Victor Turner and "liminality"......?

Question

Can anyone put in a nutshell exactly what he means please? How does he bring "communitas" into the theory. Is that structure and anti-structure?

Thanks :)

Answer 1

Liminality is a disassociated condition of the ritual subject created during certain stages of ritual where the subject is disconnected from his or her social structure (as in temporarily outcast or alienated). In a sense, liminality is a temporary state of communitas (lack of structure)

In other words, it is a structured state of non-structure, but has a structural function within ritual.

FOLLOW-UP TO YOUR SECOND QUESTION:

It's been years since I studied Turner, but I think he would say that yes, a lot of performances in western societies involve the same set of stages he proposed for the study of ritual.  Aspects of liminality in typical western weddings - the father giving away the bride is a kind of symbolic separation from her family, the bride and groom not seeing each other prior to the wedding, the somewhat ridiculous manner of dress among the wedding party, etc. He'd have much more to say about this and probably more incisive examples.

Answer 2

Basically he says that there is a certian extents to how ritual is conducted in a society. I thinkk this is clearly structure as that is what society is built on.