aware of the phenomenological critique of structural-functionalism I am in agreement with David Walsh's reifies social order and structure. Thus, comment for a sociological that "the requirement analysis of the problematic character
so as

of social order is a suspension

on the routine

of the belief
and

in the facticity
of

of that order
by

to concentrate

practices

procedures

interpretation

which members it in interactional settings."11 But Walsh's view that accomplish is important is not formal rules but the procedures what by which members are in accordance with that activities demonstrate the rule and therefore seems to me to put too much stress on what Moore would call intelligible not on the of and of situational processes processes enough regularization in certain cases may bring about a shift from regularity to adjustment, which in the phenomenological is much merit There indeterminacy. sociologists' in for their actions in a rational way, group members that argument accounting are social life a coherent and making those actions rational and thus making a way that underlines nature of all in the constructed comprehensible reality in the work of Garfinkel, view particularly reality?a developed following But scientists of "Man," anthropolo? Schutz (with Husserl both!). shadowing not only what Garfinkel gists in the strict sense, must find "interesting" terms events and activities the in ironically "uninteresting" "commonplace" social life, involving constant negotiations about typifying conduct in endless
constructions dinary, of common sense, original, but also what Perhaps is genuinely anthropologists rare?"spare, strange." interesting, are extraor? in a better

in this respect, for their fieldwork is conducted?or has position than sociologists been until recently?mostly sometimes differ? among populations having widely ent cultures from their own. The common sense of those whom they study from seems the outset to their subjects. extraordinary though ordinary enough on the other hand, share with their subjects Sociologists, understandings because they share their culture and have to work hard at transforming the a into of sensitized taken-for-granted fascinating object study. Anthropologists, from the outside to the alienness of many of the symbols and shared meanings on to those often discover what is go by they investigate, extraordinary by any has in its archives so many variant reckoning. The profession of anthropology of commonplace organizations everyday activities, every one of which no doubt or bizarre as exotic from the standpoint of the others, seemingly apprehended

66

VICTOR

TURNER

mechanisms
Sch?lte ical, parable and

that it is led to probe beneath this surface layer of reflexivity for processes and of a generally human type. French structuralism, whose leading is Claude L?vi-Strauss, this task. Bob exponent anthropological attempted
has succinctly summarized phenomena of unconscious, L?vi-Strauss's are assumed structural, ethnographic realizations argument: to be the and "conscious, concrete and empir? com?

ethnological

systems.

These,

of neurological, and cybernetic, as a uni versais. Not does structuralism stand physico-chemical only discipline or fall on the basis of this premise, but it also closure provides the paradigmatic
for the enterprise as a whole: an encompassing movement from the empirical

in turn,

are said to be

the results

description
comparable,

of ethnographic
and universal

models
structures."12

on to their final reduction

to unconscious,

here. First, L?vi-Strauss's date is drawn from and the neurological completed culinary recipes. Second, and physicochemical bases of human behavior are clearly not exhausted by but have a high potential for fixed enduring neuronal pathways genetically innovative behavior. Even if there are inherited genetic structures of cognition, at least as categories or engrams, it is not impossible that at levels of mentality a for is and in there behavior plastic, adaptive, deep capacity manipulative to In circumstance. other be words, processual potential may response changing In any event both struc? in the physicochemical infrastructure. preconstituted in biology remain as yet unverified. I wish foundations tural and processual we are not here a to with that behavioral make the surface only point dealing structures. Indeed, it crawling with processes contrasted with deep unconscious to reverse the order of depth and regard the structures be possible might as convenient means inferable in collections of myths and kindred phenomena may texts such as myths
of ordering collective experiences arising from the contestation of deep process?

Two

comments

be made

es of regularization
argue that structural

and situational
arrangements

adjustment.
(binary logic,

Phenomenologists
split representation,

might

even

media?

for framing that which actors tion, and the rest) provide boundary conditions that make take for granted, up the actor's stock of "typified conceptions common condi? knowledge, linguistic usage, and biophysical ecological settings,
tions."13 From this perspective the structural oppositions and transformations

in the "concrete logic" of mythical narratives may not detected by L?vi-Strauss as represent a to fundamental so much constraints clues cognitive provide sense knowledge. We and simplistic coding of items of common convenient must for intimations of human depth. It is here that we must look elsewhere turn once more to the investigation of processes, but now to processes heavily those of ritual, drama, and other invested with cultural symbols, particularly genres. powerful performative Van Gennep was the first scholar who perceived that the processual form of in traditional society that social life was the general experience ritual epitomized
a sequence of movements in space-time, involving a series of changes of

in state and status for of transitions activity and pragmatic he was individuals and culturally recognized groups and categories. Certainly ahead of his time; other investigative procedures had to be developed before his of salient hypotheses. He might be the foundation could become discovery steam who first known with of described the Hero Alexandria, compared

a succession

PROCESS,

SYSTEM,

AND

SYMBOL

67

b.c. Unlike James Watts's model nineteen hundred years later it engine in 120 a no useful work, merely causing a performed globe to whirl, but not world of a folklorist, had what he considered an almost invention to turn! Van Gennep, as he to elicit the processual structure of two mystical attempted inspiration rite: in of those which mark, and, types indigenous thought, bring about the an one cultural state or social status or of from individual social category passage to another culturally
summer,

in the course of his, her, or their life cycle; and those which mark recognized points in the passage of time (first fruits, harvest, mid?
new year, new moon, solstice, or equinox). He found that rites de

