Description
Book SynopsisIn 2016, Edith Turner passed away. She left behind an intellectual legacy that, together with her husband, Victor Turner, transformed modern anthropology. This edited collection focuses on Victor and Edith Turner's significant theoretical contributions, including their work on communitas, liminality, pilgrimage, friendship, fieldwork, self-reflection, affective culture, religion, spirits, and faith. This collection includes retrospectives on the personal lives of Edith and Victor, as provided by their son; a close look at Edith's work on last rites, for which she studied and contemplated her own demise; an examination of Edith's faith and belief system in light of her personal research interests; and contemporary applications of the Turners's theories in relation to modern social processes. Contributors touch on a variety of topics, including current political upheavals and inversions, the values of friendship and bonding, the importance of music as affective culture, jazz as a pilgrim
Trade ReviewVictor and Edith Turner’s significant contributions to not only anthropology, but to sociology and other academic fields is beautifully demonstrated in this solid and eclectic collection of articles compiled by Frank Salamone and Marjorie Snipes. This unique anthology provides fascinating extensions of the Turners’ key concepts and insightful, first-hand accounts of their lives by former colleagues and family. -- Marcus Aldredge, Iona College
This is a remarkable book. Following a brilliant introduction by James Peacock, placing the theoretical contributions of this volume in a broader theoretical framework of anthropological theory, past and present, in the US, UK, and France, each and every article moves the unique and rich contributions by the Turners forward rather than simply replicating them. The late Roy Wagner’s article will remain like a bright northern star, reminding us that liminality is energy, or, lightening after a storm. It is his last vintage piece, and an anthropological classic. -- Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, University of Wisconsin
Nine anthropologists, including both elders and beginners in the field, reflect on some implications and applications of salient aspects of the work of two of the modern era’s most influential scholars. Victor and Edith Turner successively represent more than a half century of innovative and bold re-thinking of ways to understand humanity. As James Peacock observes in his Introduction, this is far more than a standard festschrift. Through their own fieldwork and personal experience the contributors extend our understanding of structural inversion, ritual, symbols, liminality, communitas, reality, and other themes through which the Turners have re-shaped our field -- Phillips Stevens, University at Buffalo, SUNY
This volume is a bouquet of welcome reflections on the intellectual thought of that dynamic duo in anthropology, Victor and Edith Turner, especially with regard to their contributions to thinking on liminality and communitas. This collection is no less a long-deserved homage to Edie, who here is at center stage with, for a change, Vic in a strong supporting role. In particular, Edie’s hands-on anthropology, her penetrating of sensory domains to touch the heartbeats of healing are profound. -- Don Handelman, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Table of ContentsIntroduction James Peacock Inverted Structures Talking about the Weather: Radical Critical Empathy and the Reality of Communitas” Rory Turner “Communitas Keeps Revealing Itself”: The Unfinished Business of Communitas Marjorie Snipes Faith From Dissection to Discernment: Edie Turner, Victor Turner, and Jonathan Edwards on the Ontological Status of Spirits Stephen Glazier Studying Friendship by Making Friends? Inspirations from Edith Turner’s Humanistic Anthropology Xinyan Peng Pilgrimage Jazz Pilgrimage Frank A. Salamone The Energy of Liminality Roy Wagner The Elderly Process: Edith Turner’s Last Fieldsite Dionisios Kavadias, Charlotte Dawson, and Edie Turner
