In my thesis, I aim to show that a focus on liminality in contemporary Scottish fictional texts illustrates underlying developments of relevant social phenomena with regard to class issues, gender and sexual identity. The anthropological concept of liminality looks at a situation of “being between”. The liminar faces a situation of having to renegotiate their values and perceptions in order to proceed. Liminality always involves the existence of limits which have to be transgressed and against which the individual negotiates a personal situation. I further hypothesise that the transgression of limits can be seen as an instrument to create order. I take an anthropological approach to my thesis. Arnold van Gennep’s early studies on rites of passage and Victor Turner’s study of liminality originate in the observation of tribe-internal, social structures of personal development. Van Gennep assumes a tripartite structure among which liminality is the middle stage, the phase in which the initiand has to perform tasks to re-enter and become part of the community. Turner isolates the middle stage and transfers this concept to western societies. This theory is taken up and developed further by several literary critics and anthropologists. While the transgression of limits is often regarded as a violation of those norms which regulate societies, the transgression of limits in a rite of passage and connected with liminality is a vital aspect and socially necessary. Several concepts are related to this theory, which will play a major role in my thesis: Turner’s permanent liminality, Mikhail Bakhtin’s carnivalesque as well as Foucault’s transgression. In the first chapter, I contrast two of Alasdair Gray’s novels, stating that the most powerful message of social and capitalist criticism is not just visible on the surface of the hyperbolic texts, but particularly prominent in liminal passages. The theories of Bakhtin and Turner plays the most important role in this chapter. In the second chapter, A. L. Kennedy’s novels are contrasted. In So I am Glad a difficult psycho-social issue is solved by a liminal trigger-figure, Paradise is an example of the destructive and restrictive effects of permanent liminality. In chapter three, I deal with the issue of passing and an individual redefinition of gender identity. The performativity of masculinity reveals ambiguous definitions of gender and morale. The Wasp Factory portrays a form of masculinity which has destructive effects on the individual and its environment. It is the tension in the liminal situation of a gender myth, a brutally performed masculinity and the character’s biological sex which expresses a harsh criticism of society’s definition of masculinity. In Trumpet, the binary model of gender is questioned. The text suggests a different definition of identity as fluid, passing between the two ‘extremes’, formulating the possibility of a state of being ‘something in-between’. It is the confrontation with this ‘otherness’ which provokes a wave of rejection and protest in the environment of the individual passing as a member of the ‘other sex’. In this case, it is not the obvious liminal individual, but his son who undergoes a process of change and thus a process of renegotiating his strict value system. The final chapter deals with liminal spaces and how these reflect and support the internal development which the protagonists undergo. The choice of Orkney as a mystical place and the fictional setting in a war game show that liminal spaces – both real and fictitious – trigger a personal development and reconnect present day life in Scotland with historical events which have had a shaping role for Scottish and European life.

This is a study about young people’s understanding and experiences of interrail. The aim is to explore young people’s views of interrail and train travel in Europe and how traveling with train through interrail changes young people’s views of themselves and the world around them. Interrail is a train ticket that gives the ticketholder the ability to travel through 33 countries using over 40 different train and ferry companies. Founded in 1972 to give young Europeans the means to travel and explore their continent, today interrail is an established travel form for young people all over Europe. Through interviews of four young people currently living in Sweden I aim to understand the reasoning behind young people’s interest in interrail and train travel, how and what sort of communities that form throughout the trip, and in what ways the trip and the experiences of the trip influence the travelers lives once they return home. The analysis is primarily made from a phenomenological viewpoint, told from Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s view of phenomenology, as well as Victor Turner’s views on liminality. Throughout the study I argue that the interrail trip can be interpreted as a liminal phase between childhood and adulthood. Identity and cosmopolitism are also discussed using Nira Yuval-Davis’ terms on the subject.

The aim of this diploma thesis is to map the form and development of funeral customs in the southern part of the Roman Catholic parish Český Dub - in the collature of the church of St. Jakub Major in Letařovice from the middle of the 19th century to the second half of the 20th century. The focus is on the local village community, its experience of the death of its own member and the form of the funeral rite, which allowed the deceased to pass from the world of the living to the world of the dead. The work analyzes funeral rituals and their development through the prism of the theory of rites of passage, specifically through the perspective of Victor Turner and the analysis of the liminal phase. It also shows the reason for ritual behavior and its performative parts. The work reflects the modernization and secularization of society and tries to reveal their influence on the rituality of burials in Letařovice. It analyzes with bureaucratization and sanitation of funeral homes. The first part of this diploma thesis presents the development of burial in the Czech lands and regional historical context. Furthermore, the traditional rural funeral in the Letařovice cemetery, its spiritual and secular part, is depicted and analyzed, as it looked for the entire period - farewell in the mourning house,...

