Hubbry Logo
CommunitasCommunitasMain
Open search
Communitas
Community hub
Communitas
logo
8 pages, 0 posts
0 subscribers
Be the first to start a discussion here.
Be the first to start a discussion here.
Contribute something
Communitas
Communitas
Communitas
View on Wikipedia
from Wikipedia
Initiation at the Villa of Mysteries, Pompeii, a rite of passage expressing communitas

Communitas is a Latin noun commonly referring either to an unstructured community in which people are equal, or to the very spirit of community. It also has special significance as a loanword in cultural anthropology and the social sciences. Victor Turner, who defined the anthropological usage of communitas, was interested in the interplay between what he called social 'structure' and 'antistructure'; Liminality and Communitas are both components of antistructure.[1]

Communitas refers to an unstructured state in which all members of a community are equal allowing them to share a common experience, usually through a rite of passage. Communitas is characteristic of people experiencing liminality together. This term is used to distinguish the modality of social relationship from an area of common living. There is more than one distinction between structure and communitas. The most familiar is the difference of secular and sacred. Every social position has something sacred about it. This sacred component is acquired during rites of passages, through the changing of positions. Part of this sacredness is achieved through the transient humility learned in these phases, this allows people to reach a higher position.

Victor and Edith Turner

[edit]

Communitas is an acute point of community.[further explanation needed] It takes community to the next level and allows the whole of the community to share a common experience, usually through a rite of passage. This brings everyone onto an equal level: even if you are higher in position, you have been lower and you know what that is.

Turner (1969, Pg.132; see also [2]) distinguishes between:

  • existential or spontaneous communitas, the transient personal experience of togetherness; e.g. that which occurs during a counter-culture happening.
  • normative communitas, which occurs as communitas is transformed from its existential state to being organized into a permanent social system due to the need for social control.
  • ideological communitas, which can be applied to many utopian social models.

Communitas as a concept used by Victor Turner in his study of ritual has been criticized by anthropologists such as John Eade and Michael J. Sallnow's book Contesting the Sacred (1991).

At the heart of Turner’s theory is the notion that communitas involves a connection to the sacred, elicits powerful emotional experiences, and plays a key role in revitalizing social bonds and energies. In this sense, Turner’s work is closely linked to Durkheim’s The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. Although Turner does not directly reference Durkheim’s seminal work in The Ritual Process, it is clear that Durkheim's ideas on collective effervescence form a fundamental part of Turner’s argument. For instance, Turner states:

“Spontaneous communitas is richly charged with affects, mainly pleasurable ones. Life in "structure" is filled with objective difficulties... Spontaneous communitas has something magical about it. Subjectively there is in it the feeling of endless power... Structural action swiftly becomes arid and mechanical if those involved in it are not periodically immersed in the regenerative abyss of communitas.”[3]

Edith Turner, Victor's widow and anthropologist in her own right, published in 2011[4] a definitive overview of the anthropology of communitas, outlining the concept in relation to the natural history of joy, including the nature of human experience and its narration, festivals, music and sports, work, disaster, the sacred, revolution and nonviolence, nature and spirit, and ritual and rites of passage.

Paul and Percival Goodman

[edit]
Main article: Communitas (book)

Communitas is also the title of a book published in 1947 by the 20th-century American thinker and writer Paul Goodman and his brother, Percival Goodman. Their book examines three kinds of possible societies: a society centered on consumption, a society centered on artistic and creative pursuits, and a society which maximizes human liberty. The Goodmans emphasize freedom from both coercion by a government or church and from human necessities by providing these free of cost to all citizens who do a couple of years of conscripted labor as young adults.