had three principal stages: rites of separation, passage, viewed cross-culturally, = and limen threshold), margin (or reaggregation. The duration and complexity of these stages varied according to type of rite, though initiatory rites tended to to task have a protracted liminal stage. Max Gluckman has taken Van Gennep for stressing of ritual rather than the role which the mechanisms "whole ceremonies and specific rites play in the ordering and reordering of social relations."14 However, social anthropology had not in Van Gen descriptive time the holistic characterization of social systems which would provided nep's have made this possible, whereas the coolness displayed by Durkheim and his work must have discouraged school to Van Gennep's Van Gennep from to to his the relate processual discovery attempting early structural-functionalist formulations of the Ann?e sociologique group. American scholars were among the first to note the theoretical significance of Van Gennep's discovery. As early as to 1942 E. D. Chappell S. and C. Coon had attempted discuss his analysis of rites of passage in a framework of equilibrium-maintenance theory, and had added a fourth category, "rites of intensification," which had as their main of group unity.15 J. W. Whiting and I. L. Child,16 Frank goal the strengthening are among those scholars who have in W. Young,17 and Solon T. Kimball18 recent years seen the relevance of Van Gennep's formulation for their work in varied fields. Kimball has noted how Van Gennep went beyond his analysis of
the triadic processual structure of rites of passage "to an interpretation of their

significance for the explanation of the continuing nature of life." Van Gennep, continues Kimball, believed that rites of passage with their symbolic representa? tion of death and rebirth illustrate "the principles of regenerative renewal required by any society."19 The present author, stimulated during his fieldwork by Henry Junod's use of Van Gennep's interpretative apparatus for understand? ritual,20 came to see that the liminal stage was of crucial importance ing Thonga with renewal. Indeed, Van Gennep regard to this process of regenerative sometimes called the three stages "preliminal, in? liminal, and postliminal," never that But he the followed of his importance. up dicating implications that when individuals or groups are discovery of the liminal beyond mentioning in a liminal state of suspension, separated from their previous condition, and not new into their one, they present a threat to themselves and to yet incorporated the entire group, requiring their segregation from quotidian life in a milieu a visa to live in around ritual In interdictions. while 1963, by hedged awaiting a wrote I between cultural later to be America, worlds, suspended paper, in American the the published Proceedings of Ethnological Society for 1964, whose title expresses what for me is the distinctive feature of liminality: "Betwixt and Between: The Liminal Period in Rites de Passage."21 "Liminars," who may be

68
initiands another, the solar or or novices even whole to another in passage

VICTOR from

TURNER one sociocultural transition ceremony, state from are and one "neither status to of nor

year

populations in a

undergoing great public

quadrant here

there"; they are betwixt

custom, convention, and

and between
ceremonial.

the positions
Van Gennep

assigned
pointed

and arrayed by law,

to the many sym?

bols of birth, death, and rebirth found in the liminal stage inmany societies and religions. But for me the essence of liminality is to be found in its release from normal constraints, making possible the deconstruction of the "uninteresting"
constructions of common sense, the "meaningfulness of ordinary life," dis?

cussed by phenomenological into cultural units which may then be sociologists, some of them bizarre to the in novel ways, reconstructed point of monstrosity own "emic" the actors' is the domain of the (from perspective). Liminality
"interesting," or of "uncommon sense." This is not to say that it is totally

for insofar as it represents a definite unconstrained, initiand from status A to status B in a ritual belonging
sequence subsequent of rituals, stages. To liminality use Robert must bear some terms, Merton's

stage in the passage of an to a traditional system or

of its antecedent must and accord some symbols

traces

with
into

the "manifest"
a woman, a dead

purposes
person

of the ritual (to transform

into an ancestral spirit,

boy
But

into a man,
others have

girl
the

etc.).

"latent" capacity to elicit creative and innovative responses from the liminars and costumes in African and their instructors. The and study of masks or into secret societies, of puberty initiation Melanesian rituals, whether unlocked for maskers demonstrates the imaginative potential by liminality,
(representing deities, arch-ancestors, territorial guardian spirits, or other super

naturals) Among
to be

typically the Ndembu

appear of Zambia,
of

in liminal
awesome

sites

for example,
shape

sequestered the makishi, masked

and power, are

from mundane figures,

by believed

life. said
boy

ancient

ancestors,

secluded in the bush camps during theMukanda rites to spring from the blood-soaked site in the deep bush where they had recently been circumcised. who create the masks, though they portray a limited range of The woodcarvers the Crazy One, the the Wise Old Chief, types (the Foolish Young Woman, a wide initiative in of aesthetic etc.), Binder, range personal display Fertility novices
generating variant forms.

In other words, Homo there is an aspect of play in liminality. Huizinga's to the in the element ludens22 has sensitized thought play anthropological in culture, by his scrutiny of all kinds and negotiation of meaning construction and the judicial of playing from children's games to the dialectic of philosophy a Not is is all business! serious After him, process. play, of course, play sense reserved, in any society, for liminal occasions in the strict Van Gennepian of ritual stages. In tribal societies, children and adults play games in nonritual, leisure contexts. manufacture
ines, masks,

But the serious games which important

murals

involve
caves,

of religiously
sand-paintings,

symbolic
in sacred

the play of ideas and the forms and designs (icons, figur?
statues, effigies, pottery

emblems, and the like) are often, in traditional societies, reserved for authenti? I invoked William cally liminal times and places. In "Betwixt and Between" to monsters?so the liminal of of dissociation" "law clarify problem James's to initiands. James argued that when a media different often presented through as parts of the same total object, without and b occurred being together

PROCESS, discriminated, the occurrence of

SYSTEM, one of

AND

SYMBOL in a new

69 combination, ax,

these,

a,

the discrimination of a, b, and x from one another. As William James himself put it in his Principles of Psychology : "What is associated now with one now with another, tends to become dissociated from either, and to thing and an the abstract mind. into One of grow object contemplation by might call this favors law of dissociation are compounded dragons the
element in the common

