Das Ritual

Victor Turner interprets rituals not as expressions of mythologies but analyzes them in their immediate significance for the members of a culture. Instead of limiting himself to the study of "primitive" rituals, he provides in this book a framework for analyzing the rituals of "complex" industrial societies. Using two rituals from a Central African tribal society, he develops his categories of liminality and communitas, which have become essential for anthropology as well as for general social theory.