Turner, Victor

Victor W. Turner (1920–1983) 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's formulations on the ontological value of ritual symbolism, “liminality,” and culture have had a lasting impact in anthropology and other disciplines. His “social drama” model offered a benchmark heuristic to elucidate universal social and cultural performances, from tribal to postindustrial cultures. Turner made a path beyond the Manchester School of Social Anthropology, modifying a structural-functionalist perspective in an abiding interest in universals in human performance and the fate of religion in postindustrial culture. His interventions on ritual symbolism and dramatic process continue to have an appeal among researchers of culture, performance, and religion.