V W Turner
Biographic Data
| ID | 74959 |
|---|---|
| NAME | V W Turner |
| GIVEN NAMES | V W |
| FAMILY NAME | Turner |
| SIGNATURE | TURNER V W |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 27 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 213 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 27 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1955 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2020 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Matrilineal Succession and the Dynamics of Village Intrigue
This chapter analyses a further set of dramas which arose out of the same fundamental structural situation after a passage of three years in Mukanza Village, as that village became the scene of new conflicts for power. It outlines the events that preceded the next overt rupture of relations between the leading persons in the village. After a social drama has passed a climax, and the group involved seems to have been reintegrated, there often foll…
Village Fission, Slavery and Social Change
In order to bring out the essential character of Ndembu village fission it is instructive to compare briefly the main features of Ndembu and Tallensi social organization. Village slavery was distinguished from commercial slavery. Village slaves were paid as fines to terminate blood feuds, to settle debts, to compensate for homicide, to pay a chief or senior headman whose poison-oracle had cleared a person accused of sorcery, and to discharge fine…
Political Aspects of Kinship and Affinity
Kinship ties, both lineal and cognatic, are supplemented by affinal ties within the settlement. This chapter examines the links of in-lawship between villages as a mechanism for establishing political relations between them. Matriliny is the foundation of each village&s;s continuity in time; matrilineal descent is therefore the dominant mode of attachment by kinship, Virilocal marriage scatters the nuclear women of the matrilineal kin-group of ea…
The Structural Implications of Virilocal Marriage Within the Village
The first consequence of virilocal marriage in Ndembu residential structure is that the majority of village members tend to belong to a single bilateral extended family, consisting of the headman, his wives and children, and of his siblings, their spouses and children. There is no word in Lunda for &s;elementary family&s; but the term ntang&s;a connotes a group of bilateral kin and their in-laws who are dependent on some particular person. Throug…
The Politically Integrative Function of Ritual
The profusion of types and frequency of performance of ritual in Ndembu society are, in a way, confessions of failure in the power of secular mechanisms to redress and absorb conflicts that arise in and between local and kinship groups. Most Ndeinbu rituals tacitly recognize the instability of villages and of the relations between villages, but posit the ultimate unity of all Ndembu in a single moral community. Life-crisis rituals are performed i…
The Social Composition of the Village
The strength of the sibling bond and its importance as a determinant of residence also derive from the mother-child tie. In matters of inheritance and succession it is matrilineal descent that counts; the children of one mother by several fathers regard each other as full ( chikupu ) siblings in every respect in the social context of their maternal village, although they may visit in their different paternal villages, and receive assistance from …
Postscript
This book attempts to combine two kinds of anthropological examination. The first is a synchronic analysis of Ndembu village structure. The second is an experiment in diachronic micro-sociology. The book shows how the general and the particular, the cyclical and the exceptional, the regular and the irregular, the normal and the deviant, are interrelated in a single social process. It examines the vicissitudes in time of a social group that was in…
The Village: Topography and Demography
The Ndembu are settled in discrete circles of huts which are not scattered evenly over the whole region but tend to be loosely grouped into spatially distinct vicinages. These circles of huts are traditionally known as nyikala . This term may be translated as &s;village&s;. The registered village consists of a roughly circular or oval arrangement of huts around a cleared space in the centre of which is a round unwalled shelter used as a men&s;s p…
The Chieftainship
It is difficult to obtain a clear and coherent picture of the Ndembu chieftainship as it existed before the Europeans came. Ndembu territory has been divided between Britain and Portugal; and rival Kanongeshas in Rhodesia and Angola have arisen, whose authority and functions have been considerably modified by the different theories of government espoused by the respective colonial powers. The lukanu was ritually treated by Kafwana and hidden duri…
