RT1806_C.qxd 1/28/2004 6:32 PM Page 97 Communitas, Rites of alive/dead, child/woman, outsider/adherent), In a broad and general way, it is during such reli- involves a general “leveling” of rights, rank, and gious rites that mythology is legitimized, the strong privileges that is entirely antithetical to the “nor- become weak, the weak strong, and traditional status mal” or structural state of affairs. Turner (1997, 106), categories are reinforced by contrasting them with the for example, notes the following “binary opposites” potential anarchy and statuslessness of liminality. In where the first represents communitas and the an important sense, without structure there is no com- second structure: equality/inequality, absence of munitas and without communitas there is no structure. status/status, humility/just pride of position, James Houk silence/speech, and total obedience/obedience only to superior rank, just to mention a few. It should not See also Communitas, Rites of; Liminoid; Passage, be assumed here, however, that the “liminite” is Rites of powerless in a general sense. After all, if one is “out- side” structure, he or she is not controlled by it. Consider, for example, the “hippies” and “flower Further Reading children” of the sixties, quintessential liminites who staked out a social position that was distinctly anti- Alexander, B. (1991). Victor Turner revisited: Ritual as social structural or, in their terms, “antisocial.” Falling out- change. Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press. side the purview of proper culture, so to speak, they Bell, C. (1992). Ritual theory, ritual practice. New York: engaged in activities that were socially unacceptable Oxford University Press. in a general sense, for example, the consumption of Geertz, C. (1973). The interpretation of cultures. New York: psychoactive substances and rather unrestricted sex- Basic Books. ual practices. Houk, J. (1995). Spirits, blood, and drums: The Orisha reli- The power, so to speak, of communitas is also evi- gion in Trinidad. Philadelphia: Temple University dent in the interplay between structure and communi- Press. tas. Turner notes that both processes are essential for Turner, V. (1977). The ritual process: Structure and anti- the “well-being” of each other. In fact, one might view structure. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. society diachronically as a manifestation of the dialec- van Gennep, A. (1909). The rites of passage (M. Vizedom & tic process involving this continual interplay between G. Caffee, Trans.). London: Routledge and Kegan structure and communitas. Paul. One important example of this process might be referred to as “the normalization of communitas.” Consider, for example, the “mourning” ritual prac- ticed in the Orisha religion of Trinidad. According to Communitas, Rites of James Houk, the individual “pilgrim” involved in the ritual gains certain knowledge regarding spirits, ritu- In the 1960s Victor Turner adapted the word “com- als, etc., during a series of spiritual travels. The infor- munitas” from Paul Goodman’s usage, which connot- mation and knowledge gained during mourning, ed town planning on community lines. Turner uses however novel or traditional, or, put another way, “communitas” extensively in anthropology to mean a however heretical or heterodox, eventually becomes relational quality of full, unmediated communication, part of the complex of beliefs and practices that com- even communion, between people of definite and prise the Orisha religion. It is in this sense that com- determinate identity, which arises spontaneously in munitas is normalized. The subversion of standard all kinds of groups, situations, and circumstances. The social roles that occurs during mourning allows even Random House Webster Unexpurgated Dictionary (1998) neophyte and rank and file adherents to influence the defines “communitas” as: “Anthropol. The sense of religion along idiosyncratic lines, since everyone’s sharing and intimacy that develops among persons experiences are equally valid and, thus, equally who experience liminality as a group.” Turner first important. Looked at in this way, the communitas of noted this phenomenon—then not recognized in the mourning periodically revitalizes the structure of the social sciences—in the healing ritual of Chihamba belief system. In a similar way, Turner speaks of the among the Ndembu of Zambia in 1953. He observed purging and purification effect communitas has on and experienced it among the Chihamba patients who structure. were in passage between illness and health, and also 97 RT1806_C.qxd 1/28/2004 6:32 PM Page 98 Communitas, Rites of found it among novices changing from childhood to oneness is therefore often expressed in rituals of adulthood, and in other changes in social status. reversal in which the lowly and high-ups reverse Furthermore he recognized it in many different soci- social roles. eties among those in betwixt-and-between circum- After the inception of spontaneous communitas a stances, those going through some threshold or limen structuring process often develops and a cycle of com- in life together, that is, in a time of liminality. munitas/structure/communitas ensues. For example, religious vision becomes sect, then church, then a Description prop for a dominant political system, until communi- tas resurges once more, emerging from the spaces of The bonds of communitas that are felt at liminal times freedom often found in betwixt-and-between situa- are undifferentiated, egalitarian, direct, extant, nonra- tions. Revivals are of this nature. tional, existential, and “I–Thou” (in Martin Buber’s Much of religious observance consists of “norma- sense). The original sense of communitas is sponta- tive communitas,” the attempt to capture and pre- neous and concrete, not abstract. The experience of serve spontaneous communitas in systems of ethical communitas matters much to the participants. It does precepts and legal rules. These are often gathered in not merge identities; the gifts of each person are alive documents of “ideological communitas,” in which to the full, along with those of every other person. are formulated the remembered attributes of the Communitas liberates individuals from conformity to communitas experience in the form of a utopian general norms. It is the fount and origin of the gift of blueprint for the reform of society. Yet in the stories togetherness, and thus of the gifts of organization, usually recorded within them reside the seeds of the and therefore of all structures of social behavior, and realization of spontaneous communitas once again, at the same time it is the critique of structure that is whether these consist of poems, sacred history, sin- overly law-bound. Communitas should be distin- cere accounts of visions, or even music and art. In guished from Durkheim’s “mechanical solidarity,” the works of prophets and artists we may catch which is a bond between individuals who are collec- glimpses of the unused evolutionary potential of tively in opposition to another solidary group. In communitas, a potential not yet externalized and “mechanical solidarity,” unity depends on “in-group fixed in structure. versus out-group” opposition. But in the genesis and central tendency of communitas, communitas is uni- Sources of Communitas versalistic. Structures, like living species, become spe- cialized; communitas, as in the case of the biology of The spaces of freedom in society from which com- the human species and its direct evolutionary fore- munitas emerges are various. Communitas breaks bears, remains open and unspecialized, a spring of into society (1) through the interstices of structure in pure possibility as well as giving release from day-to- liminality, times of change of status; (2) at the edges day structural role-playing, and it seeks oneness. This of structure, in marginality; and (3) from beneath does not involve a withdrawal from multiplicity but structure, in inferiority. Liminality, marginality, and eliminates divisiveness and realizes nonduality. inferiority frequently generate sacred accounts, Communitas strains toward universalism and open- symbols, rituals, philosophical systems, and works ness; it is richly charged with feeling, mainly pleasur- of art. able. It has something magical about it. Those who experience communitas feel the presence of spiritual Liminality power. Liminality is the process of midtransition in a rite of Victor Turner emphasizes, first, “spontaneous passage. During the liminal period, the characteristics communitas”: a feeling that comes unexpectedly like of those passing through are ambiguous, for where the wind and warms everyone to each other. It defies they find themselves has few or none of the attributes deliberate cognitive and volitional construction and is of either the past or the coming state. They are betwixt at the opposite pole to social structures, that is, the and between. In nonindustrial societies their secular role sets, status sets, and status sequences consciously powerlessness may be compensated for by a sacred recognized and regulated in society and closely power—the power of the weak, derived on the one bound up with legal and political norms and sanc- hand from the resurgence of nature when structural tions. Communitas or the feeling of communion or power is removed, and on the other from the 98 RT1806_C.qxd 1/28/2004 6:32 PM Page 99 Communitas, Rites of experience of the sacred. Much of what has been pilgrimage situation does not eliminate structural bound by social structure is liberated