Liminality and Communitas
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Abstract
The attributes of liminality or of liminal personae are necessarily ambiguous, since this condition and these persons elude or slip through the network of classifications that normally locate states and positions in cultural space. This chapter describes the Latin term “communitas” to “community,” to distinguish this modality of social relationship from an “area of common living.” The distinction between structure and communitas is not simply the familiar one between “secular” and “sacred,” or that, for example, between politics and religion. Certain fixed offices in tribal societies have many sacred attributes; indeed, every social position has some sacred characteristics. One brief example from the Ndembu of Zambia of a rite de passage that concerns the highest status in that tribe, that of the senior chief Kanongesha, will be useful. It will also expand our knowledge of the way the Ndembu utilize and explain their ritual symbols.
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