Turner, Victor

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Turner, Victor (1920–83). British social and cultural anthropologist latterly working in the USA, best known for his investigations of the meaning, nature, grounds, and functions of Ndembu (Zambia) rituals and symbols. His interest in Ndembu rites of passage, where liminal periods are important, encouraged Turner to advance the theory of communitas: as well as structured interaction, all societies require contexts of anti-structure; contexts in which bare, and so equal, individuals can recognize their ‘humankindness’. At the end of his life, he came to realize that the emphasis in his work (and his teaching of other anthropologists) had been wrong, and that he should have recognized that biogenetic structuralism was correct in returning a genetic contribution to human (and thus religious) behaviours: see his ‘Body, Brain and Culture’, Zygon (1983), 221 ff.

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