Foundational scholars

Mary Douglas (1996)

• Pollution beliefs are systems for organising reality

• Dirt is matter out of place and only exists in relation to classification systems

Douglas - purpose of ritual

• Rituals of Purity impose order on the world and symbolise social boundaries like pure/impure or male/female

• ideas of pollution represent a need to classify/make sense of the world

Van Gennep → 3 stage model of rites of passage

• Provides Foundation for Turner

1. Separation (detached from previous life)

2. Margin (passes through a liminal threshold)

3. Aggregation (reincorporated into society in a new state)

Turner (1967)

• Initiates in ritual occupy a liminal space of structural invisibility

• They fall outside normal ordering categories - metaphors tend to draw on either death/pollution or gestation/new birth

Communitas

• When stripped of rank initiates relate to each other in an egalitarian manner

• This is necessary to regenerate social bonds that hierarchy puts a strain on

Sacra

•  Central function of the liminal period is the transmission of sacred knowledge

• The sacred objects shown to initiates are often deliberately monstrous or exaggerated to reinforce the basic categories of their culture they had taken for granted