Victor and Edith Turner’s significant contributions to not only anthropology, but to sociology and other academic fields is beautifully demonstrated in this solid and eclectic collection of articles compiled by Frank Salamone and Marjorie Snipes. This unique anthology provides fascinating extensions of the Turners’ key concepts and insightful, first-hand accounts of their lives by former colleagues and family.

Marcus Aldredge, Iona College

This is a remarkable book. Following a brilliant introduction by James Peacock, placing the theoretical contributions of this volume in a broader theoretical framework of anthropological theory, past and present, in the US, UK, and France, each and every article moves the unique and rich contributions by the Turners forward rather than simply replicating them. The late Roy Wagner’s article will remain like a bright northern star, reminding us that liminality is energy, or, lightening after a storm. It is his last vintage piece, and an anthropological classic.

Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, University of Wisconsin

Nine anthropologists, including both elders and beginners in the field, reflect on some implications and applications of salient aspects of the work of two of the modern era’s most influential scholars.



Victor and Edith Turner successively represent more than a half century of innovative and bold re-thinking of ways to understand humanity. As James Peacock observes in his Introduction, this is far more than a standard festschrift. Through their own fieldwork and personal experience the contributors extend our understanding of structural inversion, ritual, symbols, liminality, communitas, reality, and other themes through which the Turners have re-shaped our field

Phillips Stevens, University at Buffalo, SUNY

This volume is a bouquet of welcome reflections on the intellectual thought of that dynamic duo in anthropology, Victor and Edith Turner, especially with regard to their contributions to thinking on liminality and communitas. This collection is no less a long-deserved homage to Edie, who here is at center stage with, for a change, Vic in a strong supporting role. In particular, Edie’s hands-on anthropology, her penetrating of sensory domains to touch the heartbeats of healing are profound.

Don Handelman, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem