Liminality

Conceptual Overview

The term liminality originates from anthropology where it is used to describe the intermediate stage in rites of transition from one social status to another. The term liminal is derived from the Latin word for threshold, limen. The term liminal was originally used by the French anthropologist Arnold van Gennep in 1909 in his book Les rites de passage. The work of van Gennep was developed by another anthropologist, Victor Turner, to capture an in-between state or place, for example, the ritual of transition experienced by young people between adolescence and adulthood. Turner studied ritual processes by living with the Ndembu people in Africa from 1950 through 1954. For van Gennep, ritual progression consisted of a tripartite process: separation from the everyday flow of activities and one's social position, transition (liminality) whereby individuals are separated from their previous social group or position in an ambiguous state, and reaggregation or incorporation whereby individuals are accepted back into the social structure. Liminality can be a journey to status elevation, for example, for the novice in transition to competent practitioner, or it can go to status reversal. The transition phase characteristic of liminality could be shortlived or prolonged as, for example, in the case of either the institutionalization of liminality in monastic life or the marginal world of the artist.

The liminality of transition removes the rights of liminal individuals over others but at the same time frees them from structural obligations based on formal roles and status. Liminality can be conceptualized as both a phase and as a state, in that it is used to capture a time and place of withdrawal from conventional social action and interaction, allowing liminal persons the space to scrutinize the values and norms of the culture from which they are marginalized. For Turner, liminality could be applied to the betwixt and between [Page 822]states that for him characterized the culturally alternative lifestyles being embraced by some in the West during the 1960s and 1970s. Turner believed that societies needed the dialectic of moving between structure and liminality. Too much emphasis on social structure as the basis for organizing in society could lead to rebellion. Liminality was associated with communitas, whereby the focus was interpersonal connection and a heightened sense of community and equality between people freed from normal social life. However, too much communitas may lead to political reactionism and structural rigidity. So in this sense, liminality provided a balance in society against overemphasis on structure.

Liminality has been applied to a growing range of contexts. In health, Warner and Gabe note that liminality has been applied to the ambiguous states arising from medical conditions such as cancer or schizophrenia, whereby the threat posed by such conditions leads to a liminal state of disorientation and uncertainty. Liminality has also been applied to professions, for example, to social work, in which professionals mediate between public policy and the private worlds of family groups. Liminality has also been applied to place, for example, to the symbolic importance of the street as a liminal place associated with mental health service users who (in service terms) exist in a liminal place between hospital and community. In terms of the democratizing of space, Tambyah noted in 1996 that the Internet provides enacted liminality for its users, whereby interaction between individuals can be potentially more democratic when anonymous online users are stripped of status trappings, enabling them to be evaluated for their ideas rather than their status in society.

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