Book Condition: Very Good with no DJ. Black Boards Gilt Title on Spine. First Edition. Slight tropical speckling to top Page Edge only, otherwise, clean, clear text in tightly bound volume. No internal inscriptions, markings or stains. Dimensions: 23.2 x 16.7 x 2.8 cm. Weight: 717 g. In this posthumous collection, Turner continues his quest for 'a liberated anthropology,' a cause helped in part by the recent postmodern consciousness." -- American Theatre. Victor W. Turner (b. 1920–d. 1983) was a symbolic anthropologist whose comparative investigations of ritual and cultural performance left a unique impression in the social and human sciences, and across the arts. Turner became a prolific contributor to the comparative anthropology of ritual, symbol, and performance and had a prodigious impact across a spectrum of disciplines, from anthropology, religious and theological studies, to cultural, literary, and performance studies, to folklore, literary criticism, and neurosociology. As found in key monographs and numerous essays, his influential formulations on the ontological value of ritual symbolism, “liminality,” and culture were shaped by a lifelong passion for poetry, the classics, and stage drama. While Turner made a path beyond the Manchester School and Neo-Marxist analysis, he modified a structural-functionalist perspective in an abiding interest in universals in human performance and the fate of religion in postindustrial culture. A departure from social structure toward meaning coincided with a move to the United States, where Turner accepted an appointment as Professor of Anthropology and Chairman of the Committee on African Studies at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York (1964–1968), holding professorships in anthropology in the United States thereafter. It was during his life in the United States that Turner cut his teeth as an iconoclastic essayist and skillful orator ranging widely across disciplines. While Turner’s ethnographic career began in Africa formulating his “social drama” model, subsequent investigations included Christian pilgrimage in Mexico and Ireland (as a practicing Catholic), Japanese literary and performative genres, New York’s experimental Off-Off Broadway theater workshops, and the Carnaval in Rio. These and many other postindustrial performance genres or “cultural dramas” were understood via his “processual analysis,” which became integral to the formation of Performance Studies. While attracting controversy for expressing universalisms and his theological position, Turner’s ideas have retained appeal in the study of contemporary cultural performance. There are no book-length biographies on Turner, presumably, in part, because his endeavor was uniquely interdisciplinary, anti-systematic, and perplexing—even mystical. A fatal heart attack on 18 December 1983 cut short a very productive scholarly life, but at least we have his books.
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