Symbolic Forest: Miscellaneous Notes on the Endebu Ritual

Author: (British) Turner, written by Zhao Yuyan, Ouyang Min, Xu Hongfeng (Translated by)
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 2006-11-01
Features: This book is the representative work of Victor Turner, a renowned British anthropologist and a key figure in the symbolic ritual school. It is classified by academia as one of the most pioneering and influential ethnographic classics after World War II. The book primarily discusses various aspects of the rituals and symbolic meaning systems of the Ndembu people in Central Africa. In Turner's view, rituals serve as a means for the Ndembu to regulate their fundamental social conflicts and possess multiple social functions. The discussions in the book on the polysemy of symbols, the liminal phase of rites of passage, and the dynamic processes of rituals in social contexts have been widely cited as important literature in anthropology and numerous fields of the social sciences.