Roberto Esposito

[edit]

In 1998, Italian philosopher Roberto Esposito published a book under the name Communitas challenging the traditional understanding of this concept. It was translated in English in 2010 by Timothy Campbell. In this book, Esposito offers a very different interpretation of the concept of communitas based on a thorough etymological analysis of the word: "Community isn't a property, nor is it a territory to be separated and defended against those who do not belong to it. Rather, it is a void, a debt, a gift to the other that also reminds us of our constitutive alterity with respect to ourselves."[5] He goes on with his "deconstruction" of the concept of communitas:

"From here it emerges that communitas is the totality of persons united not by a "property" but precisely by an obligation or a debt; not by an "addition" but by a "subtraction": by a lack, a limit that is configured as an onus, or even as a defective modality for him who is "affected", unlike for him who is instead "exempt" or "exempted". Here we find the final and most characteristic of the oppositions associated with (or that dominate) the alternative between public and private, those in other words that contrast communitas to immunitas. If communis is he who is required to carry out the functions of an office ― or to the donation of a grace ― on the contrary, he is called immune who has to perform no office, and for that reason he remains ungrateful. He can completely preserve his own position through a vacatio muneris. Whereas the communitas is bound by the sacrifice of the compensatio, the immunitas implies the beneficiary of the dispensatio."[6]

"Therefore the community cannot be thought of as a body, as a corporation in which individuals are founded in a larger individual. Neither is community to be interpreted as a mutual, intersubjective "recognition" in which individuals are reflected in each other so as to confirm their initial identity; as a collective bond that comes at a certain point to connect individuals that before were separate. The community isn't a mode of being, much less a "making" of the individual subject. It isn't the subject's expansion or multiplication but its exposure to what interrupts the closing and turns it inside out: a dizziness, a syncope, a spasm in the continuity of the subject."[7]

Rethinking Community

[edit]

Roberto Esposito’s Communitas represents just one contribution in a larger debate about the meaning of community, which centered around the question of the “European Community.” A series of philosophers questioned whether the closed, exclusionary, and identitarian models of community found in the traditions of Communitarianism in Anglo-American philosophy and Classical Social Theory, were suitable for our globalized world. Instead of abandoning the desire to belong in a community, each philosopher attempts to reconceptualize community in an open and inclusive manner. Jean-Luc Nancy is credited with starting this debate with his book The Inoperative Community,[8] followed by Maurice Blanchot’s The Unavowable Community,[9] Giorgio Agamben’s The Coming Community,[10] and Roberto Esposito’s Communitas.[11] Jean-Luc Nancy revised his theory of community in Being Singular Plural, and he delivered a series of reflections on the terms and motifs of this debate in The Disavowed Community.[12]

Greg Bird provides an overview of this debate in Containing Community.[13] Rémi Astruc, a French scholar, also covers this debate in his essay "Nous? L'aspiration à la Communauté et les arts."[14] On the American side, see The Community of Those Who Have Nothing in Common by Alphonso Lingis and Miranda Joseph’s Against the Romance of Community.[15] For Christian perspectives, see Taylor Weaver's The Scandal of Community,[16] and Alan Hirsch’s The Forgotten Ways.[17]

References

[edit]

Further reading

[edit]
Revisions and contributorsEdit on WikipediaRead on Wikipedia

Communitas

View on Grokipedia
from Grokipedia
![Roman fresco depicting ritual scene from Villa dei Misteri, Pompeii][float-right] Communitas is an anthropological concept coined by in his 1969 work The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure, denoting the unstructured, egalitarian sense of solidarity and belonging that arises among individuals during liminal phases of s, where conventional social hierarchies and roles are suspended to foster intense communal bonds. Turner, drawing from ethnographic observations, distinguished communitas from "structure"—the organized, hierarchical aspects of society—positing it as an anti-structural phenomenon that emerges in transitional "betwixt and between" states, such as initiations or pilgrimages, enabling participants to experience humanity in its raw, undifferentiated form. This idea has influenced analyses of dynamics across cultures, from tribal ceremonies to modern festivals and voluntary associations, highlighting how temporary equality can generate transformative social insights, though subsequent scholarship critiques Turner's framework for underemphasizing enduring power asymmetries and for applications that dilute its original emphasis on genuine, existential rupture from norms.

