Abstract

Upon the 25th anniversary of his passing, this collection addresses the wide application of Victor Turner’s thought to cultural performance in the early 21st century. From anthropology, sociology, and religious studies to performance, cultural, and media studies, Turner’s ideas have had a prodigious interdisciplinary impact. Examining his relevance in studies of performance and popular culture, media, and religion, along with the role of Edith Turner in the Turnerian project, contributors explore how these ideas have been re-engaged, renovated, and repurposed in studies of contemporary cultural performance.

Graham St John is a Research Associate at the Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies at the University of Queensland and recent Resident Scholar at the School for Advanced Research, Santa Fe, New Mexico. Graham has published widely in the fields of anthropology, cultural, youth, and religious studies. He edited Rave Culture and Religion (Routledge, 2004), and authored Global Trance Culture: Religion, Technology and Psytrance (Blackwell, forthcoming).

“This collection of writings dedicated to the Turners may sometimes contest the validity and morality of 'feelings and desires', but St John gives these elusive possibilities an enduring stage for becoming. Could the volume be conceived as an academic fissure inciting change?”  ·  Australasian Drama Studies

“An impressive selection of analyses conducted through diverse disciplinary lenses (including media and communication, sociology, religion, and anthropology) explicates the need for a revival of Turner's multifaceted theory.”  ·  The Canadian Review of Sociology

“This volume is a wonderful exercise in rethinking Turner through the lens of our increasingly digitalized and mediatized world. . . . The introduction by St John alone is worth the price of the book. Dense with the jargon of scholarship, freshly minted phrases, theoretical labels, and esoteric framings, as it need be to describe the work of Turner, who made a prodigious impact across a spectrum of disciplines."  ·  JRAI