ON THEED GE THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF FORM AND MEANING OF THE BUSH Senior Editor J. David Sapir (University ofVirginia) Associate Editors as Ellen B. Basso (University of Arizona) Anthropology Experience J. Christopher Crocker (University ofVirginia) Hildred Geertz (Princeton University) Peter A. Metcalf (University of Virginia) Renata A. Rosaldo (Stanford University) Victor yarner Edith L. B. Turner, Editor The University of Arizona Press Tu cson, Arizona -- ---=-- = __:::---=--=---- -;;;;;;;;._.-: - - - About the Author Victor Tu rner (1920 -1983) is recognized worldwide for his work as an anthropologist and comparative symbologist. His research of ritual and symbolism took him initially to Africa, where he studied ToDaniel, Benjamin, john, and Rose amongst the Ndembu, and then to India, Israel, Mexico, Ireland, and Japan as well. In 1963, he left a post at the University of Manchester to come to the United States, where he joined the faculty of Cornell University. During the next years he published TheForest cfSy mbols, TheDrums cf A.ffliction, and TheRitual Process. In 1977, he moved to the University of Virginia where until his death he was William R. Kenan Professor of Anthropology and Religion. In these last half dozen years, his interest shifted increasingly from ritual to theatre (where his formal studies had begun), from social processes to cultural perfor­ mances, -and from the "liminal" phase of tribal ritual to the "lirninoid" of complex, post-industrial society. His most recent book, From Ritual to Theatre:The Human Seriousness cfPlay, was published in 1982. About the Editor Edith L. B. Tu rner, anthropologist, author, and poet, edited this vol­ ume of her late husband's essays from the perspective of a co-field­ worker. From the time of their first research venture to Northern Rhodesia, she worked alongside Victor Tu rner, pursuing her own special interest in the women of the various cultures in which they lived. Since 1983, she has been director of Comparative Symbology, Inc., and a lecturer in anthropology at the University of Virginia since 1984. In late 1985, she returned to Africa to do further research. THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA PRESS Copyright© 1985 The Arizona Board of Regents All Rights Reserved This book was set in 10/12 Compugraphic 8400 Bembo. Manufactured in the U.S.A. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Tu rner, Victor Witter. On the edge of the bush. Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. Symbolism-Addresses, essays, lectures. 2. Rites and ceremonies-Addresses, essays, lectures. 3. Ethnology-Addresses, essays, lectures. I. 'TI.Jrncr, Edith L. B., 1921- . II. Tit!_);. GN452.5.T86 1985 306 �::�?.i2.9_�-�- ISBN 0-8165-0949-2 Contents Prologue: From the Ndembu to Broadway 1 PART ONE ProcessualAnalysis 1. Aspects of Saora Ritual and Shamanism: An Approach to the Data ofRitual 19 2. Ritual Aspects of Conflict Control in African Micropolitics 43 3. Mukanda, Boys' Circumcision: The Politics of a Non-Political Ritual 53 4. An Anthropological Approach to the Icelandic Saga 71 5. The Icelandic Family Saga as a Genre ofMeaning-Assignment 95 6. Conflictin Social Anthropological and Psychoanalytical Theory: Umbanda in Rio de Janeiro 119/ r > 7. 'Process,-System, and Symbol: A New (I, �;)'. Antl1ropological Synthesis 151 Vlll · CONTENTS PART TWO Performance and Experience 8. The Anthropology ofPerformance 177 / 9. Experience and Performance: Towards a New Processual Anthropology 205 / 10. Images of Anti-Temporality: An Essay in the Anthropology of Experience 227 ---- Prologue: From the Ndembu to Broadway PART THREE The Brain 11. Body, Brain, and Culture 249 / 12. The New Neurosociology 275 r Epilogue: Are There Universals of Performance in Myth, Ritual, and Drama? 291 / PART FOUR Reference Material When Victor Tu rner died in 1983 Bibliography 305 he was in the fu ll swing of a productive life. Our days had become so fu ll fo r both of us that although it was my role to collect his papers fo r 319 Index publication, I had not been able to work on them for some time. Now we arc able to present the first of two volumes of selected essays, chosen to represent the development of his ideas on process theory. The first six chapters are based on ethnography: it was fr om fieldwork that Vic drew theory, from the grassroots that he respected so much. As his principal collaborator in every field that Vic explored, I recall our life together at one level as a series of stories about the events that were steps in his development. For his readers it was a series of ideas; fo r me it was a life. It was just after World War II in Britain. Vic and I were living in a KYPSY caravan, fo r a proper home was unobtainable