Definition and Core Concepts

Liminality and the Distinction from Structure

Liminality constitutes the intermediary phase of rites of passage, characterized by a suspension of normative social statuses and roles, wherein participants exist in a state "betwixt and between" prior and subsequent structured conditions. This concept, elaborated by in his analysis of Ndembu rituals in during the 1950s and 1960s, draws from Arnold van Gennep's earlier tripartite model of separation, transition, and incorporation, but emphasizes the transformative potential of the transitional "limen" or threshold. In liminal contexts, such as initiation ceremonies documented among the Ndembu, neophytes undergo symbolic degradation—stripped of insignia of rank or —fostering a temporary that dissolves hierarchical distinctions. The distinction from lies in 's role as "anti-structure," a deliberate inversion of the ordered social fabric that prevails in separation and reincorporation phases. encompasses the differentiated, positional order of everyday society, reinforced by rituals that maintain jural-political and economic hierarchies, as observed in Turner's fieldwork where pre- and post-liminal stages upheld Ndembu chieftaincy and lineage systems. Conversely, generates undifferentiated unity, termed communitas, through shared ordeal and symbolic , enabling direct interpersonal bonds unmediated by status. This anti-structural interlude, often marked by humility, obscenity, or ordeal (e.g., Ndembu boys' seclusion and trials in the ), serves to critique and revitalize upon reaggregation, preventing societal stagnation. Empirical evidence from Turner's studies underscores this binary: in structured phases, authority figures like chiefs dictate proceedings, whereas liminal episodes evoke spontaneous fellowship, as when initiates collectively navigate ambiguity without recourse to rank. Turner posited that prolonged risks ideological communitas—idealized equality without reincorporation—but in cycles, it cyclically alternates with to sustain social viability. This dynamic, grounded in ethnographic data from Central African societies, highlights not as mere transition but as a generative force for communitas, distinct from the regulatory imperatives of .

Characteristics of Communitas

Communitas manifests as an unstructured or minimally structured social bond among individuals, typically during liminal transitions, where conventional hierarchies and statuses are suspended, giving rise to equality and . , in his 1969 analysis, emphasized its emergence in the threshold phase of rituals, contrasting it with "structure" by highlighting features such as homogeneity—wherein participants are rendered anonymous and stripped of differentiating markers like rank or possession—and a pervasive sense of comradeship that transcends everyday divisions. This anti-structural quality fosters direct, unmediated human connections, often guided by shared and mutual recognition rather than codified norms, enabling expressions of compassion and collective purpose. Turner delineated three modalities: spontaneous communitas, arising organically from immediate, unstructured interactions in crises or pilgrimages; normative communitas, which institutionalizes these bonds through organized groups like monasteries to sustain equality amid partial structure; and ideological communitas, representing aspirational visions of undifferentiated that inspire social movements or utopian ideals. In all forms, communitas presupposes liminality's , where individuals confront the arbitrariness of societal roles, potentially yielding creative potential but risking without reaggregation into structure.

Historical and Theoretical Origins

Victor Turner's Anthropological Formulation

, a British born in 1920 and deceased in 1983, formulated the concept of communitas through his ethnographic studies of the Ndembu people in what is now , conducting fieldwork between 1950 and 1954. In his seminal 1969 book The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure, Turner analyzed Ndembu rituals of affliction and passage, drawing on Arnold van Gennep's earlier model of rites de passage—comprising separation, (or transition), and incorporation—to describe communitas as emerging specifically within the liminal phase. Here, participants are stripped of prior social statuses, existing in a "betwixt and between" state that dissolves hierarchical "structure"—the normative order of roles, jural rights, and obligations—and fosters "anti-structure," a modality of equality and undifferentiated human relatedness. Communitas, per Turner, manifests as an intense feeling of social togetherness, humility, and comradeship, where individuals perceive each other as "bare human beings" unbound by rank or division, often generating creative potential and existential solidarity. Among the Ndembu, this occurred in rituals such as the nkang'a boys' (involving and symbolic trials lasting up to a month) and the n'kula girls' rites, where neophytes, muddied and dressed in identical , shared ordeals that leveled distinctions between elders and youths, chiefs and commoners. Turner observed that such liminal communitas served a social function: it temporarily critiques and replenishes by revealing its relativity, allowing participants to reincorporate with renewed commitment to societal norms, thus maintaining equilibrium without permanent upheaval. Turner differentiated spontaneous communitas—arising organically from shared exigencies and dissolving back into —from ideological communitas, which institutions like pilgrimages or monasteries seek to perpetuate as a model, though often at the cost of devolving into new hierarchies. His formulation emphasized empirical grounding in Ndembu data, where communitas was not utopian but a transient, dialectically necessary to , evidenced by symbols like the milk tree (representing undifferentiated unity) and communal dances that enforced egalitarian participation. This anthropological framing positioned communitas as a universal human potential activated by , yet contingent on cultural specifics, challenging overly static views of in favor of processual dynamics.

