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Introduction to Social Anthropology B

Lecture 8

Ritual: “Rites de passage”

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Rites de passage• “The terms rites of passage (rite de passage) is associated with the

name of Arnold van Gennep, who published the book Les Rites de Passage as early as 1909. Through such rites, van Gennep wrote, society reproduces itself. People are given new status without the social structure changing, and the public character of the ceremonies gives the inhabitants an annual reminder of the fellowship, rights and obligations provided by society.

• Since then, Victor Turner (1967,1969,1974) has developed van Gennep’s perspective further by looking closely into the phases and levels of meaning provided by these rites among the Ndembu of what is now Zambia. A general point in Turner’s studies is that the rites of passage simultaneously function as permitting integration into society and give the participants a mystical experience of oneness with the spiritual world and with the ‘social organism’.

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Rites de passage• Turner follows van Gennep in dividing the rites into three phases:

separation, liminality and reintegration. • Separation is characterised by the individuals or group’s movement away

from a fixed point in social structure towards something unknown. • When the breach is completed, the agent enters a liminal phase, an

ambiguous stage where he or she is in a certain sense placed outside society, ‘betwixt and between’ (Turner 1969) two stable conditions. This puts the actor in a dangerous position. Society runs the risk that the actor refuses to be reintegrated and rejects its values and power hierarchies, while the individual on his or her part risk anomie and social homelessness. Turners writes that in nearly every society, persons in liminal phases are ‘structurally if not physically invisible in terms of his cultures standard definitions and classifications’. (1974 p.232). this difficult and dangerous liminality is necessary to order to ‘clean off’ the earlier statuses of the individual, to make him or her ready to be reborn as a new category of social person.

• In the final phase in rites of passage is reintegration. During this phase the candidates return as new persons, usually at a higher level of rank.

• Eriksen, T. H. 1995 Small Places, Large Issues. London: Pluto, p.124-5

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Transition

Seperation Re-incorperation

Ritual

Life stage

Status One

Liminal status

Status Two

Stage 1 Stage 2 Stage 3

Van Gennep’s ‘rites de passage’.

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Liminal stage

• Durkheim- • Sacred v. Profane;• Special :: Mudane• Dangerous :: Routine

• Liminal both very sacred and very evil/bad• Can be hidden, secret, polluting• Can be at the sacred centre, exposed,

conferring grace.

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Transition

Seperation Re-incorperation

Ritual

Life stage

Status One

Liminal status

Status Two

Stage 1 Stage 2 Stage 3

Van Gennep’s ‘rites de passage’.

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Chewa Ethnography

• Kaspin, Deborah 1999 “The Lion at the Waterhole: the secrets of life and death in Chewa rites de passage,” pp. 83-99 in Henrietta L. Moore, Todd Sanders, Bwire Kaare (eds). Those Who Play with Fire: Gender, Fertility and Transformation in East and Southern Africa . London : Athlone Press.

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“What is the relationship between the ‘wild animals’ of Nyau who perform in public and the corpses and adolescents who are treated in private? The answer lies in the symbolic code which the public dances and private procedures share. Accordingly, men are predators, women are game, sexuality is predation and the spilling of blood whether in menstruation, childbirth or hunting, is the source of death and renewal.

Chewa Symbolism Hunters Hunted Humans Men Women

Nyau Nyau of the Day Lion

Nyau of the Night Antelope Elephant

Meat Grown food

9• members.optusnet.com.au/ ~carlsonpa/photos.htm

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TransitionBurial in

graveyard ‘home’ of the Nyau

Seperation: Nyau predators collect corpse from the

women

Re-incorperation: Nyau including Antelope and Elephant return meat to

the village

Ritual

Life stage

Status OneDeath

Liminal statusJourney to the

spirit world

Status TwoArrival of dead soul in

the spirit world

Stage 1 Stage 2 Stage 3

Chewa Funeral Rituals.

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Symbolism of masks

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Transition

Seperation: Re-incorperation:

Ritual

Life stage

Status OneSingle

Liminal status

Status TwoMarried

Stage 1 Stage 2 Stage 3

British Weddings.

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• Basic pattern applies to ‘other’ forms of wedding/ marriage:

• Civil partnership

• Nuns ‘marrying’ Christ