Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors

Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors PDF Author: Victor Turner
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501732846
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 310

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Book Description
In this book, Victor Turner is concerned with various kinds of social actions and how they relate to, and come to acquire meaning through, metaphors and paradigms in their actors' minds; how in certain circumstances new forms, new metaphors, new paradigms are generated. To describe and clarify these processes, he ranges widely in history and geography: from ancient society through the medieval period to modern revolutions, and over India, Africa, Europe, China, and Meso-America. Two chapters, which illustrate religious paradigms and political action, explore in detail the confrontation between Henry II and Thomas Becket and between Hidalgo, the Mexican liberator, and his former friends. Other essays deal with long-term religious processes, such as the Christian pilgrimage in Europe and the emergence of anti-caste movements in India. Finally, he directs his attention to other social phenomena such as transitional and marginal groups, hippies, and dissident religious sects, showing that in the very process of dying they give rise to new forms of social structure or revitalized versions of the old order.

Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors

Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors PDF Author: Victor Turner
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501732846
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 310

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Book Description
In this book, Victor Turner is concerned with various kinds of social actions and how they relate to, and come to acquire meaning through, metaphors and paradigms in their actors' minds; how in certain circumstances new forms, new metaphors, new paradigms are generated. To describe and clarify these processes, he ranges widely in history and geography: from ancient society through the medieval period to modern revolutions, and over India, Africa, Europe, China, and Meso-America. Two chapters, which illustrate religious paradigms and political action, explore in detail the confrontation between Henry II and Thomas Becket and between Hidalgo, the Mexican liberator, and his former friends. Other essays deal with long-term religious processes, such as the Christian pilgrimage in Europe and the emergence of anti-caste movements in India. Finally, he directs his attention to other social phenomena such as transitional and marginal groups, hippies, and dissident religious sects, showing that in the very process of dying they give rise to new forms of social structure or revitalized versions of the old order.

Revelation and Divination in Ndembu Ritual

Revelation and Divination in Ndembu Ritual PDF Author: Victor Turner
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501717197
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 356

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Book Description
Drawing on two and a half years of field work, Victor Turner offers two thorough ethnographic studies of Ndembu revelatory ritual and divinatory techniques, with running commentaries on symbolism by a variety of Ndembu informants. Although previously published, these essays have not been readily available since their appearance more than a dozen years ago. Striking a personal note in a new introductory chapter, Professor Turner acknowledges his indebtedness to Ndembu ritualists for alerting him to the theoretical relevance of symbolic action in understanding human societies. He believes that ritual symbols, like botanists' stains, enable us to detect and trace the movement of social processes and relationships that often lie below the level of direct observation.

The Forest of Symbols

The Forest of Symbols PDF Author: Victor Witter Turner
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 9780801491016
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 436

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Book Description
Collection of 10 articles previously published on various aspects of ritual symbolism among the Ndembu of Zambia; p.83-4; brief mention of C.P. Mountford on Aboriginal colour symbolism; Primarly for use in cultural comparison.

Victor Turner and Contemporary Cultural Performance

Victor Turner and Contemporary Cultural Performance PDF Author: Graham St. John
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 9781845454623
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 376

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Book Description
In the twenty years following Victor Turner's death, interventions on the interconnected performance modes of play, drama, and community (dimensions of which Turner deemed the limen), and experimental and analytical forays into the anthropologies of experience and consciousness, have complemented and extended Turnerian readings on the moments and sites of culture's becoming. Examining Turner's continued relevance in performance and popular culture, pilgrimage and communitas, as well as Edith Turner's role, the contributors reflect on the wide application of Victor Turner's thought to cultural performance in the early twenty-first century and explore how Turner's ideas have been re-engaged, renovated, and repurposed in studies of contemporary cultural performance.

Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture

Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture PDF Author: Victor Witter Turner
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231157916
Category : Christian pilgrims and pilgrimages
Languages : en
Pages : 358

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Book Description
Originally published: 1978, in series: Lectures on the history of religions; new ser., no. 11. With new introd.

The Ritual Process

The Ritual Process PDF Author: Victor Turner
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351474901
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
In The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure, 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."

Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors

Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors PDF Author: Victor Witter Turner
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 9780801491511
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
The core of this book is a complete description of two important Ndembu rituals of affliction (Chihamba and Kayong'u), and an analysis of the system of ideas underlying more than a dozen modes of divination. Written by an internationally-known social scientist, the book demonstrates how the study of small-scale events may reveal as much about what it means to be a human being in society as do grand macrosocial and macrocultural surveys.Drawing on two and a half years of fieldwork, Victor Turner offers two thorough ethnographic studies of Ndembu revelatory ritual and divinatory techniques, with running commentaries on symbolism by a variety of Ndembu informants. Striking a personal note in the introductory chapter, Turner acknowledges his indebtedness to Ndembu ritualists for alerting him to the theoretical relevance of symbolic action in understanding human societies. He believes that ritual symbols, like botanists' stains, enable us to detect and trace the movement of social processes and relationships that often lie below the level of direct observation.

Theater as Metaphor

Theater as Metaphor PDF Author: Elena Penskaya
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110622033
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
The papers of the present volume investigate the potential of the metaphor of life as theater for literary, philosophical, juridical and epistemological discourses from the Middle Ages through modernity, and focusing on traditions as manifold as French, Spanish, Italian, German, Russian and Latin-American.

Narrating the Organization

Narrating the Organization PDF Author: Barbara Czarniawska-Joerges
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226132280
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
Using a narrative approach unique to organizational studies, Czarniawska employs literary devices to uncover the hidden workings of organizations. She shows how the interpretive description of organizational worlds works as a distinct genre of social analysis, and her investigations ultimately disclose the paradoxical nature of organizational life: we follow routine in order to change, and decentralize in order to control. By confronting such paradoxes, we bring crisis to existing institutions and enable them to change.

Symbols

Symbols PDF Author: Raymond Firth
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0415694663
Category : Signs and symbols
Languages : en
Pages : 468

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Book Description
This book first published in 1973 offers a broad survey of the study of symbolic ideas and behaviour. The study of symbolism is popular nowadays and anthropologists have made substantial contributions to it. Raymond Firth has long been internationally known for his field research in the Solomons and Malaysia, and for his theoretical work on kinship, economics and religion. Here from a new angle, he has produced a broad survey of the study of symbolic ideas and behaviour. Professor Firth examines definitions of symbol. He traces the history of scientific inquiry into the symbolism of religious cults, mythology and dreams back into the eighteenth century. He compares some modern approaches to symbolism in art, literature and philosophy with those in social anthropology. He then cites examples in anthropological treatment of symbolic material from cultures of varying sophistication. Finally he offers dispassionate analyses of symbols used in contemporary Western situations - from hair-styles to the use and abuse of national flags; from cults of Black Jesus to the Eucharistic rite. In all this Professor Firth combines social and political topicality with a scholarly and provocative theoretical inquiry.