Communitas : The Anthropology of Collective Joy PDF

In this seminal work, Edith Turner extends the concept of communitas that Victor Turner developed nearly four decades ago.

Communitas is inspired fellowship, a group's unexpected joy in sharing common experiences, the sense felt by a group when their life together takes on full meaning.

Turner argues that communitas is a driving force in history as it operates personally, in religion, in revolution, in all domains of human life.

It is grounded in lived events and may be the result of a transgressive process that takes people from deadly violence to shared intimate transcendence.

Turner views events through the lens of communitas and establishes by narration and multicultural case studies its fundamental importance to human personal, social, and spiritual well-being.

The book even follows the instinctive response that humanity makes to the overall natural world, thus including the spiritual bonding of the human and the non-human.

At heart, this is a very religious book, or as Turner writes, a connection among "nature, spirit-energy, and soul."