Liminal monsters and by varying concomitants."23 from various discriminata, each of them originally an
sense construction of social reality. In a sense, they have

the liminars' powers of analysis and the pedagogical function of stimulating to them the building from blocks which their hitherto taken-for revealing in the But another reveal world has been constructed. way they granted all constructed the the indeterminacy freedom, worlds, culturally underlying as free play of mankind's and well cognitive imaginative capacities. Synthesis, as In many cultures, liminality analysis, is encouraged by monster construction!
is often bally, the this scene innovative for immolative freedom. action Symbolic which demonstrates, elaborately usually contrived, subver are structures,

to liminars at most sacred episodes in the marginal rites, and are then, the time and labor taken to construct them, destroyed. despite Shakespeare's as his master of liminality, Prospero, declared, "leave palaces," "cloud-capped not a rack behind." The fabrications of liminality, being free from the pragmat? exhibited
ics of the common sense world, are "baseless fabrics of this vision"?like The

the products of ritual and dramatic ritual are surely not Tempest ineffectual?at least they survive in ways not altogether to be expected. How, science? then, should they be assessed in the terms of sociocultural Let me advert to the ecological anthropological concept of resilience men? tioned above.24 This holds that ecological systems (including those ordered by culture) survive "in so far as they have evolved tactics to keep the domain of or resilience, broad of change." stability, enough to absorb the consequences itself. Yet
Here we are not only once more in the presence of the constant negotiation of

meanings processes
but we cultural

and the mutually modifying of the phenomenological anthropologists, of regularization and situational adjustment elicited by Sally Moore,
begin carving to to see out the by evolutionary, negotiation, and, over indeed, the ages mere of survival, sapient value of the of development, even Evolutionary

ritualized
moments, cost

spaces and times, given over as most

the manufacture the production of models of weird for and

sacred, privileged,
behavior extravagant and conduct, forms.

and inviolable
if the

is oftentimes

as it since Darwin, has always stressed the importance of variability, a to to and selection, at the permits given species adapt changing conditions; rather than for homogeneity, which level, is often for variability zoological demands a single limited environment. Anthropologists such asMalinowski and L?vi-Strauss have always found the distinction between nature and culture a useful one, and I share their conviction. I see liminality, in tribal societies, even when they have inhabited a single ecological environment for a long time by any theory,
measure, as the provision of a cultural means of generating variability, as well as

of ensuring the continuity of proved values and norms. This is done sometimes inversion of mundane the simple life, so that liminars become by mirror antitheses of their antecedent secular "selves" (the bundle of roles occupied in many puberty rites boys are invested preritually). Thus, symbolically with

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VICTOR

TURNER

feminine attributes, and girls with masculine traits, on the way from juniority to or in social classification, seniority political authority.25 With increasing
frequency, however, inversion gives way, as societies increase in scale and

to the liminal complexity, generation of many alternative models. It should be mentioned, however, that, like everything else in liminality, the not of does in societies that have been go uncontested, primacy play especially one place and have had time to consolidate sense in their common long
structures into plausible semblances of "natural systems." Here, in the dan?

gerous
structures, stage, a

realm of challenge
it strong is necessary, thread of

to all established
above all,

jural-political,
even constructed

kinship,
through order. This

and other
the liminal is often

to maintain,

"common

sense-ically"

concealed and seldom revealed symbols and by sacra, carefully are on rare liminal occasions. of which symbols, configurations exposed only the one axiomatic and rules definitions of the culture?usually They represent a that has been well consolidated continuous of occupancy by single territory over a cultural groups goodly period of time. In such relatively homogeneous are widely where understandings and deeply shared, the liminal periods of ritual have episodes in which the axioms and principles which govern mundane inmyths and symbols which do not contravene life have solemn representation or criticize the mundane order (as ludic construction often do) but present it as represented based in the primordial cosmogonie process. Here ritual is less play than work, as well as and the culture that has such liminality tends to be nonreflexive are their and rituals Where backed by superior nonadaptive. religious systems and force and power they tend to lose their ludic innovativeness political success of a to reduce the need to "carry" a form tends for the variability, single store of alternative forms. That this may be shortsighted is seldom recognized,
for climatic, geological, or historical processes may bring disasters and traumas

the single-model ritual system, represented by a set of paradigmatic for which translation into action, may provide inadequate models and their ritual myths for mental and physical response. What, paradoxically, may be more functional
is a culture even which carries liminal with schemata it over for time behavior, a store in of seemingly nonfunctional, terms, a reper? ridiculous evolutionary

one of which may prove to be toire of variant deep cultural models, adaptive in even It and be said that biotic conditions. may drastically changed ecological the ludic in French the when sense, structure, penetrates partially cognitive on it a and of rules found of lexicon" space-time "grammar liminality, imposing
to be successful in mundane, extraritual contexts, the society thus beset has so

much the less adaptive resilience. feature of liminality Another

and probably more than one,

is that itmay

be said to contain
term is Gregory

at least one,
Bateson's, a

"metalanguage."