Matrilineal Descent: The Basic Principle of Village Organization
In long-established villages with respected headmen something like hierarchically organized lineages of the type made familiar in British anthropological literature by the researches of Evans-Pritchard and Fortes begin to emerge, although such lineages are shallow by comparison with those found among such matrilineal and uxorilocal people as the Hopi and Ashanti. Maternal descent determines succession and inheritance. In succession to headmanship…
Varieties of Village Fission
The theme of the spatial dispersion of close lineal kin after fission in a village pervades Ndembu society just as the theme of lineal ramification in a single locality pervades Tallensi society. If one examines the spatial arrangement of almost any vicinage in the Ndembu region, one shall find few adjacent villages indeed that are linked by close lineal ties. Shika Village, about twelve miles from Mukanza Village, is a village whose nuclear line…
Historical and Ecological Background
Payment of domestic servants and labourers and the creation of opportunities for buying trade goods and selling native produce in the northern pedicle led to further increases in its population. Game was virtually exterminated in the pedicle by Africans with muzzle-loaders and Europeans with rifles. Local trade in dried meat and fish developed with Angolan and Congo Africans who exchanged these commodities for cash and store goods. There are nume…
Schism and Continuity in an African Society: A Study of Ndembu Village Life
Victor Turner's "Schism and Continuity in an African Society: A Study of Ndembu Village Life" is a landmark study in social anthropology, first published in 1957. Based on fieldwork conducted among the Ndembu people of Zambia, the book explores the dynamics of social conflict and cohesion, focusing on the role of ritual in managing tensions arising from matrilineal descent and virilocal residence. Turner analyzes how schisms, often stemming from …
Divination and its Symbolism
Divination has certain affinities with the judicial process, for it is vitally concerned with the customs and interests of persons in complex social situations. But it also prepares the way for the more rigidly standardized processes of redressive ritual. It is this mediating function that determines the cognitive and flexible qualities of its symbolism. Divination and redressive ritual are stages in a single process that is peculiarly sensitive …
A Performance of Ihamba Analysed
Among the Luvale and Luchazi the term lihamba , cognate with ihamba , stands for a particular manifestation of a shade. The shade appears to rouse the lihamba from its domicile under the ground for this purpose. An echo of this Luvale usage is found in the ritual of Kayong&s;u, frequently performed by Ndembu. Kayong&s;u has two functions. The first is to cure persons who have been afflicted by ancestor spirits with disorders of the chest or lungs…
The Social Setting of the Ritual Sequence at Nswanamundong’u Village
A ritual that assists in the consolidation of village unity may place that village in active opposition to rival villages in the same chiefdom, and so diminish the over-all cohesion. But ultimately a tendency towards restoring the dynamic equilibrium of the whole would seem to exist, and this tendency finds expression in certain critical ritual symbols and the values contained in them. It is now necessary to examine in some detail the social sett…
Nkang’a: Part Two
The musical bow is called mankun-kundimba . Ndembu derive this term from nkunku meaning &s;early&s;, since it is characteristically played at dawn during seclusion. The novice also plays it when she is hungry, or if she is afraid that wild animals, especially lions, are prowling about. She is forbidden to call out, and must speak only in whispers or a low voice. In a crisis, she may summon help by playing her bow. The novice is seated on a mat be…
Nkang’a: Part One
In the foregoing analysis of the complex extended-case history of Kamahasanyi and his kin, affines, neighbours and fellow citizens, stress was laid on the organizational principles of matriliny and virilocal marriage. These principles are regarded as possessing the highest possible legitimacy, in the sense that they are positively evaluated, and accepted as valid and binding by all Ndembu. The importance that matriliny, virilocality, seniority, m…
Rituals and Social Processes
The unity of a given ritual is a dramatic unity. It is in this sense a kind of work of art. If unity, then, must be regarded as the product, and not the premise, of ritual action, it must further be supposed that a ritual sequence arises out of some condition of social disunity, actual or potential. Thus, the typical development of a ritual sequence is from the public expression of a wish to cure a patient and redress breaches in the social struc…
