Abstract
Arnold van Gennep wroteThe Rites of Passagein 1909 and applied the framework to his study of French folklore. He conducted fieldwork in Algeria and throughout France. While Van Gennep's focus from 1924 to his death, indeed until the posthumous publication in 1958 of Part 7 ofManual of Contemporary French Folklore, might appear to be solely focused on folklore, for Van Gennep there was no distinction between folklore and ethnography. For him, folklore was the ethnography of the rural populations of Europe. Although he had over 400 publications, Van Gennep is identified almost exclusively withThe Rites of Passage. Influenced by Van Gennep's focus on pattern and process in ritual, British cultural anthropologist Victor Turner elaborated on the liminal in rites of passage and interpreted it as betwixt and between social structure. Van Gennep's approach to ritual also influenced the British social anthropologists Edmund Leach and Rodney Needham.
Published Version
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