The

for anyone, has given the social sciences a thinker who, new way of talking about the phenomena and processes we study.26 Bateson in the evaluation of the messages involved is talks about "a play frame which if it can so be claimed
which also it contains."27 in many He argues that in human systems, systems certain of communication, are emitted and in nonhuman, zoological signals

relations period
forms

among of time,

for a variable actors, which frame the subsequent proceedings not is direct but which is about the in which communication
used in the day-to-day processes of ensuring survival?

of

communication

PROCESS,

SYSTEM,

AND

SYMBOL

71

relations and the forms of social control case, the productive their orderliness and relative freedom from conflict. Metacommu guaranteeing It is the self-conscious. but plurally and cumulatively nication is self-conscious, or group evaluates its own routine behaviors. Because it is way a population of individual com? it perhaps lacks the trenchancy and cumulative collective in mankind's mentary, but compensates by its positing of generic thought against generic it the reflexivity of many it has perforce to clothe Because represents experience. of itself in multivocal many meanings") symbols, and against the ("susceptible is univocal signs in which the logical thought of gifted individual philosophers men of and self-consciousness have We the experiencing plural expressed.
thinking together as against the singular self-consciousness of a master crafts?

man

of cognitive reflexivity. Plurality brings feeling and willing (orexis) into the act. One might even argue that the founders of major religions (whose adherents in hundreds of millions, "scientif? still can be counted "objectively"?hence a medial tribal between (and plural) reflex? position occupied ically"?speaking) ivity and industrial

(as represented by the Western (and singular) reflexivity for collectivities and their common sense in that they spoke European thinkers), same at their the Western the time, provided values, and, critique; whereas of the social much tradition, losing component, plural, spoke for philosophical the individual, cognitively liberated though orectically alienated, as against the "damned compact majorities" of Ibsen's Dr. Stockman inAn Enemy of thePeople. If liminality is tribal, traditional ritual is a mode of plural, reflexive, often the countervailing ludic metacommunication processes and (though containing we to have ask the it can of system maintenance), question?whether symbols answered or not is another set of questions for investigation? be satisfactorily what are the functional equivalents of liminality in complex societies, high on with ever increasing division of labor the dimensions of scale and complexity, and where and specialization of crafts and professions, the concept of the individual as against the mass is positively evaluated?
Before we can answer this question or we might consider the distinction be?

tween
expressing

indicative
action,

and

subjunctive

moods
occurrence

of verbs?those
(for we are

classes
concerned

of words
with the

existence,

processual
designates

aspects
the

of nature
of

and culture).
an act, state,

The
or

indicative
as

mood

commonly
it asks

expression

occurrence

"actual";

terms of the definitions of tested facts acceptable in the questions common of a given human population. Where the subjunctive mood is found, it tends to express desire, hypothesis, it supposition, possibility: or so. In it be its embraces both cognitive may range might expressive = ac? theories or propositions possibilities ("hypotheses" unproved tentatively or ones to relations) and emotional cepted explain certain facts (though here the a better it mood because wish or be expresses optative might appellation, as ritual and carnival disguises, probably belong desire). Enacted fantasies, such here. At any rate one might classify ordinary, quotidian life as indicative, even much of ceremonial or ritual. But one would have to reckon liminal processes subjunctive or optative, for they represent alternatives to the positive systems of of "fact"?in sense world economic, indicative dialectic in everyday action operating life. But if the legal, and political "does not live by bread alone." It seems that the is "bread," mankind between is and may be, culturally elaborated into the distinction

72
between preand post-liminal,

VICTOR on the

TURNER one and on the forms

hand,

liminal,

other,

a continuous cultural
common sense

human
to a

factors, great

social process, and socio? involving biological, ecological, and made reflexive by the search for meaning raised above
higher power.

have indicated a drift, trend, or direction in or it may be called progressive at cultural history, which, whether regressive, a any rate indicates a series of linear developments. Henry Maine hypothesized a move from "mechanical" to modal shift "from status to contract," Durkheim a stage of "organic" solidarity; Marx and Engels postulated "primitive commu? The social thinkers of productive subverted by the development forces which generated class the of around issue Private in its turn, gener? property. property, oppositions ated the notion of individuality and elevated it to philosophical respectability, even as it assured the and alienation of the masses of man? impoverishment to put to use in kind?who had no property other than their "labor-power" a in Hegelian fashion, an abolition of private earning living. They predicted, means of the of and class property ownership by a regenerated production communism the less dialecti masses, organized among property ironically?and means from which the the of production very cally?by ruling classes derived of the laws of historical their profits, which, directed by an elite cognizant that is, the Communist the instruments development, Party, would overthrow level of class hegemony, army and police forces, and restore at a higher material best preclass state. the primordial communism which was mankind's in types of social thinkers have posited a developmental sequence Major as the the in which shifts from sociocultural systems collectivity emphasis effective moral unit to the individual. This is paralleled by a growing stress on achieved as against ascriptive status, and by an ever more precise division of
labor in the domains of economics and social control. The obligatory com?

nism"

ponent
way to

in social relationship
contract. Corporate

yields
groups

to the optional
constructed

or voluntaristic,
on the model of

status gives
kin ties are

as effective social centers of action by associations of those replaced having lords it over groups bonded interests. Rational and bureaucratic organization Industrialization ties to locality. The city prevails over the rural hinterland. decisively split work from leisure by its "clocking in and out" devices and or work is complemented reserved play for the leisure sphere wherein

like by has has re?

in its liminal stage, contained both work warded.28 Ritual which, particularly and play (many tribal societies speak of ritual activity as work, for ceremonies a leisure are part of the ongoing process of the whole group) now becomes
activity. Moreover, its liturgical structures accentuate the solemn and attenuate

internalized the festal aspects, as codes for moral behavior becomes increasingly as "conscience." When and it loses its capacity to play with ideas, symbols, ceases to be an it ritual cultural its when loses resilience, evolutionary meanings, or an agency of collective reflexivity. effective metalanguage and scholars in adjacent fields, influenced by devel? Some anthropologists, are such as history and literary criticism, in opments adjacent disciplines, to turn their attention to both the folk and high culture of complex beginning societies My erhoff, obligatory and civilizations (C. Geertz, M. Douglas, and R. Grimes spring readily to mind). rituals and ritualized bonds characteristic B. R. Firth, J. Peacock, In these they find that the of complex, rurally based