Syftet med denna uppsats är att undersöka konsumism med hjälp av religionsvetenskapliga teorier om ritual och myt. Med hjälp av framförallt Victor Turners ritualteori och Bruce Lincolns mytteori studerar vi exempelfallen Harley Davidson, Saab, Coca-Cola, Corona, Mountain Dew och Snapple samt hur köpcentra och stormarknader kan fungera som rituellt rum.Med konsumism menar vi konsumtion som en kulturellt viktig handling. Ett fenomen som uppstår när vi har så pass mycket materiella tillgångar att vi har möjlighet att köpa saker för att vi vill ha dem, inte för att vi behöver dem. För vårt religionsvetenskapliga grundperspektiv använder vi oss av Clifford Geertz religionsdefinition.Vi har visat att reklamer kan studeras utifrån ett religionsvetenskapligt perspektiv, då framförallt som myter. Med hjälp av en strukturalistisk analysmetod kan vi påvisa att exempelvis Coca-Colas underliggande mytem är en myt vänskap, där den rituella handlingen av att ge en Coca-Cola till någon mytiskt skapar en slags samhörighet och vänskap. Corona har å sin sida skapat sig en rituell och mytisk ö på vilken deras reklamer fungerar. Vi kan se hur Mountain Dew och Snapple använder sig av en slags minimal offentlig religion för att skapa sina egna märken som kulturellt betydelsefulla symboler.Vi diskuterar även vad som händer med våra religionsvetenskapliga begrepp när vi applicerar dem på ett material som vanligtvis inte betraktas som religionsvetenskapligt, och menar att det finns en intressant korsbefruktning mellan olika kulturvetenskapliga områden.

In this essay I refer Eilis Ni Dhuibhne’s narrative construction of the main characters and the theme of the novel The Dancers Dancing, in the context of the anthropologist Victor Turner’s concept of liminality. Thus the summer in the Gaeltacht that five teenage girls experience, can be understood as a depiction of the liminal phase in a rite of passage. Ni Dhuibhne’s differently constructed characters enlighten different aspects of liminality and through the céilí dance their experiences are exposed. Furthermore this essay suggests that Julia Kristeva’s notion of the chora, which can be associated to dance, is also relevant when describing the unbounded and unlimited process that radically can reform social structures. I conclude that the liminal space offers an area of many possibilities. It functions as a free zone where the main characters can freely explore their personal issues that trouble them, or the difficulties of their own society.

<p>This essay describes the phases of funeral rituals between the Syrian/Assyrian, and compares the homeland with Sweden. It describes the stage of rituals according to Victor Turner schema of separation, margin or limin, and aggregation. The rituals religious significance agrees with Clifford Geertz’s theory about the importance of religious beliefs for the human being</p>

This essay describes the phases of funeral rituals between the Syrian/Assyrian, and compares the homeland with Sweden. It describes the stage of rituals according to Victor Turner schema of separation, margin or limin, and aggregation. The rituals religious significance agrees with Clifford Geertz’s theory about the importance of religious beliefs for the human being

In the United States, Christmastime has become a time of tension between the holy ideals of family togetherness, childhood innocence, and goodwill towards men and commercial idolatry. Christ and Santa Claus are pitted against each other in the war on Christmas between religion and secularism instead of feasting together on ham and figgy pudding in the traditional fashion. While many would agree that the everyday realities of the Christmas season do not often live up to the ideals imposed upon the holiday, few are able to tell why this is so or even trace the roots of their discontent. In an exploration of the unique anomaly of the hierosecular American Christmas, I propose that the unique systems of Christmas belief extend beyond the usual boundaries of sacred and secular to create a complex web of different beliefs that are performed together to create the unique feeling of Christmas. From a performance theory perspective, I use performance as both traditionally theatrical and as a paradigm for understanding and expressing belief in an effort to explore the essential but elusively defined cultural signifiers of the American Christmas. Through a series of case studies focusing on various traditions of Christmas performance, I apply the performance theories of Diana Taylor, Patrice Pavis, Victor Turner and others to such Christmas staples as Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol and Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker. In doing so, I propose different points for viewing Christmas and introducing new points of inquiry for questioning the meaning of Christmas, belief, and performance

Utifrån sex intervjuer med kolloledare, som uppsatsen baseras på, framkommer att en tydlig skiljelinje görs mellan kollo och livet utanför. Kollo beskrivs som en särskild och annorlunda värld. För intervjupersonerna innebär arbetet på kollo att separeras från sin vanliga kontext för att istället bli del av ett nytt och relativt slutet sammanhang. Genom att bland annat tillämpa Michel Foucaults idéer om heterotopier och antropologen Victor Turners tankar om liminalitet och communitas skapas förståelse för hur kollo som rum inverkar på ledarnas villkor, förutsättningar, handlingsmöjligheter, relationer, tankar, sinnesstämningar och kroppsuppfattningar. Uppsatsens övergripande intresseområde är rum, sammanhang och varande som erfars och konstrueras som något utöver det vanliga och vardagliga. / <p>Uppsatsventilering ägde rum den 13-01-2023 på Stockholms universitet. </p>

Buddhist prison outreach is a relatively recent development, in the United States of America and elsewhere, and has yet to be chronicled satisfactorily. This thesis traces the physical, legal and social environment in which such activities take place and describes the history of Buddhist prison outreach in the USA from its earliest indications in the 1960s to the present day. The mechanics of Buddhist prison outreach are also examined. Motivations for participating in Buddhist prison outreach are discussed, including Buddhist textual supports, role models and personal benefits. This paper then proposes that volunteers active in this area are members of a liminal communitas as per Victor Turner and benefit from ‘non-player’ status, as defined by Ashis Nandy. The experiences of the inmates themselves is beyond the scope of this thesis. / Religious Studies and Arabic / M.A. (Religious Studies)