Victor Turner's Theory In Anthropology

The symbolic approach to ritual was first written about by Victor Turner (1920-1983), who studied the Ndembu tribe of Zambia, and studied their use of symbols in rituals and rites of passage. Clifford Geertz (1926-2006) was an American anthropologist whose largest and most important works were on the Balinese cockfights in Indonesia, and defined culture as a web of ideas expressed in symbols, that can have multiple meanings. Stanley Tambiah (1929-2014) was a Professor Emeritus at Harvard that formulated a performative approach to ritual, where every human action was a ‘performance’ and all performances were telling to the culture.

Structure and communitas are the two main cornerstones to Victor Turner’s theory of symbols. They are two opposing yet mutually necessary aspects of social life: the concept of structure is defined as “society as a structured, differentiated, and often hierarchical system of politico-legal-economic positions with many types of evaluation, separating men in terms of ‘more’ or ‘less.’” Communitas, on the other hand, is defined as “society as an unstructured or rudimentarily structured and relatively undifferentiated comitatus, community, or even communion of equal individuals who submit together to the general authority of the ritual elders.” And it usually comes together during times of liminality. …show more content…
He presents fascinating examples of how cultures often share systems of symbols and how the symbols are not only shaped by those who use them but not only shape are both shaped by and also shape social and cultural practice. Geertz 's broad description and his methods of interpretive anthropology lack the scientific structure that is required of quality ethnography and are often criticized for not being scientific enough. Many scholars also contend that Geertz 's methods ultimately result in a lack of contribution to the construction of any larger or over arching