Victor Turner and Contemporary Cultural Performance

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.

“"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”

“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

Graham St John is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Dept of Social Sciences, University of Fribourg, Switzerland, and an Adjunct Research Fellow in the Griffith Centre for Cultural Research, Griffith University, Australia. He is Executive Editor of Dancecult: Journal of Electronic Dance Music Culture and is author of Weekend Societies: Electronic Dance Music Festivals and Event-Cultures (Bloomsbury 2017), Mystery School in Hyperspace: A Cultural History of DMT (North Atlantic Books, 2015), Global Tribe: Technology, Spirituality and Psytrance (Equinox, 2012) and Technomad: Global Raving Countercultures (Equinox, 2009).

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.

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