The Goodmans' Socio-Economic Interpretation

and Percival Goodman, brothers and collaborators in , , and social critique, introduced the concept of in their 1947 book Communitas: Means of Livelihood and Ways of Life, framing it as a socio-economic model for integrating production, consumption, and daily existence to foster authentic . , an anarchist thinker, and Percival, an architect, argued that modern industrial societies alienate individuals by segregating workplaces from living spaces and rendering labor purposeless, leading to fragmented social bonds. Their interpretation posits communitas not as transient experience but as a permanent structural alternative, where economic organization directly shapes communal vitality, emphasizing self-sufficient, decentralized units that prioritize human-scale production over mass consumption or centralized control. The Goodmans analyzed four paradigmatic community types to illustrate how livelihood patterns dictate social forms, critiquing each for failing to achieve true communitas except in their proposed ideal. The first, a "city of efficient consumption," resembles a vast or complex, where economic activity revolves around passive buying in sprawling, automobile-dependent suburbs, eroding communal ties through and commercial spectacle. The second, a "crossroad world of ," centers on exchange hubs like ports or markets, fostering transient interactions but lacking stable production, resulting in opportunistic rather than cohesive societies. The third, an "industrial power house," embodies Fordist factories and monolithic plants, prioritizing output via hierarchical division of labor, which dehumanizes workers and confines to leisure enclaves disconnected from economic purpose. In contrast, the Goodmans advocated a fourth model—"a new " of communitas—as a balanced socio-economic order providing "planned security with minimum controls," where small-scale industries, , and crafts integrate directly into residential areas, eliminating the production-consumption divide. This entails decentralizing power to neighborhood-scale cooperatives, with technologies scaled to human needs (e.g., workshops rather than assembly lines), enabling participatory and meaningful work that sustains both material subsistence and cultural expression. They estimated such communities could support 10,000 to 50,000 residents, drawing on historical precedents like medieval guilds or frontier settlements, while warning against over-reliance on state welfare or corporate monopoly, which they saw as perpetuating alienation. Unlike Victor Turner's later anthropological usage of the term for liminal anti-structure, the Goodmans' communitas demands deliberate economic redesign to embed equality and spontaneity in everyday institutions, influencing mid-20th-century utopian planning but critiqued for underestimating scalability challenges in industrialized economies.

