The Intellectual Legacy of Victor and Edith Turner

(Hardback)

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In 2016, Edith Turner passed away. She left behind an intellectual legacy that, together with her husband, Victor Turner, transformed modern anthropology. This edited collection focuses on Victor and Edith Turners significant theoretical contributions, including their work on communitas, liminality, pilgrimage, friendship, fieldwork, self-reflection, affective culture, religion, spirits, and faith. This collection includes retrospectives on the personal lives of Edith and Victor, as provided by their son; a close look at Ediths work on last rites, for which she studied and contemplated her own demise; an examination of Ediths faith and belief system in light of her personal research interests; and contemporary applications of the Turnerss theories in relation to modern social processes. Contributors touch on a variety of topics, including current political upheavals and inversions, the values of friendship and bonding, the importance of music as affective culture, jazz as a pilgrimage, and deeper theoretical issues surrounding the concept of liminality. This work illustrates the Turners enduring theoretical and affective contributions and emphasizes the great importance they placed on studying and understanding what it means to be human. We continue to learn from their example.

Reviews

Victor and Edith Turners significant contributions to not only anthropology, but to sociology and other academic fields is beautifully demonstrated in this solid and eclectic collection of articles compiled by Frank Salamone and Marjorie Snipes. This unique anthology provides fascinating extensions of the Turners key concepts and insightful, first-hand accounts of their lives by former colleagues and family. -- Marcus Aldredge, Iona College
This is a remarkable book. Following a brilliant introduction by James Peacock, placing the theoretical contributions of this volume in a broader theoretical framework of anthropological theory, past and present, in the US, UK, and France, each and every article moves the unique and rich contributions by the Turners forward rather than simply replicating them. The late Roy Wagners article will remain like a bright northern star, reminding us that liminality is energy, or, lightening after a storm. It is his last vintage piece, and an anthropological classic. -- Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, University of Wisconsin
Nine anthropologists, including both elders and beginners in the field, reflect on some implications and applications of salient aspects of the work of two of the modern eras most influential scholars. Victor and Edith Turner successively represent more than a half century of innovative and bold re-thinking of ways to understand humanity. As James Peacock observes in his Introduction, this is far more than a standard festschrift. Through their own fieldwork and personal experience the contributors extend our understanding of structural inversion, ritual, symbols, liminality, communitas, reality, and other themes through which the Turners have re-shaped our field -- Phillips Stevens, University at Buffalo, SUNY
This volume is a bouquet of welcome reflections on the intellectual thought of that dynamic duo in anthropology, Victor and Edith Turner, especially with regard to their contributions to thinking on liminality and communitas. This collection is no less a long-deserved homage to Edie, who here is at center stage with, for a change, Vic in a strong supporting role. In particular, Edies hands-on anthropology, her penetrating of sensory domains to touch the heartbeats of healing are profound. -- Don Handelman, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Author Bio

Frank A. Salamone is professor emeritus of sociology and anthropology at Iona College and advanced facilitator at the University of Phoenix. Dr. Marjorie M. Snipes is professor of anthropology at the University of West Georgia.