Victor Turner
- LAST REVIEWED: 30 June 2014
- LAST MODIFIED: 30 June 2014
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199766567-0074
- LAST REVIEWED: 30 June 2014
- LAST MODIFIED: 30 June 2014
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199766567-0074
Introduction
Victor W. Turner (b. 1920–d. 1983) was a symbolic anthropologist whose comparative investigations of ritual and cultural performance left a unique impression in the social and human sciences, and across the arts. Born in Glasgow, the son of Captain Norman Turner, an electronics engineer, and Violet Witter, founding member and actress of the Scottish National Theater, Turner became a prolific contributor to the comparative anthropology of ritual, symbol, and performance and had a prodigious impact across a spectrum of disciplines, from anthropology, religious and theological studies, to cultural, literary, and performance studies, to folklore, literary criticism, and neurosociology. Awarded a Robert Thompson scholarship, Turner early studied a BA in English Literature at University College, London (1938–1941) and returned following WWII to undertake a BA in Social Anthropology (completed in 1949). As found in key monographs and numerous essays, his influential formulations on the ontological value of ritual symbolism, “liminality,” and culture were shaped by a lifelong passion for poetry, the classics, and stage drama. Influential was the dialectical processualism of Max Gluckman, who headed Social Anthropology at Manchester University, and advised Turner’s PhD dissertation on the social organization of the Ndembu tribe of Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) (completed in 1955). While Turner made a path beyond the Manchester School and Neo-Marxist analysis, he modified a structural-functionalist perspective in an abiding interest in universals in human performance and the fate of religion in postindustrial culture. A departure from social structure toward meaning coincided with a move to the United States, where Turner accepted an appointment as Professor of Anthropology and Chairman of the Committee on African Studies at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York (1964–1968), holding professorships in anthropology in the United States thereafter. It was during his life in the United States that Turner cut his teeth as an iconoclastic essayist and skillful orator ranging widely across disciplines. While Turner’s ethnographic career began in Africa formulating his “social drama” model, subsequent investigations included Christian pilgrimage in Mexico and Ireland (as a practicing Catholic), Japanese literary and performative genres, New York’s experimental Off-Off Broadway theater workshops, and the Carnaval in Rio. These and many other postindustrial performance genres or “cultural dramas” were understood via his “processual analysis,” which became integral to the formation of Performance Studies. His most intimate colleague and research partner was wife Edith Turner, who he married in 1943, with whom he had five children, and who eventually became a respected anthropologist in her own right. While attracting controversy for express universalisms and his theological position, Turner’s ideas have retained appeal in the study of contemporary cultural performance.
General Overviews
There are no book-length biographies on Turner, presumably, in part, because his endeavor was uniquely interdisciplinary, anti-systematic, and perplexing—even mystical. While a fatal heart attack on 18 December 1983 cut short a very productive scholarly life, Turner’s lifelong approach was recognized by colleague Richard Schechner and others to possess a characteristic “incompleteness”—which has been both frustrating and compelling for critics, colleagues, and students. As Babcock and MacAloon 1987 states, the refusal to create a “Turnerian system or semiotics of culture” was “a matter of intellectual and, indeed, moral principle, for his was a laughing, struggling spirit that protested the indignity of any closed system” (p. 19). He would no doubt rumble with laughter at the sheer folly of this article. Illustrative of his rare breadth of talent, as a teenage student, Turner oscillated between the arts and sciences, winning prizes for poetry and acclaim for his prowess as a soccer player. At the University of Chicago (where he held a professorship from 1967–1977) Turner taught Kierkegaard’s philosophy of paradox alongside Durkheim and Freud, and Rilke, Rimbaud, Blake, Dante, and Dostoyevsky were often used to illuminate anthropological theory. Listed are the prologues to two important anthologies of essays and lectures (re)published posthumously and compiled by Turner’s significant other, with Turner 1985 being among the most sensitive introductions to the man’s life, and Turner 1992 serving as an excellent prologue to his iconoclastic style, while a work by one of his foremost students, Babcock 2001, offers a compelling analysis of the role of Woman and women in Turner’s theory and life. Various sources are recommended as overviews, each with unique approaches. Babcock and MacAloon 1987 superbly condenses Turner’s ideas while also providing a bibliography of his works; Deflem 1991 includes a useful comparison with the French structuralist approach to symbolism; Ortner 1984 distinguishes the Turnerian from the Geertzian school of symbolic anthropology; Erickson and Donat Murphy 2010 clarifies Turner’s position within the history of anthropology; while the single most comprehensive source introducing Turner’s work and impact is St John 2008.