PROCESS,

SYSTEM,

ANO

SYMBOL

73

and professional have been supplanted by city-based associational civilizations of ritual The dismemberment has, however, proved the opportunity linkages. of of theater in the high culture and carnival at the folk level. A multiplicity have the task of desacralized performative assumed, genres plural prismatically, of major liturgical systems, reflexivity. The sparagmos (dismemberment) to some in their the cases, or, periphery of the social process, has relegation resulted in the genesis and elaboration of esthetic media, each of which takes as a component the its point of departure subgenre of traditional ritual. Thus cultural
dramatic scenario?frequently the enactment of a sacred narrative?now be?

a of plots most of multiplicity performative mode sui generis breeding which are far from sacred! Song, dance, graphic and pictural representation, these and more, broken loose from their ritual integument, become the seeds of concert music, ballet, literature, and painting. If ritual might be compared to a arts into a multiplicity of performative mirror for mankind, its conversion gives us a hall of each the others, and each magic mirrors, reflecting the reflections of not a simple inversion of mundane reality, but its systematic representing and distortion, the ensemble composing a reflexive metacommen magnification as on tary society and history they concern the natural and constructed needs of humankind under given conditions of time and place. of a collective The fragmentation liturgical work, such as ritual, paves the way for the labeling of specific esthetic works as the production of individuals. But, in fact, all performative genres demand an audience even as they abandon a congregation. Most of them, too, incarnate their plots or scores in the synchro? nized actions of players. It is only formally that these esthetic progeny of ritual may be described as individual creations. Even such forms as the novel involve a and process and a reading process, both of which have collective publishing A features. is in for both scholars social up great opportunity opening initiatory are interested who in the reflexive or dialectical sciences and humanities common sense processes between in the "getting and spending" relationship of dimensions sociocultural life and the popular and high (biocultural-ecological) comes a
performative genres which continually scrutinize, criticize, subvert, uphold,

the behavior ?f the personnel, their values, activities and with concerned the of maintenance and management relationships, centrally those processes; or which make statements, in forms at least as bizarre as those of tribal liminality, about the quality of life in the societies they monitor under term which literally means the guise of "entertainment"?a "holding between," that is, "liminalizing." in isolation Instead of studying socioeconomic processes from these "magic mirrors," or dramatic types as texts in vacuo, it is possible to envision a creative collaboration sociolo? among literary critics, anthropologists, art historians of and other historians, historians, gists, philosophers, religion, kinds of scholars, on the shared field of the relationship, between Noh, say, Kowaka, Kabuki, Kyogen, Bunraku, and other Japanese theatrical genres, and the social and cultural history of Japan at the time of genesis and in the successive periods of development and decline of these genres?always with the stress on the between and social dramatic process reciprocal relationship medium under varying conditions of time and place. A formidable undertaking? But a great one. The same might be said of dynamic studies of Elizabethan and Stewart drama, Greek high and low comedy, the commedia dell' arte, the

and attempt

to modify

74

VICTOR

TURNER

theater of the absurd, and the theater of cruelty, not merely in sociocultural to the fluctuant context but in live reflexive relationship of their problems terms of competent, and times?in dynamic sociological anthropological analy? sis, both synchronie and diachronic. In a recent appraisal of modern social anthropology Sir Raymond Firth has sense on its inward-turning in the that commented modern anthro? disposition not with the the is behavior of concerned pology solely populations investigated their models for perceiving and interpreting their materials and their behavior, with their modes of thought, not modes of action.29 generating on the contrary, stresses attention to the that I am presenting, The position of modes of and action. if models Furthermore, thought relationship between on on recent are to be considered, I would draw work the role of metaphor in but mainly with
assigning meaning to social behavior, conduct, and action, and argue that, at

least implicitly, many sociocultural systems, insofar as they may be considered to be systems, are oriented, through the cumulative effect of their performative are not genres, to what I have called root paradigms. These merely cognitive clusters of rules from which many kinds of social actions can be generated, but on occasions of raised con? represent consciously recognized (though only an allusive, metaphorical sciousness) cultural models of kind, cognitively delim? loaded, and ethically impelled, so as to give form to action in ited, emotionally Such root paradigms are often based on gener? publicly critical circumstances. in the careers of religious or political of narratives climaxes ally accepted leaders, having thus an existential rather than merely morally edifying charac? the primacy of social over individual goals when ter, and often emphasize to the point of these in extreme situations, choices appear between endorsing in the lives of religious founders, decisions for others. sacrifice Key personal
such as Gautama, Moses, Jesus, and Mahomet, and of political leaders such as

Lenin

and Gandhi,
genres,

are portrayed
and form an

as exemplary
almost engrammatic

through

a wide
of

range
sociali?

of

performative as

component

zation. Biocultural
society our shift possessing

anthropologists
survival to that of value of such

might
at the the

on sacrifice of self for regard this stress

transcultural genres, as species we level. may love, When see compassion, we these

paradigmatic

perspective acts in terms

performative values "loaded"

supreme

It may be that our future task as scientists of the human condition and heroism. a liminal is to establish a set of concepts occupying ground between objective to survival and estimation of values promoting response subjective species for survival. of self-sacrifice group stirring exemplifications If one is to be as bold as the editor of Daedalus would have us in assessing one would have in anthropology, have happened whether or not breakthroughs to record that the potentiality exists today. It may be for a major breakthrough is possible only in the United that such a breakthrough States, for British, and third world other and French, partly through the anthropology, European and tend to be more homogeneous of their practitioners, limited number
committed to the pursuit of agreed-upon goals?structuralism and neo-Marxism

and conflict theory in Britain, structural-functionalism sophisticated theories in the Third all established of evaluation and the political metropolitan a States that "thousand flowers" have truly It is only in the United World. in a rigorous theoretical way, because of the huge size and cognitive blossomed in France,

