Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors: Symbolic Action in Human Society (Symbol, Myth, & Ritual)

By Victor Turner

Book Overview

In this book, Victor Turner is concerned with various kinds of social actions and how they relate to, and come to acquire meaning through, metaphors and paradigms in their actors' minds; how in certain circumstances new forms, new metaphors, new paradigms are generated. To describe and clarify these processes, he ranges widely in history and geography: from ancient society through the medieval period to modern revolutions, and over India, Africa, Europe, China, and Meso-America. Two chapters, which illustrate religious paradigms and political action, explore in detail the confrontation between Henry II and Thomas Becket and between Hidalgo, the Mexican liberator, and his former friends. Other essays deal with long-term religious processes, such as the Christian pilgrimage in Europe and the emergence of anti-caste movements in India. Finally, he directs his attention to other social phenomena such as transitional and marginal groups, hippies, and dissident religious sects, showing that in the very process of dying they give rise to new forms of social structure or revitalized versions of the old order.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0801491517
• ISBN13: 9780801491511
• Release Date: October 1975
• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Length: 312 Pages
• Weight: 0.82 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.5" x 8.2"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Dramas, Fields and Metaphors

One of more important anthropologists from twenty century. Turner look for understood the "ritual" in its much perspectives. This book have a series of articles referring to this theme.

Masterful Essays in Symbolic Anthropology

The role of culture in human societies is explored through a combination of empirical research and the nimble mind and imaginative powers of the late Victor Turner. This collection will prove especially useful to students of comparative religion, social/cultural anthropology, literature, performance, and the visual arts. Turner's essays are far from dry. They thrill with their ability to combine close observations of the "exotic" beliefs of non-Western peoples and cutting edge insights into more familiar cultural dimensions of everyday life in western Europe and the United States.