Communitas ─ The Anthropology of Collective Joy

In this seminal work, Edith Turner extends the concept of communitas that Victor Turner developed nearly four decades ago.

Communitas is inspired fellowship, a group's unexpected joy in sharing common experiences, the sense felt by a group when their life together takes on full meaning. Turner shows how communitas is a driving force in history as it operates personally, in religion, in revolution, in all domains of human life. It is grounded in lived events, and may occur as the climax to a process that takes people from violence to shared intimate transcendence. Turner establishes by narration and multicultural case studies the fundamental importance of communitas to human personal, social, and spiritual well-being. She even follows the instinctive response that humanity makes to the overall natural world, thus including the spiritual bonding of the human and the non-human. Then the book shows exactly how we align ourselves to recognize communitas in action. This is—its 'key.' At heart, this is a very religious book, or as Turner writes, a connection among 'nature, spirit-energy, and soul.'

Edith Turner is a lecturer in Anthropology at the University of Virginia, specializing in the study of ritual, religion, and consciousness. She has been researching the field of symbol/ritual for nearly 60 years - formerly in collaboration with her husband, renowned anthropologist Victor Turner - and has conducted fieldwork in Zambia, Northern Alaska, rural Ireland, Central and South America, Europe, and Asia. She was editor in chief of the journal, Anthropology and Humanism, and is author of Heart of Lightness: The Life of an Anthropologist (2006), Among the Healers: Stories of Spiritual and Ritual Healing around the World (2005), and a contributor to Shamanism: A Reader (2003).