PROCESS,

SYSTEM,

AND

SYMBOL

75

where each major department of the subcontinent, individualism may be the state?where likened to an autonomous Hellenic each, diaspora city through of its graduates, has a nimbus of satellites, both individuals and groups. The
outcome has been that a number of perspectives on the human condition, each

of excellent quality, have sprung up in virtual and theoretically technically one another. One thinks at once of cultural of anthropology, independence biocul? social anthropology, ecological anthropology, symbolic anthropology, structuralist tural anthropology, anthropology, anthropolo? phenomenological gy, biocultural plus the many legal and political anthropologies, ecology, hybridizations and other scholarly approaches: anthropo? anthropology and of speaking; the uses of systems theory in logical linguistics ethnography in anthropology; Marxist research; approaches applications of the archeological to of and others. data; knowledge anthropological sociology in blinkers, anthropologists is that, instead of working and My suggestion in cross-cultural interested scholars in adjacent disciplines should problems, between
an earnest (and "ludic") attempt at mutual empathy?earnest in the sense

make

that the disciplines mentioned above, and significant others, might be treated at least as a unified field whose unity might have something to do with the systems that theory view that there are systems and systemic relations so fundamental even occur in and different This would many they living inorganic phenomena. not be to reduce the distinctive features of the disciplines entering into the field
to some bland interactional average, but would respect the natural indepen?

dence

of each within

forces and placed their faith in the primacy of economic could not imperialistically claim that ways of thinking about and to the cosmos and his fellows were, appreciating man's relationship by defini? a at least until the defeat of transmitted load of "false consciousness"?false tion, all adversaries of the proletariat. Rather, they should hold the evaluation of the nature and of productive forces and the conflicting classes resulting magnitude relations,
from them as at least as problematic as "ideology." Why What so much, so fast, and so

struggle against others who have

It would also represent a their dynamic interdependence. chauvinism. For and disciplinary example, vulgar Marxists

wastefully
least as

employed?
false as any

The

perspectival

view from the infrastructure

cosmology. is required

may

be at

superstructural

is a firm,

scholarly, yet imaginative grasp of the total phenomena produced by Man alive and Woman alive. It is strange that both the Hegelian and Marxist logics should from the positive and structuralist dialectic so uncompromisingly conceptualize position of thesis. It is not so much a question of the content of a process of self transformation
or jurally

being made

up of opposing
of human

factors or forces as of any cognitive

processes and relationships encoun?

normative

structuration

the subjunctive mood in verbs, a virtually tering, unlimited range of alternative ways of doing things or relating people. Limits may be set, of course, by biotic or ecological and often by historical conditions. But for the dialectical a substitute negation we should perhaps liminality, or of alternatives rather than the reversal inversion of the antecedent plurality condition. Moreover, the motor of historical dialectic is not so much a matter of to a qualitative as deliberate formula? increments quantitive cumulating change tions of human thought and imagination?often made in liminal situations, such confronts
as exile, prison, or even in an "ivory tower"?first presenting, and then perhaps

as the indicative

76 backed

VICTOR

TURNER

is a major source of up by organized action, a new vision. Liminality a than rather the of embodiment antithesis. Science is not change logical mocked?but then neither is art. If what has been durably regarded as the "interesting" by the informed opinion of thousands of years of human attention cannot be incorporated into the serious study of mankind, then that study is in the hands of the and the bolshevik" of surely "philistines"?the "bourgeois
D. H. Lawrence?who were so intent on securing by force general assent to

their opposed views on the nature of material (one said "private" property should be the basic label, the other "public") that the richness and subtlety of one human "immaterial" culture (especially, add, its liminal construc? might tions) escaped this Tweedledum-and-Tweedledee pair of dedicated materialists. is work under the aegis of a wider orbit of What is needed in anthropology in its hitherto recovered law in which separate specialists subdisciplines, utilize systems theory social, and cultural anthropology, biological, ecological, to in a single field, stress the integrate their finds and research procedures have to primacy of processual approaches, incorporate what phenomenologists and remain aware of the powerful role of say about the negotiation of meaning, sociocultural conditions for reflection, criticism, liminality in providing rapid
socialization, the postulation of variant models of and for conduct and social

and the reformulation of cosmologies religious and scientific. organization, and in interest of renewed systems theory abound in the processual Signs recent literature. If one glances through the articles inAnnual Review ofAnthropol? ogy for 1975 one finds Jane F. Collier writing: "Legal processes are social process?
es. Law ... is an aspect of ongoing social life," etc., and her article is peppered

with

items of "process" vocabulary and with references to the legal handling of in the United conflict as framed by extended-case analysis.30 E. A. Hoebel in Britain32 may be said to have been among the States31 and Max Gluckman
of processual analysis through their studies of law as social process, as

pioneers

inArcheological Research" Collier recognizes. Fred T. Plog in "Systems Theory new the it is is where shows how processual archeology thought influencing to in "The interest linked general systems intrinsically general systems theory: theory in archeology has been expressed primarily by 'processual archeologists'
and has been a component of the 'systemic approach' that these archeologists have advocated."33

in their essay "New Directions in Ecology A. P. Vayda and B. J. McCay, in effect support Sally Moore's view that processes and Ecological Anthropology" and the factor of indeterminacy must of regularization, processes of adjustment, be taken into account in studying sociocultural populations, when they attempt to rescue the notion of homeostasis from its previous association with concepts of as static equilibria and unchanging emphasizing systems.34 They cite Slobodkin
that "some properties of homeostatic systems must at times change so as to

maintain . . .e.g.
response

other properties that are important for staying in the existential game? resilience and what might be described as flexible enough to change in
to whatever hazards and perturbations come along."35 Systems theory,

the irruption of sudden unprecedented changes, it from those structural-func? and viable it disencumbering processually making sociocultural which metaphorized tional assumptions systems either as orga?
nisms or machines.

