Suomen Antropologi Volume 33, 4/2008
Tribute to Victor Turner
Articles
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Beyond Symbolic Representation: Victor Turner and variations on the themes of ritual process and liminality
Suomen Antropologi: Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society Volume 33(4) 2008: 5-24
Abstract
Victor Turner’s celebrated work The Ritual Process published in 1969 provided a radically new perspective on the study of ritual. It was a major departure from the dominant theoretical schools of the time that had discussed ritual primarily in terms of representation, reproduction, or mystification. In Turner’s thinking ritual was re-conceived as a crucible for the emergence of original meaning, of new ways of structuring relations and for reorienting experience. Moreover, his concern reached well beyond the exploration of ritual as such and was ultimately aimed at the understanding of the possibilities and potentialities of human being. This article focuses on Turner’s major contribution to the study of ritual and attempts to extend in some ways the direction to which the path that he blazed was leading. Ideas concerning the dynamics and virtuality of ritual are developed in relation to Turner’s concepts of process and liminality.
Keywords dynamics, liminality, process, ritual, Victor Turner, virtuality
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Exploring the Work of Victor Turner: Liminality and its later implications
Suomen Antropologi: Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society Volume 33(4) 2008: 26-44
Abstract
Victor Turner broke anthropology free from cultural determinism when it was anchored in the reductionist theories of Durkheim. Like Tolstoy penchant for the building of social structures in order to perpetuate itself. He saw in the cracks between structures, and in the liminal gaps necessary for changes in structure, the revival of the lost immediacy of social relationships and the communitas that is its mark. Nowadays one may include signs of spirituality in those gaps, although that spirituality has been a topic previously tabooed in anthropological circles or hidden under structural analysis. Turner saw the inconvenient truth that if structuralism as a value and philosophy (plus what we now see as the violence inseparable from the political state, along with neoconservatism and neoliberalism—business doctrines multiplied by themselves ad infinitem) were to continue as the world’s philosophy, we would continue with wars and the smothering of the natural flexibility of social intercourse (see Robert Putnam 2000, who shows in stark figures how sociality in general is losing ground in our era).
Keywords anthropology, communitas, liminality, rites of passage, social process, Victor Turner
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A Town on the Move: The narrative-redressive phase of social drama in a contemporary political setting
Suomen Antropologi: Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society Volume 33(4) 2008: 45-61
Abstract
The setting for our ethnographic research is Padua (Padova) a middle-sized northern Italian town well known for its ancient University and its basilica of Saint Anthony, Il Santo. In 1998 the municipality of Padua counted only 5,600 migrants, primarily from Nigeria, the Philippines and Morocco; by 2008 this number had quadrupled, comprising in large part people from Eastern Europe and the Balkans in search of work in Padua’s lively tertiary and service sectors. In this context, we query whether Turner’s concept of ‘social drama’ is an applicable model for exploring questions such as whether migrants have provoked a crisis that is upsetting the status quo in the region; whether such crisis is recognizable in the public sphere and, if so, how it is manifested and how it may be overcome. Above all, is Turner’s model capable of unveiling the sense of what is occurring in our towns, in our neighbourhoods, in the tens of public speeches of the actors involved, both migrants and hosts? These are, in sum, the questions around which our work has been revolving in the past years, and to which we have attempted to provide an answer, here and elsewhere.
Keywords city change, migrants, Padua, redressive phase, social drama, Victor Turner
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Unravelling Ritual: Victor Turner and the problems of exegesis
Suomen Antropologi: Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society Volume 33(4) 2008: 62-70
Abstract
As a pioneer in the interpretation of ritual, Victor Turner showed us how to access other peoples’ deepest understandings about the nature of life. In the process, he encountered problems of presentation that ethnographers still have to confront. This paper explores Turner’s solutions to these problems, and how subsequent authors have modified them.
Keywords ethnography, ritual, Victor Turner
Other Material
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INTERVIEW WITH JOEL ROBBINS: Culture, Value, and Anthropological Theory
Suomen Antropologi: Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society Volume 33(4) 2008: 71-83
Keywords anthropological theory, culture, value
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Five Notes on Anthropology, Europe and the Mediterranean
Suomen Antropologi: Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society Volume 33(4) 2008: 84-87
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Southern Questions in the Anthropology of Europe
Suomen Antropologi: Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society Volume 33(4) 2008: 88-91
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Tourism and the Environment in the Mediterranean
Suomen Antropologi: Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society Volume 33(4) 2008: 92-95
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Globalization as a Distinctively Mediterranean Cultural Project
Suomen Antropologi: Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society Volume 33(4) 2008: 96-99
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BOOK REVIEWS: see abstract below
Abstract
Paul Sillitoe (ed.): Local Science vs. Global Science; Sirpa Lappalainen, Pirkko Hynninen, Tarja Kankkunen, Elina Lahelma, Tarja Tolonen (eds): Etnografia metodologiana; Mary Douglas: Thinking in Circles