Babcock, Barbara. 2001. Woman/women in ‘The Discourse of Man’: Edie Turner and Victor Turner’s language of the feminine. Anthropology and Humanism 26.2: 115–123.
DOI: 10.1525/ahu.2001.26.2.115
One of Turner’s foremost students explores the “gynesis”—the “putting of Woman into discourse”—in his work (p. 119). Woman is figuratively significant in Turner’s anthropology of the generative, but as Babcock suggests, the voices and ideas of actual women, including his mother, Babcock herself, and Edith Turner, were critical in his intellectual development. Also in St John 2008 (pp. 297–308).
Babcock, Barbara, and John J. MacAloon. 1987. Victor W. Turner (1920–1983): Commemorative essay. Semiotica 65.1–2: 1–27.
Superb condensed overview coauthored by two of Turner’s foremost students. While Turner’s enterprise is considered encyclopedic, it was “in the style of Rabelais rather than Descartes” (p. 1). Recognizes that symbolic and political anthropology were inseparable for Turner, forming something of an ethos. Includes a bibliography of Turner’s works.
Deflem, Mathieu. 1991. Ritual, anti-structure, and religion: A discussion of Victor Turner’s processual symbolic analysis. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 30.1: 1–25.
DOI: 10.2307/1387146
Among the most comprehensive condensed overviews of Turner’s contribution to studies of ritual and religion. Covers strengths and weaknesses, and includes a comparison with the French structuralist approach to symbolism.
Erickson, Paul A., and Liam Donat Murphy, eds. 2010. Readings for a history of anthropological theory. 3d ed. Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press.
Includes Turner’s essay “Symbols in Ndembu Ritual” and incisively positions Turner within the history of anthropology.
Ortner, Sherry B. 1984. Theory in anthropology since the Sixties. Comparative Studies in Society and History 26.1: 41–75.
Distinguishes two variants of symbolic anthropology, the Geertzian and the Turnerian, emerging in the early 1960s. Ortner traces the roots of their differences, recognizing the sense of pragmatics within the Turnerian camp.
St John, Graham. 2008. Victor Turner and contemporary cultural performance: An introduction. In Victor Turner and contemporary cultural performance. Edited by Graham St John, 1–37. New York: Berghahn.
A comprehensive introduction to Turner. Introduces seventeen chapters collected in a volume addressing the significance of Turner’s work for studies in contemporary cultural performance.
Turner, Edith. 1985. Prologue: From the Ndembu to Broadway. In On the edge of the bush: Anthropology as experience. Edited by Edith Turner, 1–15. Tucson: Univ. of Arizona Press.
The introduction to the first of two anthologies of essays collected and published posthumously. Explains how, alongside classic monographs in anthropology, Prospero, the poetry of Rilke, the work of Melville, Kierkegaard, and numerous poets and classic authors shaped Turner’s universalist heuristic.
Turner, Edith. 1992. Prologue: Exploring the trail. In Blazing the trail: Way marks in the exploration of symbols. Edited by Edith Turner, ix–xxi. Tucson: Univ. of Arizona Press.
A sensitive introduction to Turner’s iconoclastic symbolic comparativism.
Users without a subscription are not able to see the full content on this page. Please subscribe or login.