in fact, can be modified

to handle

PROCESS,

SYSTEM,

AND

SYMBOL

77

in a The present author has for some time tried to analyze ritual processually traditional societies to medieval number of settings, ranging from African and in several universalistic modern pilgrimages religions. Ritual studies led him into the analysis of ritual symbols and, later, of social symbols in general. This type of investigation, which is sometimes called processual symbolic analysis, is concerned with the interpretation of the meaning of symbols considered as dynamic systems of signifiers, signifieds, tural processes.36 Here
competence. tions, is categories, Ritual and supposed

and changing modes of signification the focus ismeaningful performance

contradictions in Western

in temporal sociocul? as well as underlying

is a transformative

commonly

classifica? major performance revealing as It is in of cultural not, essence, processes. a for social conservatism whose culture, prop

symbols merely condense cherished cultural values, though itmay, under certain take on this role. Rather does it hold the generative source of culture conditions, in its liminal stage. Hence, and structure, particularly ritual is by definition is linked with social states associated with social transitions, whereas ceremony and statuses. Ritual symbols, in processual analysis, are regarded as the smallest units of ritual behavior, whether object, activity, relationship, word, gesture, or are factors in social action, in a ritual situation.37 They spatial arrangement or ends and means, whether associated with collective formulated explicitly
not.38

in contexts of the analytical frame is processual and embeds meaning definitions assigned to terms do not always coincide with those made from sign by linguists and cognitive structuralists. Thus symbol is distinguished of its signifieds, and by the both by the multiplicity polysemy) (multivocality, nature of its signification. In symbols there is always some kind of likeness Because situation, (metaphoric/metonymic) posited by the framing culture between signifier (sym? and signified(s); in signs there need be no likeness. Signs are almost bol-vehicle) in "closed" systems, whereas symbols, particularly dominant always organized over or anchor entire ritual are (which symbols preside processes), semantically
"open." The meaning is not absolutely fixed, nor is it necessarily the same for

that a particular signifier ("outward form") has symbolic can be added by collective fiat to old meaning. signifieds signifiers. More? either over, individuals may add personal meaning to a symbol's public meaning, by utilizing one of its standardized modes of association to bring new concepts or by a within its semantic orbit (metaphorical reconstruction) including itwithin complex of initially private fantasies. Such private constructions may become or standardized that the part of public hermeneutics interpretations provided or semantic manipulator has sufficient power, authority, prestige, legitimacy a shaman, (e.g., he may be prophet, chief, or priest) to make his interpretation stick. Political symbols have been analyzed in similar terms by A. Cohen,39 R. everyone who New agrees
Firth,40 A. Legesse,41 and V. Turner,42 among others.

study of symbolic forms and processes and the functions anthropological of symbolism has generally thrived in the past decade. Where it has been influ? enced by linguistics or structuralism the stress has been on the eliciting of abstract from cultural "products" (myths, kinship no? systems of symbols and meanings The
menclatures, from native iconographie informants forms, by ethnotaxonomies, etc.). texts Processualism, on customs on the drawn other questionnaires,

hand,

demands

a kind of fieldwork

in which

the investigator

becomes

involved

78 with central sociocultural

VICTOR

TURNER

processes. He recognizes his own role in social inter? action with his informants and tries to account for the biases this may impart to in the his subsequent analyses. Symbolic analysis here rests on data generated heat of action in ritual, legal, formal, informal, interpersonal, domestic, ludic, has become party and privy. solemn, etc., processes to which the anthropologist Such data are quite different from those obtained by a stance of detachment. This or the stance is best for the taking of measurements (gardens, hut sizes) counting of heads (village census-taking), but worst for coming to an understanding (itself a
of how actors perceive, generate, and negotiate meaning, using words

process)

and symbols. sociocultural

structure, with

present author has suggested that there are natural units of tend to have, like raw rites de passage, a temporal process, which The
successive phases cumulating to at least a temporary resolution.

internal structuring, and style of processual units are influenced by The duration, and cultural variables which must be empirically biotic, ecological, investigated in each population under survey. Extended case histories may contain a sequence of several processual units of different types, ranging from those which maximize to those which maximize kinds and intensities of conflict. Different cooperation is required is a workable into play. What social control functions are brought cross-cultural typology of processual units. For it is in the analysis of the "social that we recognize the merit of Sally drama"43 and the "social enterprise"44 on clear comment: "An anthropology focused Moore's exclusively regularities of
form, al,' symbol, 'cultural,' and or content, 'processual' and their congruence presumed out in orientation) is leaving (whether fundamental 'structur? dimen?

not only in the imperfect fit negotiable part of many real situations lies the symbolic or formal level and the level of content, but also in the between a of alternatives and meaning within each, which may accommodate multiplicity sions. The
range of manipulation, interpretation, and choice. Individuals or groups may

in their situations exaggerate the degree of order or the quality of indeterminacy for myriad reasons."45 How they do this, and why, can be ascertained only if the an actor in the field of living relationships. There investigator has also become are risks in not staying aloof, of course, but the acquisition of knowledge has al? ways been beset by dangers, here physical as well as intellectual! to indulge in a few personal opinions and itmay be permissible In conclusion, or not yet oc? the great breakthrough paradigm shift has speculations. Clearly, we "an with if mean, Kuhn, curred, accepted example of actual by paradigm includes scientific practice?which law, theory, application and instrumentation from which the models spring coherent traditions of together which provides are scientific research."46 But there among hitherto isolated signs of convergence can as mentioned in a single work, either If be united these above. subdisciples, a or team of interdependent a specialists, then the reflexivity by by single mind, and cultural social, among biological, anthropologists, systemically ecological, in them the their (and concepts mutually process) in relation modifying relating and empirically generated data, may pro? to a body of both phenomenologically in its own way to those from which have sprung duce a paradigm comparable
coherent traditions of natural science research. But to achieve this goal anthro?

to sink certain unimportant structural differences, and pro? pologists a relationship of communitas with one another, a relational achieve cessually even communion, between definite communication, quality of full unmediated identities. Such communitas would essentially be a liminal phe and determinate will have

PROCESS, of a blend of

SYSTEM,

AND

SYMBOL

79 as one sees

nomenon,

consisting

humility

and

comradeship)?such

among

liminars in the ritual process

in simple societies

"on the edge of the world."