Roberto Esposito's Philosophical Framework

Roberto Esposito, an Italian philosopher born in 1950, develops his concept of communitas in his 1998 book Communitas: Origine e destino della comunità (translated as Communitas: The Origin and Destiny of Community in 2010), where he proposes a radical rethinking of through etymological and historical analysis. Deriving communitas from the Latin roots cum (with) and munus (duty, obligation, gift, or office), Esposito argues that fundamentally entails a relational bond of indebtedness and exposure rather than shared substance, property, or identity. This underscores communitas as a "void" or absence—a non-possessive giving that circulates without accumulation, positioning as an originary lack that demands response from its members. Esposito's framework critiques modern political philosophy for negating communitas in favor of immunitas, a paradigm of self-preservation and exclusion that privileges sovereignty over communal obligation. Tracing this negation through thinkers like Hobbes and Rousseau, he contends that the modern subject emerges by immunizing itself against the communal debt, transforming politics into a defensive apparatus against alterity. In this view, immunitas—etymologically linked to exemption from duty—represents not just protection but the privative denial of communitas, leading to biopolitical paradigms where life is managed through separation rather than exposure. Esposito extends this to biopolitics, advocating an "affirmative biopolitics" that reclaims communitas as openness to the other's difference, countering negative biopolitical closures like totalitarianism. Central to Esposito's is the inseparability of and immunity: communitas generates its own negation, as the obligation to give provokes reactive privatization. He illustrates this historically, from Roman munus as to medieval exemptions, showing how persists as a horizon of possibility amid its constant foreclosure. Unlike possessive models (e.g., communitarianism's emphasis on shared values), Esposito's communitas demands relinquishment of self-sufficiency, fostering a of the gift that avoids fusion into organic totality. This framework, while abstract, informs Esposito's broader oeuvre on terms of the political, urging a communal attuned to finitude and interdependency rather than mastery.

Empirical Applications and Evidence

In Traditional Rituals and Rites of Passage

In the liminal phase of traditional rites of passage, as conceptualized by , communitas arises as a spontaneous sense of equality and among participants, temporarily suspending everyday social hierarchies and statuses. This phase, intermediate between separation from prior social roles and reincorporation into new ones, features neophytes who are ritually humbled, often through shared hardships, anonymity in dress or behavior, and communal instruction, fostering a "structureless" community unbound by differential power or rank. Turner emphasized that such communitas is not mere camaraderie but a potent anti-structural force that reinforces group cohesion by highlighting the arbitrary nature of normal societal structures. Turner's ethnographic work among the Ndembu people of in the 1950s and 1960s provides a primary empirical basis for this observation, particularly in the mukanda for adolescent boys, which lasts several months in a secluded bush camp. Initiates, regardless of familial or clanic differences, endure identical ordeals—such as , symbolic death and rebirth, and collective labor—while living in uniform simplicity, with seniors enforcing equality to prevent dominance by any individual. This setup generates intense communitas, evident in the boys' mutual dependence, shared secrecy, and post-ritual bonds that extend into adult life, strengthening Ndembu social fabric against factionalism. Turner documented over a dozen such rituals, noting how communitas here serves to regenerate tribal unity amid ecological and social stresses. Similar dynamics appear in other traditional contexts Turner analyzed, such as the installation rites for Ndembu chiefs, where candidates undergo and symbolic degradation to emerge with renewed legitimacy, evoking communitas among ritual specialists and kin through egalitarian participation in symbolic acts. In broader cross-cultural terms, Turner linked this to pilgrimage sites in medieval , where diverse pilgrims, stripped of worldly distinctions during the journey, formed egalitarian bonds akin to liminal communitas, as seen in accounts of communal hardships on routes to in the 12th-15th centuries. These examples underscore communitas as a recurrent mechanism in pre-modern s for resolving structural tensions, though Turner cautioned that its intensity varies with ritual seclusion and ordeal severity.

In Modern and Contemporary Contexts

In contemporary settings, communitas manifests in countercultural festivals such as , held annually in Nevada's since 1986, where participants engage in ritualistic practices that suspend everyday hierarchies and foster spontaneous equality. The event's principles of radical inclusion, gifting, and create liminal spaces amid the arid playa, with over 70,000 attendees in recent years contributing to collective art installations, theme camps, and the climactic burning of a large effigy, evoking anti-structural bonds through shared sensory experiences like raves and communal . Electronic dance music (EDM) events and s similarly produce communitas via prolonged liminal immersion in music, dance, and altered states, as observed in psytrance gatherings and Canadian rave scenes since the 1990s, where participants report transcendent unity transcending social divisions, though often classified as "liminoid" voluntary pursuits rather than obligatory rites. Australian festivals like ConFest exemplify this through eco-spiritual heterotopias emphasizing bodily and anti-structural community, blending ritual elements with modern . Modern pilgrimages, such as the , sustain communitas among diverse walkers covering over 800 kilometers across , with studies documenting spontaneous fellowships that challenge structured identities, yet reveal contestations including conflicts over resources and differing motivations. In these contexts, Turner's concept highlights ephemeral unity during the journey's liminal phases, but empirical accounts note its fragility against commercial influences and participant heterogeneity since the 1980s resurgence. Social movements and protests invoke communitas during crises, as in Israel's 2011 tent protests involving hundreds of thousands decrying , where encampments generated unstructured amid liminal disruption of norms. Disaster responses, like the 1997 floods, and Gandhian-inspired diffusing into 1960s movements further illustrate this, with shared adversity yielding ritual-like resilience, though contemporary uses sometimes conflate it with mere , diluting its anti-structural essence.