The Morphology of Rituals of Affliction
Nkula is said by Ndembu to be of considerable antiquity—&s;from Mwantiyanvwa&s;, the king from whose realm in the Congo they originally came. Its aim is to remove a ban imposed by the shade of a deceased relative on the patient&s;s fertility. According to Muchona, Nkula is performed &s;to make children in a woman. It is performed when a woman has too much menstrual blood, or if she misses her periods but does not become pregnant. It is also perfo…
Field Context and Social Drama
In the trouble-case the individual and his society or his sub-group &s;appear in dramatic relation at a moment of maximum pressure, each upon the other&s;. In another respect, these cases may be regarded as components of &s;social dramas&s;. To analyse satisfactorily even a single social drama, it is necessary to place it firmly in what may be called its field context. Method is frankly along Gestalt lines. For among the relevant dimensions of ou…
Aspects of Saora Ritual and Shamanism
Verrier Elwin gives exhaustive lists of the names and kinds of mystical entities believed in by the Saora, describes in cultural detail many sorts of ritual to propitiate or exorcise them, and contributes a most valuable section on shamanism. The Hill Saora inhabit the Agency Tracts of the Ganjam and Koraput Districts of the modern state of Orissa. Saora are mainly distinguished from other peoples by linguistic and cultural criteria, and by the o…
Aspects of Saora Ritual and Shamanism
The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure
In The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure, Victor examines rituals of the Ndembu in Zambia and develops his now-famous concept of Communitas. He characterises it as an absolute inter-human relation beyond any form of structure. The Ritual Process has acquired the status of a small classic since these lectures were first published in 1969. demonstrates how the analysis of ritual behaviour and symbolism may be used as a key to understandi…
Essais d'anthropologie religieuse
Schism and Continuity in an African Society: A Study of Ndembu Village Life
Victor Turner's "Schism and Continuity in an African Society: A Study of Ndembu Village Life" is a landmark study in social anthropology, first published in 1957. Based on fieldwork conducted among the Ndembu people of Zambia, the book explores the dynamics of social conflict and cohesion, focusing on the role of ritual in managing tensions arising from matrilineal descent and virilocal residence. Turner analyzes how schisms, often stemming from …
The Spatial Separation of Generations in Ndembu Village Structure
Opening ParagraphIn recent literature on the social structure of African peoples much attention has been paid to the role of the lineage in village and local organization. Among one Central African people at least-the Mwinilunga Ndembu of Northern Rhodesia-the spatial separation of adjacent genealogical generations is a structural principle of equal importance. Other anthropologists working in Angola and western and central Northern Rhodesia have…
The Spatial Separation of Generations in Ndembu Village Structure
Opening ParagraphIn recent literature on the social structure of African peoples much attention has been paid to the role of the lineage in village and local organization. Among one Central African people at least-the Mwinilunga Ndembu of Northern Rhodesia-the spatial separation of adjacent genealogical generations is a structural principle of equal importance. Other anthropologists working in Angola and western and central Northern Rhodesia have…
The Social Organization of the Gwembe Tonga. Elizabeth Colson
Essais d'anthropologie religieuse
The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure
In The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure, Victor examines rituals of the Ndembu in Zambia and develops his now-famous concept of Communitas. He characterises it as an absolute inter-human relation beyond any form of structure. The Ritual Process has acquired the status of a small classic since these lectures were first published in 1969. demonstrates how the analysis of ritual behaviour and symbolism may be used as a key to understandi…
Aspects of Saora Ritual and Shamanism
Aspects of Saora Ritual and Shamanism
Verrier Elwin gives exhaustive lists of the names and kinds of mystical entities believed in by the Saora, describes in cultural detail many sorts of ritual to propitiate or exorcise them, and contributes a most valuable section on shamanism. The Hill Saora inhabit the Agency Tracts of the Ganjam and Koraput Districts of the modern state of Orissa. Saora are mainly distinguished from other peoples by linguistic and cultural criteria, and by the o…