How to Subscribe
Oxford Bibliographies Online is available by subscription and perpetual access to institutions. For more information or to contact an Oxford Sales Representative click here.
Article
- Africa, Anthropology of
- Aging
- Agriculture
- Animal Cultures
- Animal Ritual
- Animal Sanctuaries
- Anorexia Nervosa
- Anthropocene, The
- Anthropological Activism and Visual Ethnography
- Anthropology and Education
- Anthropology and Theology
- Anthropology of Islam
- Anthropology of Kurdistan
- Anthropology of the Senses
- Anthrozoology
- Antiquity, Ethnography in
- Applied Anthropology
- Archaeobotany
- Archaeological Education
- Archaeologies of Sexuality
- Archaeology
- Archaeology and Museums
- Archaeology and Political Evolution
- Archaeology and Race
- Archaeology and the Body
- Archaeology, Gender and
- Archaeology, Global
- Archaeology, Historical
- Archaeology, Indigenous
- Archaeology of Childhood
- Archaeology of the Senses
- Archives
- Art Museums
- Art/Aesthetics
- Autoethnography
- Bakhtin, Mikhail
- Bass, William M.
- Beauty
- Belief
- Benedict, Ruth
- Binford, Lewis
- Bioarchaeology
- Biocultural Anthropology
- Bioethics
- Biological and Physical Anthropology
- Biological Citizenship
- Boas, Franz
- Bone Histology
- Bureaucracy
- Business Anthropology
- Cancer
- Capitalism
- Cargo Cults
- Caribbean
- Caste
- Charles Sanders Peirce and Anthropological Theory
- Childhood Studies
- Christianity, Anthropology of
- Citizenship
- Class, Archaeology and
- Clinical Trials
- Cobb, William Montague
- Code-switching and Multilingualism
- Cognitive Anthropology
- Cole, Johnnetta
- Colonialism
- Commodities
- Consumerism
- Crapanzano, Vincent
- Cultural Heritage Presentation and Interpretation
- Cultural Heritage, Race and
- Cultural Materialism
- Cultural Relativism
- Cultural Resource Management
- Culture
- Culture and Personality
- Culture, Popular
- Curatorship
- Cyber-Archaeology
- Dalit Studies
- Dance Ethnography
- de Heusch, Luc
- Deaccessioning
- Design
- Design, Anthropology and
- Diaspora
- Digital Anthropology
- Disability and Deaf Studies and Anthropology
- Douglas, Mary
- Drake, St. Clair
- Dreaming
- Durkheim and the Anthropology of Religion
- Economic Anthropology
- Embodied/Virtual Environments
- Embodiment
- Emotion, Anthropology of
- Environmental Anthropology
- Environmental Justice and Indigeneity
- Ethics
- Ethnoarchaeology
- Ethnocentrism
- Ethnographic Documentary Production
- Ethnographic Films from Iran
- Ethnography
- Ethnography Apps and Games
- Ethnohistory and Historical Ethnography
- Ethnomusicology
- Ethnoscience
- Europe
- Evans-Pritchard, E. E.
- Evolution, Cultural
- Evolutionary Cognitive Archaeology
- Evolutionary Theory
- Experimental Archaeology
- Federal Indian Law
- Feminist Anthropology
- Film, Ethnographic
- Folklore
- Food
- Forensic Anthropology
- Francophonie
- Frazer, Sir James George
- Geertz, Clifford
- Gender
- Gender and Religion
- Gene Flow
- Genetics
- Genocide
- GIS and Archaeology
- Global Health
- Globalization
- Gluckman, Max
- Graphic Anthropology
- Grass
- Haraway, Donna
- Healing and Religion
- Health and Social Stratification
- Health Policy, Anthropology of
- Heritage Language
- HIV/AIDS
- House Museums
- Human Adaptability
- Human Evolution
- Human Rights
- Human Rights Films
- Humanistic Anthropology
- Hurston, Zora Neale
- Identity
- Identity Politics
- India, Masculinity, Identity
- Indigeneity
- Indigenous Boarding School Experiences
- Indigenous Economic Development
- Indigenous Media: Currents of Engagement
- Industrial Archaeology
- Institutions
- Interpretive Anthropology
- Intertextuality and Interdiscursivity
- Kinship
- Laboratories
- Landscape Archaeology
- Language and Emotion
- Language and Law
- Language and Media
- Language and Race
- Language and Urban Place
- Language Contact and its Sociocultural Contexts, Anthropol...