Criticisms and Limitations

Theoretical and Methodological Critiques

Critics have argued that Turner's conceptualization of communitas romanticizes the liminal experience, portraying it as an unalloyed state of egalitarian bonding while downplaying persistent social hierarchies and conflicts within rituals. For instance, in pilgrimage studies, communitas has been faulted for oversimplifying participant interactions by assuming undifferentiated unity, ignoring ethnographic evidence of contestation, factionalism, and power asymmetries among pilgrims that undermine claims of spontaneous equality. This idealization, evident in Turner's later emphasis on the "joy in connection," risks projecting a normative Western individualism onto diverse cultural practices, detached from the dialectical interplay between and structure where anti-structure often reinforces rather than dissolves norms. Theoretically, communitas has been critiqued for its transformationist bias, assuming that liminal phases inherently generate creative or egalitarian outcomes without empirical verification of ritual efficacy. Ronald Grimes, for example, contends that not all rites produce transformation, and Turner's framework erases routine ritual practices like repetition and drills that maintain rather than disrupt social order, leading to an overemphasis on novelty at the expense of stability. Furthermore, the concept's portability across contexts— from Ndembu initiations to modern festivals—has been challenged for lacking universality, as seen in Hindu pilgrimage sites where rituals affirm existing structures rather than fostering communitas. These issues stem from an underexamined opposition to structure, where communitas is valorized as subjunctive possibility without addressing how it ideologically sustains power relations under the guise of equality. Methodologically, Turner's reliance on intensive among the Ndembu of in the 1950s and 1960s has drawn scrutiny for its interpretive subjectivity and limited generalizability beyond small-scale, non-industrial societies. Symbolic anthropology's focus on emic meanings, as employed by Turner, prioritizes holistic narrative over quantifiable data or comparative metrics, rendering claims about communitas' emergence vulnerable to and difficult to falsify through replication. Subsequent ethnographies have repeatedly documented counterexamples, such as structured hierarchies persisting in liminal settings, yet the concept endures without rigorous testing against broader datasets, highlighting a methodological gap between anecdotal richness and causal validation. This approach, while innovative for its time, aligns with mid-20th-century anthropology's qualitative strengths but falters under demands for causal realism, where empirical patterns of inequality in rituals challenge the universality of communitas as a transient equalizer.

Practical Challenges and Empirical Failures

Turner's posits communitas as an inherently transient arising in liminal contexts, where social hierarchies dissolve temporarily, but it proves unsustainable in enduring social structures, as differentiation and norms inevitably reassert themselves to manage and conflict. Attempts to institutionalize communitas, such as in permanent egalitarian groups, encounter causal barriers rooted in human incentives: without enforced roles, free-riding on shared resources proliferates, while disagreements over labor division and erode the undifferentiated . Empirical efforts to sustain communitas-like states in intentional communities reveal high attrition, with most dissolving due to economic mismanagement, interpersonal frictions, and failure to adapt to practical demands like mundane maintenance tasks. For instance, the hippie communes, which sought ongoing communal bonds inspired by countercultural ideals of equality, largely collapsed within a few years, often from poor financial planning and avoidance of hierarchical needed for viability. Scholarly analyses attribute these outcomes to mismatched expectations—initial enthusiasm for anti-structural living yielding to realities of and divergent individual motivations, rather than any inherent ideological flaw. In disaster contexts, where spontaneous communitas might emerge amid shared peril, it frequently fails to materialize or persist beyond acute phases, undermined by pre-existing family ties, uneven civic engagement, and institutional interventions that prioritize order over egalitarianism. Modern approximations, such as festival environments like Burning Man, deliver episodic communitas but revert to normative structures post-event, highlighting the causal tension between temporary bonding and long-term coordination. These patterns underscore that while communitas fosters adaptive flexibility in flux, its extension into stable forms invites entropy from unaddressed incentives and externalities.

