I first came across the term 'liminal' many years ago in the book 'The Missionary Congregation, Leadership, and Liminality' (1997) by the missiologist Alan Roxburgh.
It was a good read and still worthwhile. When I engaged in further studies it was a word that appeared now and then. During my PhD studies in the first stab at what I was going to do (about 2003) the concept was going to figure quite centrally but then got dropped. Actually, I remember, vaguely attending an academic conference where I heard someone mutter that if they heard the term used again they were going to scream! Oh it was popular and not.
More recently it has reemerged into the 'evangelical' and 'missional' discourse through the work of Frost and Hirsch along with the attendant concept of 'communitas' e.g. 'The Faith of Leap'.
Basically taken together people like to talk about us living and carrying out mission in a 'liminal' period. At times some of the comments read a bit 'derivative' that is people quoting people with respect to the concept but not wrestling with the concept. That is okay and I am no expert but (having rediscovered my notes in a clear out) I am happy to share some of my ignorance and lots of my opinions in a few posts. In this I just introduce the idea a bit...
The concept of 'liminality' is generally associated with the work of Scots born anthropologist Victor Turner (1920-1983).
In developing his category of the liminal Turner acknowledged his dependence upon the earlier work of anthropologist Arnold Van Gennep.[1] Van Gennep in his work had explored in ‘simpler’ societies what he described as ‘rites of passage’, that is ‘the ceremonial patterns, which accompany a passage from one situation to another or from one cosmic or social world to another’.[2] These rites he argued could then be broken down into ‘rites of separation, transition rites, and rites of incorporation’.[3] Van Gennep classified these rites as ‘pre-liminal’, ‘liminal’ and ‘post-liminal’ respectively.[4]
In developing van Gennep’s work Turner was particularly interested in the transitional, ‘threshold’, ‘margin’, liminal period.[5] For Turner this ‘betwixt and between’ period is one when participants, ‘threshold people’, enter a period of ambiguity.[6] In such a period they experience community or better ‘communitas’ with the other participants.[7] Such an experience of liminality frees the participants from the normative controlling structures of society where status and institutional arrangements dominate.[8] As a marginal place, from a structural standpoint, liminality is a ‘dialectic’ place that has to contend with existing structures but is yet a place where they are challenged.[9] Accordingly it is a place of potentiality.[10] Acknowledged in his earlier writings Turner developed the notion of the potentiality and creative nature of ‘anti-structural’ liminality in his later work.[11]
While Turner’s anthropological studies were done among societies radically different from the West it can be argued that periods of social change and upheaval made his work appealing because of the parallels that could be drawn from the rituals in these societies and socio-political upheaval in the West.[12]
[1] Turner, ‘Liminality and Communitas’, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure, by Victor Turner (New York: Aldine De Gruyter, 1995=1969), p. 94.
[2] Arnold van Gennep, The Rites of Passage, trans. by Monika B. Vizedom and Gabrielle L. Caffee (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960=1908), p. 10, italics van Gennep.
[3] Van Gennep, Rites, p. 11, italics van Gennep.
[4] Van Gennep, Rites, p. 11.
[5] Turner, ‘Liminality and Communitas’, p. 94.
[6] Turner, ‘Liminality and Communitas’, p. 95.
[7] Turner, ‘Liminality and Communitas’, p. 97, italics Turner.
[8] Turner, ‘Liminality and Communitas’, pp. 96-97.
[9] Turner, ‘Liminality and Communitas’, p. 129.
[10] Turner, ‘Liminality and Communitas’, pp. 127-128.
[11] Turner, ‘Liminal to Liminoid, in Play, Flow, and Ritual: An Essay in Comparative Symbology’, From Ritual, pp. 44-48.
[12] Abrahams, ‘Foreword’, Ritual Process, p. viii.
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