R. H. Osborne, and R. J. Miller, "Biocultural in Annual Review of Ecology," (Palo Alto, 1975), p. 176. Anthropology 3Ibid., p. 164. 4A. Schutz, Collected Papers (The Hague, 1962), vol. I, p. 285. 5D. E. Brown, 15:1 (1974):40. Current Anthropology, "Corporations," 6S. F. Moore, in Symbol and Politics in Communal Ideology (Ithaca, N.Y., 1976), pp. "Epilogue," 230-238. 7Ibid., p. 232. 8Ibid., p. 233. of Essoins discussion in "Poetic Diction and Legal Fiction" in The Importance 1962), pp. 60-64. Cliffs, N.J., of Language (Englewood nP. Filmer, M. Phillipson, D. Silverman, and D. Walsh, and the Social World," in "Sociology in Sociological Theory (London, New Directions 1972), p. 21. 12B. Sch?lte, "The Structural Anthropology of Claude L?vi-Strauss," in J. J. Honigmann (ed.), Handbook of Social and Cultural Anthropology 1973), p. 680. (Chicago, 13 A. Cicourel, of Status and Role," inH. P. Dreitsel "The Negotiation {ta.), Recent Sociology, No. 2 in "Sociology and the Social World," (New York, 1970), cited by D. Walsh p. 21. on the Ritual 14M. Gluckman, 1962), p. 4. of Social Relations (Manchester, Essays 15E. D. Chappell and C. S. Coon, Principles of Anthropology (New York, 1942), passim. and I. L. Child, Child Training and Personality: A Cross-Cultural 16J.W. Whiting Study (New 1953). Haven, 17F. W. Young, Initiation Ceremonies: A Cross-Cultural Study of Status Dramatization (Indianapolis, Kimball, 1960). London, 19S. T. Kimball, 1965). 18S. T. "Introduction" to A. Van Gennep, Les Rites de Passage Encyclopedia (English translation, (New 1912 9Ibid., pp. 234-235. 10See Owen Barfield's

References *L. Gumplowicz, 1963), p. 203. 2K. A. Bennett,

The Outlines

of Sociology,

I. L. Horowitz

(ed.)

(American

edition

New

York,

"Arnold Van Gennep," York, 1968), vol. 13, p. 113. 20H. Junod, The Life of a South African Tribe 1913.

in International (New Hyde

of the Social Sciences 1962). First published

Park, N.Y.,

21V. Turner, "Betwixt and Between: in Rites de Passage" The Liminal Period in J. Helm (ed.), 1964), pp. 4-20. Proceedings of theAmerican Ethnological Society for 1964 (Seattle, Homo Ludens (English translation, London, 1949). First published 1938; paperback, 22J. Huizinga, 1955. Boston, 23W'. James, Principles ofPsychology (New York, 1890 in 2 volumes. 1918), p. 506. First published 24Discussed and B. J. McCay, "New Directions in Ecology and Ecological by A. P. Vayda Annual Review of Anthropology, p. 4. Anthropology," 25See V. Turner, The Ritual Process (Chicago, 1969) for examples. to an Ecology ofMind 26G. Bateson, (New York, 1972), passim. Steps 27Ibid., p. 188. Le Loisir et la Ville (Paris, 1962). 28J. Dumazedier, 29R. Firth, of Modem Social Anthropology," Annual Review of "Appraisal p. 8. Anthropology, Annual Review of 30J. F. Collier, "Legal Processes," p. 121. Anthropology, 31E. A. Hoebel, The Law of Primitive Man: A Study in Comparative Legal Dynamics (Cambridge, his classical use of the case method in collaboration with K. N. 1954), following Mass., Llewellyn, The Cheyenne Way (Norman, Oklahoma, 1941). 32M. Gluckman, The Judicial Process Among the Barotse of Northern Rhodesia (Manchester, 1955). 33F. T. Plog, "Systems inArcheological Research," Annual Review ofAnthropology, Theory p. 207. 34A. P. Vayda and B. J. McCay, "New Directions in and Ecological pp. Ecology Anthropology," 298-299. 35Ibid., p. 299. 36V. Turner, Studies, "A nnu al Review ofAnthropology, pp. "Symbolic 37V. Turner, The Forest of Symbols (Ithaca, N.Y., 1967), p. 19. 38V. Turner, The Drums of Affliction (Oxford, 1968), p. 269. 39A. Cohen, Two-Dimensional Man: An on the Essay of Power Anthropology 1974). Society (London, 40R. Firth, Symbols: Public and Private 1973). (Ithaca, N.Y., 145-161.

and Symbolism

in Complex

gO

VICTOR

TURNER

41 A. Legesse, Gada: Three Approaches to the Study of African Society (London, 1973). 42 V. Turner, Dramas, Fields, andMetaphors: Symbolic Action inHuman Society (Ithaca, N. Y., 1974). 43 V. Turner, Schism and Continuity in an African Society: A Study ofNdembu Village Life (Manchester, 1957), pp. 91-93. 44R. Firth, Essays on Social Organization and Values (London, 1964), passim. 45S. F. Moore, p. 233. "Epilogue," 46T. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago, 1962), pp. 10, 41.