Victor Turner

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
For other people named Victor Turner, see Victor Turner (disambiguation).

Part of a series on
Anthropology
Types
Archaeological
Biological
Linguistic
Research framework
Key concepts
Key theories
Lists

Victor Witter Turner (28 May 1920 – 18 December 1983) was a British

cultural anthropologist best known for his work on symbols, rituals, and rites of passage. His work, along with that of Clifford Geertz and others, is often referred to as symbolic and interpretive anthropology
.

Early life

Victor Turner was born in Glasgow, Scotland, son to Norman and Violet Turner. His father was an electrical engineer and his mother a repertory actress, who founded the Scottish National Players. Turner initially studied poetry and classics at University College London.

In 1941, Turner was drafted into World War II, and served as a noncombatant until 1944. During his three years of service he met and married Edith Brocklesby Davis, who was serving during the war as a "land girl". Their five children include scientist Robert Turner, poet Frederick Turner, and Rory Turner, an anthropology professor at Goucher College.

Turner returned to University College in 1946 with a new focus on anthropology. He later pursued graduate studies in anthropology at

Manchester University.[1][2]

Career

Turner worked in Zambia (then Northern Rhodesia) as research officer for the

PhD
at University of Manchester in 1955. Like many of the Manchester anthropologists of his time, he also became concerned with conflict. He developed the new concept of social drama in order to account for the symbolism of conflict and crisis resolution among Ndembu villagers.

Turner spent his career exploring rituals. As a professor at the

Catholicism in 1958.[3][4]

Turner explored

liminal phase. Van Gennep's structure consisted of a pre-liminal phase (separation), a liminal phase (transition), and a post-liminal phase (reincorporation). Turner noted that in liminality, the transitional state between two phases, individuals were "betwixt and between": they did not belong to the society that they previously were a part of and they were not yet reincorporated into that society. Liminality is a limbo, an ambiguous period characterized by humility, seclusion, tests, sexual ambiguity, and communitas.[2]

Turner was also a committed ethnographer and produced work on ritual. He and his wife Edith L. B. Turner co-authored Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture (1978).

Death

Turner died on 18 December 1983 in Charlottesville, Virginia. After his death, his widow Edith Turner embarked on her own career as an anthropologist. She developed upon Victor's "anthropology of experience" with a publication on communitas.[5]

Influence

Author Chuck Palahniuk was quoted in The Believer as saying, "So often what I’m doing is dramatizing the writings of Victor Turner, who wrote a lot about liminal and liminoid events."[6] Turner's work on liminality and performance has strongly influenced developments in the field of Performance Studies,[7] particularly due to his friendship and professional collaboration with Richard Schechner with whom he explored the relationship between ritual and theater.[8]

Victor Turner Prize

The Victor Turner Prize in Ethnographic Writing is awarded annually by The Society for Humanistic Anthropology (SHA). Eligible works are "published books in various genres including ethnographic monographs, narratives, essays, biographies, memoirs, poetry, and drama."[9] Kirin Narayan's Storytellers, Saints and Scoundrels: Folk Narrative in Hindu Religious Teaching (1989) was the first Victor Turner Prize winner in 1990.[10][11]

Publishing

References

  1. ^ Turner, Edith (1990). "The Literary Roots of Victor Turner's Anthropology". In Kathleen M. Ashley (ed.). Victor Turner and the Construction of Cultural Criticism. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. pp. 163–169.
  2. ^ a b Moore, Jerry D. (2012). "Victor Turner: Symbols, Pilgrims, and Drama". Visions of Culture. Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press. pp. 224–234.
  3. ISBN 978-0-19-163205-1
    .
  4. ISBN 978-1-317-10504-6
    .
  5. ^ Turner, Edith (December 2011). Communitas: The Anthropology of Collective Joy. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
  6. ^ "Issues". 16 February 2023.
  7. ^ Companion Websites (17 December 2012), Performance Studies: An Introduction - Victor Turner's Social Drama, retrieved 10 October 2018
  8. ^ York, Institute of Historical Research (IHR), University of London and Institute for the Public Understanding of the Past, University of. "Performance and performativity - a method to study the media and how the abolition of slavery has been commemorated". www.history.ac.uk. Retrieved 10 October 2018.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  9. ^ "Welcome! | Society for Humanistic Anthropology". sha.americananthro.org. Retrieved 23 September 2018.
  10. ^ Director (Research Services Division). "Professor Kirin Narayan". researchers.anu.edu.au. Retrieved 23 September 2018.
  11. ^ "SHA Prize Winners | Society for Humanistic Anthropology". sha.americananthro.org. Retrieved 23 September 2018.

External links

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Victor_Turner&oldid=1205010246"