victor turner, symbolic anthropology
TRANSCRIPT
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VICTOR TURNER (1920‐1983),SYMBOLIC ANTHROPOLOGY
Blazing the Trail [Ndembu Ritual]: Way Marks [“Blazes” chinjikijilu] in the Exploration of Symbols (1992)
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Max Gluckman (1911‐1975)
Research on tribes of Central and South America (1936‐1947)Manchester U. Openly anti‐colonialAgainst racismPolitics, Law & RitualJudicial Processes among the Barotse of Northern Rhodesia
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Claude Levi‐Strauss’Structuralism
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Arnold van Gennep
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Rites de passage
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Victor Turner:Liminal States
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Ndembu ritual symbols
A chinjikijilu is a land mark or blazeDerived from kujikijila, to blaze a trail by cutting marks on treesA blaze connects the known with the unknown territory; it marks the wayIt also allows the hunter to re‐connect back to his village from the unexplored and unknown bushMyth of the labyrinth (“string” for Theseus)
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From Structuralist to Mystic to Symbologist to Liminality Theorist to Political Anthropologist!Victor Turner’s intellectual quest led him from a Structuralist viewpoint through a series of major ideasThe idea of “the liminoid” (the in‐between, the no‐man’s land) is one he is often associated with (a “liminality theorist”)His early Structuralism is both in terms of Durkheimian social facts and Freudian psychological facts
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The Liminoid Phenomenon
Turner studied the liminal state in rites of passage in his earlier workHe borrowed the key idea from Arnold van Gennep, a Belgian anthropologistBut he extended the concept to cover the basic condition of modern, industrial capitalist societies and “post‐industrial,” information age societiesReligious rituals “embody” and give visible form to liminoid aspects of our subjective livesHe did not immediately associate with semiotics
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Comparative Symbology or Semiotics?
Victor Turner used ideas as “idea units” and did not attempt to incorporate his theoretical formulations into broader paradigms or theory systemsHis comparative work on symbols is largely Cartesian in that he thinks in terms of a dialectic of structure and anti‐structureObjects in a museum are seen as giving visible form to cultural phenomena like ritual
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Carl Gustav Jung’sArchetypes: Universal Symbols
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Avalokiteshvara:bodhisattva of compassion
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But are these Symbols in a Cartesian or a Peircian Sense?
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Kinship and Structure:Generations & Ritual
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Ndembu Funeral Rituals & Japanese Funeral Rituals
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Field Work in Northern Rhodesia = Zambia; but, he extends the ideas to modern societies
Ritual symbolsInterpretation of exegetical meaning Indigenous informantsOperational meaningGestalt of meanings (whole, “totality”)Comparative symbology“Communitas” (tt) = rudimentary structures in a society during a liminal period, leisure genres like entertainment in mass societies
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“Social Dramas” (tt)
Not the same as Erving Goffman’s “dramaturgical sociology” (SI Pr)Schism and conflict is played out in mini‐social dramas and major social dramasDis‐harmony, aharmonic processesSimilar to sociological Conflict TheoryConflict resolution occurs when “redressive action” stops the further spread of conflict (e.g. mediation, ritual)
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Is Turner’s Approach Semiotic?
Turner’s symbolic anthropology is not necessarily compatible with Peirce’s semiotic approachIt is interesting to consider this because it seems to be so similar. After all, he deals with symbols and culture.The main difference is a Cartesian approach to the subject (anthropologist) versus a Peircianapproach that involves Interpretive Networks and Operationalized Representations.