Victor Turner: The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (1969–) [EN, PT, ES, DE, CZ, PL]

“In The Ritual Process, Victor Turner examines rituals of the Ndembu in Zambia and develops his now-famous concept of “Communitas.” He characterizes it as an absolute inter-human relation beyond any form of structure.

The Ritual Process has acquired the status of a small classic since these lectures were first published in 1969. Turner demonstrates how the analysis of ritual behavior and symbolism may be used as a key to understanding social structure and processes. He extends Van Gennep’s notion of the “liminal phase” of rites of passage to a more general level, and applies it to gain understanding of a wide range of social phenomena. Once thought to be the “vestigial” organs of social conservatism, rituals are now seen as arenas in which social change may emerge and be absorbed into social practice.

As Roger Abrahams writes in his foreword to the revised edition: “Turner argued from specific field data. His special eloquence resided in his ability to lay open a sub-Saharan African system of belief and practice in terms that took the reader beyond the exotic features of the group among whom he carried out his fieldwork, translating his experience into the terms of contemporary Western perceptions. Reflecting Turner’s range of intellectual interests, the book emerged as exceptional and eccentric in many ways: yet it achieved its place within the intellectual world because it so successfully synthesized continental theory with the practices of ethnographic reports.””

First published by Aldine Publishing, New York, 1969
Publisher Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY, 1991 (Seventh printing)
ISBN 0801491630
213 pages

Review (Theodore Schwartz, American Anthropologist, 1972)
Review (Anthony Graham-White, Educational Theatre Journal, 1975)
Review (Volker Barth, FQS, 2002, in German)

The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (English, 1969/1991)
O processo ritual: Estrutura e antriestrutura (Portuguese, trans. Nancy Campi de Castro, 1974)
El proceso ritual: Estructura y antiestructura (Spanish, trans. Beatriz García Ríos, 1988)
Das Ritual: Struktur und Anti-Struktur (German, trans. Sylvia M. Schomburg-Scherff, 1989/2000)
Průběh rituálu (Czech, trans. Lucie Kučerová, 2004, no OCR, added on 2014-8-13 via Michal, updated on 2016-9-18)
Proces rytualny: Struktura i antystruktura (Polish, trans. Ewa Dżurak, 2010, updated on 2016-9-18)

See also Turner’s From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play, 1982. (added on 2014-2-25)

Curious Rituals: Gestural Interaction in the Digital Everyday (2012)

“Curious Rituals is a research project conducted at Art Center College of Design (Pasadena) in July-August 2012 at the media design program.

It looks at gestures, postures and digital rituals that typically emerged with the use of digital technologies (computers, mobile phones, sensors, robots, etc.): gestures such as recalibrating your smartphone doing an horizontal 8 sign with your hand, the swiping of wallet with RFID cards in public transports, etc. These practices can be seen as the results of a co-construction between technical/physical constraints, contextual variables, designers intents and people’s understanding. We can see them as an intriguing focus of interest to envision the future of material culture.” (source)

The book features an essay by Dan Hill, followed by a design fiction by Julian Bleecker and script of a short film.

Authors Nicolas Nova, Katherine Miyake, Walton Chiu, Nancy Kwon
Published in September 2012
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License
72 pages
via Roelof Roscam Abbing

authors
A Digital Tomorrow (short film, 10 min)

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