History of Rites of Passage

In the early 1900s, cultural anthropologist Arnold von Gennep (1909) was exploring how other cultures honored and marked initiatory rites. Noticing a commonality in the overall form, particularly the typical three phases of severance, threshold, and incorporation, Gennep created the now common place phase of rites of passage. The acknowledgement of such a structure–-particularly with the pre-, liminal, and post-liminal phases–-revolutionized anthropology and brought about a concrete shift in post-Enlightenment thinking (of the Western educated, Western civilized) people in which the derogatory and belittling views of indigenous people (i.e., as simple, primitive) began to unwind. This critical work became the foundational moment for multiple scholars after.

By mid-century, other anthropologists were exploring the effects of such passages. In a seminal work by Turner (1969), he unpacked what he termed the communitas that such works engendered both for the individual and for the community. In this, the idea that these ways of knowing and connecting were not simple but rather a kind of ancient human technology–-an original sociological/psychological skill for living with and close to the earth/land. Turner is perhaps know best for his concept that such rites dismantle and open a different cultural/social energy, in which the typical roles are 'betwixt and between' those in everyday life.

Lincoln (1981) and then Bynum (1986) later corrected a significant male bias from Genneps (and Turner's) work, and expanded the understanding of rites of passage in regard to female initiatory rites. In this updated, empirically-driven scholarship, female rites were seen with three phases: enclosure, transformation, and emergence.

What these feminist authors articulated was to acknowledge the very different social and cultural aspect of rites of passage between genders. Whereas male rites of passage often had to do with moving between roles, with physically demanding ordeals, female rites were often centered on biological transformation (i.e., menarche) and ensuing psychoemotional continuity, and honored the significance of the life-giving powers of the female as she shifted from adolescent to adult.

References

Bynum, C. W. (1986). Women's stories, women's symbols: A critique of Victor Turner's theory of liminality. In F. E. Reynolds & S. L. Burkhalter (Eds.), Anthropology and the study of religion (pp. 105–125). Center for the Scientific Study of Religion.

Lincoln, B. (1981). Emerging from the chrysalis: Studies in rituals of women's initiation. Harvard University Press.

Turner, V. (1969). The ritual process: Structure and anti-structure. Aldine Publishing

Van Gennep, A. (1960). The rites of passage (M. B. Vizedom & G. L. Caffee, Trans.). University of Chicago Press. (Original work published 1909)