In 1909 anthropologist
Arnold van Gennep introduced the concept of the "liminal period of ritual," a transition located between separation and reassimilation.
Anthropologist
Arnold van Gennep wrote that all humans experience 'life crises' (6) at the points of birth, puberty, marriage and death, and this denotes a process, in the words of academic Anna Backman Rogers, of 'becoming-other': 'the ritual subject goes through a period of instability in which he/she is subjected to various trials and his/her former self is effaced'.
Their discussion includes theories associated with the French journal L'Annee Sociologique, together with now classical works by
Arnold van Gennep (1908), Emile Durkheim (1912), Robert Hertz (1907) and others--all sharing the conviction that death, in addition to its biological, existential and psychological aspects, poses moral challenges to the community and that this requires a moral solution: the collective funeral.
Wilson is adept at diagnosing the problems with previous explanations: His own application of
Arnold van Gennep's theory of a "rite of passage" ignores the actual makeup of the ritual.
Arnold Van Gennep introduced the concept of liminality to mark the importance of people's metamorphosis.
The editors acknowledge the importance in the development of liminality of
Arnold Van Gennep and Victor Turner studies, who worked within the frame of cultural anthropology, but mention is also made of contemporary critics who are now finding new uses of liminality, such as Bjorn Thomassen.
Two classic anthropologists,
Arnold van Gennep and Victor Turner, have studied rites of passage and liminal experiences.
As the introductory essay highlights, these essays either accommodate or question the traditional views of rites of passage that were introduced by ethnographer
Arnold van Gennep in The Rites of Passage (Les rites de passage, 1909; translated 1960) and Victor Turner's anthropological study The Ritual Process (1969), which is based on van Gennep's work (ix).
En 1909, quand
Arnold van Gennep, le celebre ethnographe francais, publiait Les rites de passage, devenu depuis le livre de chevet de tous les ethnologues, il se penchait sur la description et l'analyse des rites, consideres comme essentiels pour le parcours de vie de l'homme.
Prescott and
Arnold van Gennep, but it gives a convincing explanation of the transitional existence of the people of Istria.