- Language Ideology
- Language Socialization
- Leakey, Louis
- Legal Anthropology
- Legal Pluralism
- Levantine Archaeology
- Liberalism, Anthropology of
- Linguistic Anthropology
- Linguistic Relativity
- Linguistics, Historical
- Literacy
- Literary Anthropology
- Local Biologies
- Lévi-Strauss, Claude
- Magic
- Malinowski, Bronisław
- Margaret Mead, Gregory Bateson, and Visual Anthropology
- Maritime Archaeology
- Marriage
- Material Culture
- Materiality
- Mathematical Anthropology
- Matriarchal Studies
- Mead, Margaret
- Media Anthropology
- Medical Activism
- Medical Anthropology
- Medical Technology and Technique
- Mediterranean
- Memory
- Mendel, Gregor
- Mental Health and Illness
- Mesoamerican Archaeology
- Mexican Migration to the United States
- Migration
- Militarism, Anthropology and
- Missionization
- Mobility
- Modernity
- Morgan, Lewis Henry
- Multimodal Ethnography
- Multispecies Ethnography
- Museum Anthropology
- Museum Education
- Museum Studies
- Myth
- NAGPRA and Repatriation of Native American Human Remains a...
- Narrative in Sociocultural Studies of Language
- Nationalism
- Needham, Rodney
- Neoliberalism
- NGOs, Anthropology of
- Niche Construction
- Northwest Coast, The
- Oceania, Archaeology of
- Paleolithic Art
- Paleontology
- Performance Studies
- Performativity
- Personhood
- Perspectivism
- Philosophy of Museums
- Pilgrimage
- Plantations
- Political Anthropology
- Postprocessual Archaeology
- Postsocialism
- Poverty, Culture of
- Primatology
- Primitivism and Race in Ethnographic Film: A Decolonial Re...
- Processual Archaeology
- Psycholinguistics
- Psychological Anthropology
- Public Archaeology
- Public Sociocultural Anthropologies
- Race
- Religion
- Religion and Post-Socialism
- Religious Conversion
- Repatriation
- Reproductive and Maternal Health in Anthropology
- Reproductive Technologies
- Rhetoric Culture Theory
- Rural Anthropology
- Sahlins, Marshall
- Sapir, Edward
- Scandinavia
- Science Studies
- Secularization
- Semiotics
- Settler Colonialism
- Sex Estimation
- Sexuality
- Shamanism
- Sign Language
- Skeletal Age Estimation
- Social Anthropology (British Tradition)
- Social Movements
- Socialization
- Society for Visual Anthropology, History of
- Socio-Cultural Approaches to the Anthropology of Reproduct...
- Sociolinguistics
- Sound Ethnography
- Space and Place
- Stable Isotopes
- Stan Brakhage and Ethnographic Praxis
- Structuralism
- Studying Up
- Sub-Saharan Africa, Democracy in
- Surrealism and Anthropology
- Technological Organization
- Tourism
- Trans Studies in Anthroplogy
- Transhumance
- Transnationalism
- Tree-Ring Dating
- Turner, Edith L. B.
- Turner, Victor
- University Museums
- Urban Anthropology
- Value
- Violence
- Virtual Ethnography
- Visual Anthropology
- Whorfian Hypothesis
- Willey, Gordon
- Witchcraft
- Wolf, Eric R.
- Writing Culture
- Youth Culture
- Zoonosis
- Zora Neale Hurston and Visual Anthropology