The Anthropology of Experience

Victor Turner was born in Scotland and educated in England. He began his career as a research officer with the Rhodes-Livingstone Institute in northern Rhodesia. Best known for his ethnographic studies of ritual and social process among the Ndembu, Turner also produced significant theoretical insights about rites of passage, the psychology of healing, conflict management, the importance of drama and play, and the theory of symbolic interpretation. He spent much of his career at universities in the United States and was among the leading figures in the turn to symbolic interpretation that marked American anthropology during the 1960s and 1970s.