Divination and its Symbolism
Divination has certain affinities with the judicial process, for it is vitally concerned with the customs and interests of persons in complex social situations. But it also prepares the way for the more rigidly standardized processes of redressive ritual. It is this mediating function that determines the cognitive and flexible qualities of its symbolism. Divination and redressive ritual are stages in a single process that is peculiarly sensitive …
A Performance of Ihamba Analysed
Among the Luvale and Luchazi the term lihamba , cognate with ihamba , stands for a particular manifestation of a shade. The shade appears to rouse the lihamba from its domicile under the ground for this purpose. An echo of this Luvale usage is found in the ritual of Kayong&s;u, frequently performed by Ndembu. Kayong&s;u has two functions. The first is to cure persons who have been afflicted by ancestor spirits with disorders of the chest or lungs…
The Social Setting of the Ritual Sequence at Nswanamundong’u Village
A ritual that assists in the consolidation of village unity may place that village in active opposition to rival villages in the same chiefdom, and so diminish the over-all cohesion. But ultimately a tendency towards restoring the dynamic equilibrium of the whole would seem to exist, and this tendency finds expression in certain critical ritual symbols and the values contained in them. It is now necessary to examine in some detail the social sett…
Nkang’a: Part Two
The musical bow is called mankun-kundimba . Ndembu derive this term from nkunku meaning &s;early&s;, since it is characteristically played at dawn during seclusion. The novice also plays it when she is hungry, or if she is afraid that wild animals, especially lions, are prowling about. She is forbidden to call out, and must speak only in whispers or a low voice. In a crisis, she may summon help by playing her bow. The novice is seated on a mat be…
Nkang’a: Part One
In the foregoing analysis of the complex extended-case history of Kamahasanyi and his kin, affines, neighbours and fellow citizens, stress was laid on the organizational principles of matriliny and virilocal marriage. These principles are regarded as possessing the highest possible legitimacy, in the sense that they are positively evaluated, and accepted as valid and binding by all Ndembu. The importance that matriliny, virilocality, seniority, m…
Rituals and Social Processes
The unity of a given ritual is a dramatic unity. It is in this sense a kind of work of art. If unity, then, must be regarded as the product, and not the premise, of ritual action, it must further be supposed that a ritual sequence arises out of some condition of social disunity, actual or potential. Thus, the typical development of a ritual sequence is from the public expression of a wish to cure a patient and redress breaches in the social struc…
The Morphology of Rituals of Affliction
Nkula is said by Ndembu to be of considerable antiquity—&s;from Mwantiyanvwa&s;, the king from whose realm in the Congo they originally came. Its aim is to remove a ban imposed by the shade of a deceased relative on the patient&s;s fertility. According to Muchona, Nkula is performed &s;to make children in a woman. It is performed when a woman has too much menstrual blood, or if she misses her periods but does not become pregnant. It is also perfo…
Field Context and Social Drama
In the trouble-case the individual and his society or his sub-group &s;appear in dramatic relation at a moment of maximum pressure, each upon the other&s;. In another respect, these cases may be regarded as components of &s;social dramas&s;. To analyse satisfactorily even a single social drama, it is necessary to place it firmly in what may be called its field context. Method is frankly along Gestalt lines. For among the relevant dimensions of ou…
Matrilineal Succession and the Dynamics of Village Intrigue
This chapter analyses a further set of dramas which arose out of the same fundamental structural situation after a passage of three years in Mukanza Village, as that village became the scene of new conflicts for power. It outlines the events that preceded the next overt rupture of relations between the leading persons in the village. After a social drama has passed a climax, and the group involved seems to have been reintegrated, there often foll…
Village Fission, Slavery and Social Change
In order to bring out the essential character of Ndembu village fission it is instructive to compare briefly the main features of Ndembu and Tallensi social organization. Village slavery was distinguished from commercial slavery. Village slaves were paid as fines to terminate blood feuds, to settle debts, to compensate for homicide, to pay a chief or senior headman whose poison-oracle had cleared a person accused of sorcery, and to discharge fine…