due to the German bombing. However, we were determined not to be without books, so we would walk fo ur mi��s to Rugby Town to visit the public library, wheeling a pram containing two little boys, Freddie and Bobbie. Vic had been in the army in the lowly rank of a conscientious objector, digging up unex­ ploded bombs. He continually worked with laborers and liked their type FROM THE NDEMBU TO BROADWAY 2 • PROLOGUE • 3 of interaction. He even searched through books to find more on such real social group, and the countervailing tendencies that corrected otherwise life interaction. At the library he found Comingif Age in Samoa by Margaret harsh or dysfunctional systems. Vic was looking fo r just this. He was Mead and TheAndaman Islanders by A. R. Radcliffe-Brown; and he realized interested in the events of life, processes he could watch unrolling. Thus that tribal life was even more down to earth, certainly more socially we aimed in the field fo r an extremely close-up view of process, a view integrated, than that of the British private soldier. I remember Vic as he informed by Vic's growing knowledge of Ndembu social structure and read The Andaman Islanders suddenly resolving: "I'm going to be an regularities. The striving of the Ndembu-their consciousness, their anthropologist." activity-seemed to ramify into innumerable complexities at whatever So it was decided. First, he went back to school at University College, level of affairs they were engaged in, whether it was disputes over London, fo r his B.A. in anthropology. At this time Vic began to read Karl matrilineal descent and succession, problems of slavery, social change, Marx and think about the dialectic-the essence of process. It so happened marriage, chieftainship, or ritual. The organic interconnections of human that Max Gluckman, professor of social anthropology at Manchester Uni­ life were visible in motion, in operation. Vic did n�__ <;>_nly_�:Jct�lLlik.� .a ... versity, also used Marxism, especially in The Economy ifthe Central Barotse theater gQ�J;._He loved sitting in the men's hut �h th;;- �alabashes; he . Plain (1941), which Vic read aloud to me while I was sewing the children's kne� that the "plays" he observed were serious-and that we ourselves in clothes. I saw the sense of this kind of anthropology and began to look Western society should be more intimately concerned with our fe llows, as forward to fieldwork. It was Max, on one of his preambulations in search the Ndembu were. of good graduate students for his new department at Manchester, who In the second year of fieldwork, once we had started to fo cus on ritual, spotted Vic and offered to arrange a grant with the Rhodes-Livingstone on rites of passage, on Ndembu awareness about their own rituals and Institute, Zambia, fo r fieldworkin an African tribe. Vic agreed gladly. He about the spirit world, the theory of fu nctionalism, that these rituals were would be able to avoid static fo rmalism by working out of Manchester. designed as some kind of all-purpose social glue and reflected structural He was assigned the Mambwe tribe, a people in the midst of change, to patterns, began to look inadequate. We had been reading Meyer Fortes and study economics; but it so happened that Vic never arrived at the his work on the Tallensi, which indeed portrayed a dynamic system, but as Mambwe homeland. While he was at the Institute he received a telegram Portes showed it, one entirely revolving around social structural require­ fr om Max: "Suggest you change to Ndembu tribe Northwestern Province ments. One day-the scene is imprinted on my mind-we were walking much malaria yellow fe ver plenty of ritual." Vic consulted me. "Of ;�eross an old village site where Mukanza Village used to be (for the course," I said. I knew the side of Vic that loved the world of symbols­ Ndembu move their villages every five or six years). No vestige of walls but how did Max know? "We'll manage," I said, "We'll get shots and take or house timbers remained, just a wide stretch of sand where grew little quinine." And I arranged an interview with a doctor, who gave me the wild round cucumbers and mossy flowers. Vic started to talk. How could drugs and plenty of good advice. the ritual we were studying (it was Chihamba, in which we were being So here we were in Mukanza Village, making hut counts, village and initiated as novices) be an expression of social structure? If expression garden maps, genealogies, researching personal budgets, and most impor­ were all that was needed, why did such complex cults of ailliction as tant, learning the Ndembu language. This was the "out trail," sung in ( :hihamba spring into existence? There was no call for such extraordinary poetry by Kipling; we both thrilled to the experience.