The Rites of Passage
Book description
Folklorist Arnold van Gennep's masterwork, The Rites of Passage, has been a staple of anthropological education for more than a century. First published in French in 1909, and translated into English by the University of Chicago Press in 1960, this landmark book explores how the life of an individual in…
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Why read it?
1 author picked The Rites of Passage as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
The discovery that 'rituals of transition' in the lives of individuals—birth, puberty, marriage, childbirth, death—are structurally the same and analogous to a destabilizing "passage" through 'no man's land'—is an insight of genius.
My enduring 'affection' for ivory tower thinkers comes from having actually applied their ideas among a people in the New Guinea Highlands over a period of 15 years.
The methods of these early masters are sometimes faulty—"shreds and patches" of exotic beliefs and practices are grouped together, torn from their contexts in time and geography—but by trying to extend Charles…
From Gillian's list on the anthropology of myth and ritual.
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