Influence and Extensions

Interdisciplinary Adaptations

Turner's concept of communitas has been extended to organizational studies, where it describes emergent bonds of equality and shared purpose that arise in liminal phases of team formation or , facilitating and adaptability within hierarchical structures. In analyses of dynamics, researchers apply communitas to explain how interdependent practices and rituals—such as collaborative problem-solving sessions—temporarily suspend status differences, promoting spontaneous and that can challenge rigid bureaucracies. For instance, during organizational change processes, communitas emerges as groups navigate uncertainty, leading to collective resilience and novel solutions, as evidenced in case studies of corporate transformations where shared fosters anti-structural . These adaptations highlight communitas not as a utopian ideal but as a empirically linked to heightened group , though often fleeting without institutional reinforcement. In educational contexts, communitas informs models of , particularly in communal settings like seminars or experiential programs, where liminal transitions—such as entering a new academic cohort—cultivate undifferentiated bonds that enhance mutual understanding and intellectual growth. Scholars integrate it with Vygotsky's to argue that ritual-like group activities generate communitas, enabling learners to transcend individual hierarchies and co-construct knowledge through egalitarian . Empirical observations in religious and higher education settings demonstrate that such dynamics yield measurable benefits, including improved retention and , as participants report intensified feelings of unity during intensive retreats or collaborative projects spanning 2013–2020. This application underscores communitas's role in bridging cognitive and affective learning, though critics note its dependence on voluntary participation to avoid coerced . Psychological adaptations frame communitas as a state of collective joy arising from synchronized social flow, akin to in group activities, which counters isolation by amplifying shared emotional highs. Drawing on Turner's framework, studies link it to outcomes, such as elevated well-being in communal rituals like festivals or groups, where participants experience undifferentiated humanity leading to reduced self-focus and heightened . In clinical settings, it has been observed in support networks during health crises, where liminal waiting periods foster spontaneous , correlating with lower distress levels in qualitative data from cancer patient cohorts. These extensions emphasize empirical correlates like releases in group , yet caution that idealized communitas overlooks power asymmetries inherent in real-world applications.

Recent Developments and Reassessments

In the early 2020s, scholars have reassessed Victor Turner's communitas concept, highlighting its expansion beyond contexts into broader social phenomena while retaining ties to liminal experiences. A traces the concept's transformation through diverse applications in anthropology and adjacent fields, noting that while Turner originally linked communitas to Ndembu rituals in —emphasizing egalitarian bonds amid ambiguity—subsequent uses have adapted it to secular disruptions, such as political upheavals and cultural performances, often diluting its ritual specificity but enhancing its explanatory power for transient . This reassessment underscores communitas as a tool for analyzing "transcendent emotional experiences" in modern , though critics within the review caution against overgeneralization that risks conflating spontaneous fellow-feeling with structured community. Applications to crises have gained prominence, with theorists framing disaster communitas as emergent from catastrophe's "anti-structure," involving improvisational mutual aid and utopian impulses rather than enduring institutions. For instance, a 2021 study posits that post-disaster settings evoke Turner's spontaneous communitas through collective improvisation, yet empirical cases reveal its fragility, often dissolving once normal structures reassert, challenging romanticized views of crisis-forged equality. Similarly, pandemic-era research in 2024 examines in disrupted academic study groups, where virtual transitions fostered temporary communitas via shared vulnerability, but methodological limitations—such as self-reported data—highlight difficulties in verifying egalitarian bonds amid isolation. Philosophical extensions in transdisciplinary works, such as a 2022 volume on communitas, integrate Turner's ideas with performative arts and politics, reassessing commonality as performative rather than innate, particularly in European contexts of migration and unrest; however, these adaptations prioritize aesthetic over empirical validation, prompting calls for causal analysis of why liminal equality rarely persists. Overall, these developments affirm communitas's enduring relevance for understanding ephemeral in fluid societies, but reassessments emphasize empirical scrutiny to distinguish genuine anti-structural bonds from ideological projections.

