Liminality
Van Gennep and Turner on threshold states between social positions or identities.
Originally developed by Arnold van Gennep in his 1909 work on rites of passage and substantially extended by Victor Turner in the 1960s and 70s, liminality describes the threshold state in which participants in a transition have left their previous identity but not yet assumed a new one. Turner emphasized the structural ambiguity of the liminal phase, the suspension of ordinary social hierarchies, and the emergence of communitas — an unstructured equality among those undergoing transition together. The concept has expanded beyond ritual studies into organizational change, identity development, and analyses of disruption.
Core components
- Separation phase
- Liminal/threshold phase
- Reaggregation phase
- Communitas (unstructured solidarity in liminality)
- Anti-structure
- Liminoid (Turner's extension to non-ritual contexts)
Primary use case
Anthropological analysis of ritual and transition; studies of organizational change; identity development theory; analyses of crisis and disruption.
Common criticisms
- Western framing may not generalize to all cultural contexts
- over-extension to any transitional state risks emptying the concept
- communitas may be idealized
- structure/anti-structure distinction may be too binary.
Lineage
- Child of
- Rites of Passage
- Siblings
- Rites of Passage, Hero's Journey, Bridges' Transition Model
- Derived from
- Rites of Passage