Some Thoughts on Victor Turner's The Ritual Process
Turner's work is, in many ways, a synthesis of several fields. He is an anthropologist; however, his work also incorporates many aspects of structuralism. Turner relies heavily on his fieldwork in Africa to provide evidence for his argument. Turner's book is composed of several lectures, as well as an essay. The individual sections of the book, while related, are difficult to consider as a whole. Finding a single thesis for this book was a difficult prospect; however, there were several consistencies among the individual sections, and I believe that a thesis of a sort may be found at the end of the final esssay. Society (societas) seems to be a process rather than a thing--a dialectical process with successive phases of structure and communitas. There would seem to be--if one can use such a controversial term--a human "need" to participate in both modalities. Persons starved of one in their functional day-to-day activities seek it in ritual liminality. The structurally inferior aspire to symbolic structural superiority in ritual; the structurally superior aspire to symbolic communitas and undergo penance to achieve it (p. 203).
This passage clearly illustrates several of Turner's main points in The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. In this text, Turner begins by defining society as he sees it, within the context he has used the term. According to Turner, both structure and communitas are vital to humanity. Turner believes that individuals deprived of either structure or communitas will seek to fill their needs through rituals that provide them with either structure, in the case of those that are structurally inferior, or communitas, in the case of those that are structurally superior. Victor Turner is primarily an anthropologist. His concrete data regarding ritual comes from his fieldwork with the Ndembu. Turner's theoretical approach is reliant on the work of Arnold van Gennep, who developed the idea of liminality in his own work. Turner used ideas, like communitas and liminality to organize his thoughts, and to assist in understanding the ritual behavior of the tribe he studied. Turner's work is also influenced by structuralists, such as Levi-Strauss, and by sociologists of religion, such as Emile Durkheim. Turner's data is drawn from his fieldwork with the Ndembu in Africa. The Ndembu are a tribal society, and Turner was particularly interested in their ritual behaviors. During his time among the Ndembu, Turner was able to attend their rituals, and these rituals form the basis of The Ritual Process. The rituals discussed by Turner include fertility rites, circumcision rites, rituals devoted to twinship, and rites concerned with social status, such as the making of a tribal chief. Turner's particular interest with these rituals is the role played by liminality, structure, and communitas. Ritual serves, for Turner, the function of balancing structure and communitas. The individuals participating in the rituals are, temporarily, outside of the normal social structure, and thus, are in a liminal state.
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