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Victor Turner
(28 May 1920 – 18 December 1983)
Victor Turner was a British cultural anthropologist best known for his work on symbols and rites of passage, and why people continue to perform these functions. Turner was also heavily involved with the concept of liminality and performance in theatre.
Born in Scotland to Violet and Norman Turner in 1920, Victor wanted to study poetry and classic literature at University College London. However, in 1941, Turner was drafted into WWII as a noncombatant and a conscientious objector (New World Encyclopedia). During the war, he met his future wife (and fellow scholar) Edith Lucy Brocklesby Davis, who was a “land girl” (meaning she worked in agriculture). In 1943, the two were married and had five children together. After the war, Turner returned to University College London where he completed his studies with distinction before moving on to graduate studies in anthropology at Manchester University. One of Turner's main focuses was the social hierarchy of the Ndembu tribe of Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) and it was the focus on his dissertation- of which he completed in 1955 (St. John). In 1958, after diving heavily into religious rites and rituals the world over, both Turner and his wife converted to Catholicism, which also impacted Turner and his wife's writings later in life, focusing on performance liminality, which are studies that he would be associated with today.
Turner passed away on December 18, 1983 at the age of 63 in Virginia. According to the Royal Anthropological Institute and the copy of Turner's obituary that exists on the site, “Pilgrimage and festival were his [Turner's] two strong later interests. How lucky he was to have written so fully on both. The particular blessing was to have followed an integrating train of thought all of his life and to have held to it joyfully. For all the hard work and serious thought, a joyous personality is the memory that Victor Turner leaves behind him” (“Victor Turner”).