References

  1. https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095628414
  2. https://www.anthrobase.com/Dic/eng/def/communitas.htm
  3. https://voidnetwork.gr/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Liminality-and-Communitas-by-Victor-Turner.pdf
  4. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/14634996241282143
  5. http://liminalities.net/16-4/transformationism.pdf
  6. https://monoskop.org/images/9/90/Turner_Victor_The_Ritual_Process_Structure_and_Anti-Structure.pdf
  7. https://www.routledge.com/The-Ritual-Process-Structure-and-Anti-Structure/Turner-Abrahams-Harris/p/book/9780202011905
  8. http://faculty.buffalostate.edu/fishlm/articles/turner.pdf
  9. http://web.vu.lt/rstc/a.pazeraite/files/2014/09/Victor-Witter-Turner-The-ritual-process_-structure-and-anti-structure-Cornell-University-Press-1991.pdf
  10. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/333567436_Victor_Turner_and_The_ritual_process
  11. https://www.panarchy.org/goodman/community.html
  12. https://libcom.org/article/communitas-revisited
  13. https://jacobin.com/2025/10/market-consumer-democracy-collective-needs
  14. https://www.sup.org/books/theory-and-philosophy/communitas
  15. https://www.on-dizziness.com/resources-overview/communitas
  16. https://www.amazon.com/Communitas-Destiny-Community-Cultural-Present/dp/0804746478
  17. https://marxandphilosophy.org.uk/reviews/7601_communitas-bios-review-by-benoit-dillet/
  18. https://churchlifejournal.nd.edu/articles/roberto-esposito-philosopher-of-community-and-immunity/
  19. https://cosmosandhistory.org/index.php/journal/article/view/124/234
  20. https://www.amazon.com/Roberto-Esposito-Political-Biopolitics-Commonalities/dp/B00HTK68OQ
  21. https://centreforsensorystudies.org/burning-man-transforming-community-through-countercultural-ritual-process/
  22. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/14634996241282143
  23. https://arrow.tudublin.ie/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1216&context=ijrtp
  24. https://digitalcommons.wcupa.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1117&context=anthrosoc_facpub
  25. https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/9780748693504-011/html
  26. https://dialnet.unirioja.es/descarga/articulo/7433471.pdf
  27. https://aeon.co/essays/like-start-ups-most-intentional-communities-fail-why
  28. https://www.forbes.com/sites/russellflannery/2021/04/11/what-happened-to-americas-communes/
  29. https://lunarpedia.org/w/Communes_Fail
  30. https://communityfinders.com/why-intentional-communities-fail/
  31. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11186-021-09442-4
  32. http://edgecentral.blogspot.com/2020/04/jumping-shark-enigma-of-burning-man.html
  33. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/336198910_Crisis_and_communitas_Victor_Turner_and_social_process
  34. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00344087.2013.767677
  35. https://www.taosinstitute.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Feb-7-2020-From-Liminality-to-Communitas-The-Collective-Dimensions-of-Transformative-Learning-1.pdf
  36. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/moral-landscapes/202112/communitas-collective-joy-through-joint-social-flow
  37. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6691787/
  38. https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/history/victor-w-turner
  39. https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/napa.12214
  40. https://www.routledge.com/Crisis-and-Communitas-Performative-Concepts-of-Commonality-in-Arts-and-Politics/Sajewska-Sugiera/p/book/9781032138473
Add your contribution
Related Hubs
Contribute something
User Avatar
No comments yet.