Political Aspects of Kinship and Affinity
Kinship ties, both lineal and cognatic, are supplemented by affinal ties within the settlement. This chapter examines the links of in-lawship between villages as a mechanism for establishing political relations between them. Matriliny is the foundation of each village&s;s continuity in time; matrilineal descent is therefore the dominant mode of attachment by kinship, Virilocal marriage scatters the nuclear women of the matrilineal kin-group of ea…
The Structural Implications of Virilocal Marriage Within the Village
The first consequence of virilocal marriage in Ndembu residential structure is that the majority of village members tend to belong to a single bilateral extended family, consisting of the headman, his wives and children, and of his siblings, their spouses and children. There is no word in Lunda for &s;elementary family&s; but the term ntang&s;a connotes a group of bilateral kin and their in-laws who are dependent on some particular person. Throug…
The Politically Integrative Function of Ritual
The profusion of types and frequency of performance of ritual in Ndembu society are, in a way, confessions of failure in the power of secular mechanisms to redress and absorb conflicts that arise in and between local and kinship groups. Most Ndeinbu rituals tacitly recognize the instability of villages and of the relations between villages, but posit the ultimate unity of all Ndembu in a single moral community. Life-crisis rituals are performed i…
The Social Composition of the Village
The strength of the sibling bond and its importance as a determinant of residence also derive from the mother-child tie. In matters of inheritance and succession it is matrilineal descent that counts; the children of one mother by several fathers regard each other as full ( chikupu ) siblings in every respect in the social context of their maternal village, although they may visit in their different paternal villages, and receive assistance from …
Postscript
This book attempts to combine two kinds of anthropological examination. The first is a synchronic analysis of Ndembu village structure. The second is an experiment in diachronic micro-sociology. The book shows how the general and the particular, the cyclical and the exceptional, the regular and the irregular, the normal and the deviant, are interrelated in a single social process. It examines the vicissitudes in time of a social group that was in…
The Village: Topography and Demography
The Ndembu are settled in discrete circles of huts which are not scattered evenly over the whole region but tend to be loosely grouped into spatially distinct vicinages. These circles of huts are traditionally known as nyikala . This term may be translated as &s;village&s;. The registered village consists of a roughly circular or oval arrangement of huts around a cleared space in the centre of which is a round unwalled shelter used as a men&s;s p…
The Chieftainship
It is difficult to obtain a clear and coherent picture of the Ndembu chieftainship as it existed before the Europeans came. Ndembu territory has been divided between Britain and Portugal; and rival Kanongeshas in Rhodesia and Angola have arisen, whose authority and functions have been considerably modified by the different theories of government espoused by the respective colonial powers. The lukanu was ritually treated by Kafwana and hidden duri…
Matrilineal Descent: The Basic Principle of Village Organization
In long-established villages with respected headmen something like hierarchically organized lineages of the type made familiar in British anthropological literature by the researches of Evans-Pritchard and Fortes begin to emerge, although such lineages are shallow by comparison with those found among such matrilineal and uxorilocal people as the Hopi and Ashanti. Maternal descent determines succession and inheritance. In succession to headmanship…
Varieties of Village Fission
The theme of the spatial dispersion of close lineal kin after fission in a village pervades Ndembu society just as the theme of lineal ramification in a single locality pervades Tallensi society. If one examines the spatial arrangement of almost any vicinage in the Ndembu region, one shall find few adjacent villages indeed that are linked by close lineal ties. Shika Village, about twelve miles from Mukanza Village, is a village whose nuclear line…
Sociology (12 works) · History (10 works) · Geography (9 works) · Anthropological Studies and Insights (6 works) · Art (6 works) · Biology (6 works) · Computer Science (6 works) · African history and culture analysis (5 works) · Anthropology (4 works) · Genealogy (4 works)