Liminality Research Articles

Between Emotion, Politics and Law: Narrative Transformation and Authoritarian Deliberation in a Land Dispute-triggered Social Drama in China

AbstractThrough studying a revenge murder triggered by a land dispute in China and the subsequent trial, this article explores “narrative transformation” in a social drama and proposes an event-based model for authoritarian deliberation. It argues that an obscure murder rose to prominence because it came to be narrated as a different kind of story. Initially viewed as “a normal killing,” it was transformed to represent a “contest” between a law-and-order frame, which emphasizes individual guilt, and a righteous-revenge frame, which symbolizes wider conflicts. The article also contends that in the absence of an institutionalized issue forum, contentious events present a model for authoritarian deliberation. That is to say, deliberation is often pegged to social dramas on the “judicial periphery,” thanks to a liminal phase inviting reflexivity, and exposes elite dissent that is otherwise veiled by an interest-driven alliance. In this case study, the media engaged with other institutions in contentious performances that affirmed hidden social fault-lines but also encouraged deliberation.

A History of Death in the Hebrew Bible

A History of Death in the Hebrew Bible

Study on the liminality in Shin, Kyung Lim's Poetry Farm Dance

Study on the liminality in Shin, Kyung Lim's Poetry Farm Dance

HUTSULʼS MASCULINE INITIATION PRACTICES

Summary. The purpose of the study is to analyse the rituals and actions performed by the Hutsuls to manifest the changes in age or social status of a male, to describe the structure and age sequence of the rituals and to identify the main ritual elements related to the changes of male’s status. The research is conducted on the basis of available sources. The research methodology is based on principles of systematicity and objectivity, as well as on comparative-historical method, structural-semantic and typological analysis and the field research method. The term «initiation» refers solely to the rites of male’s transition from an infant to an adolescent and from an adolescent to an adult. The scientific novelty of the research is establishing the correlation between different initiation practices and age and social markers. The structure of the initiation practices as well as their influence on the appearance of a person, his/her place in the community, social rights and responsibilities has been described. Conclusions. The initiations Hutsuls performed were meant to empower a new member of the community with rights and responsibilities, and more importantly, to extend his lifespan. Several rituals were important to young men in different periods of their life as they had initiation significance. According to the typical scheme of transition by A. van Gennep, we can distinguish two main groups of initiations – those that contain the liminal phase and those that do not.The main markers of status change for men (in the studied rituals and ceremonies) are the change of hairstyle (cutting hair), «misbehaving» within the fellow community, showing required physical qualities and military service.Meanwhile, we must admit the lack of solid source base for this study. Therefore the structure, the nature and the significance of Hutsulʼs masculine initiation practices cannot be fully revealed. The way of gaining special statuses by Hutsul males requires further scientific research.

Liminal Space, Sexuality, and the Language of #MeToo

#MeToo has advanced the way that we think and speak of sexual abuses of power by creating a powerful social platform in which victims can function as a group, symbolizing what as psychoanalysts we consider unthinkable, while also striking at the inherent paradox that sexuality poses – how to account for the vagaries of human sexuality and its transgressive nature while holding individual and collective abuses of power accountable? My essay addresses such questions by focusing on the way that language fails to hold and symbolize sexuality due to its affective excess and its driven and enigmatic qualities, and advances the idea that the sexual is metabolized in action with an other and not through words and language. Further, that the boundary between what is permissible and what is not is negotiated on both conscious and unconscious levels of knowing, which I refer to as the liminal area of sexuality. I develop these ideas within a post-Lacanian framework and suggest that psychoanalysis must interface with other disciplines in order to bring depth to our consideration of sexuality at its most transgressive as well as to help stretch the symbolic function of language.

The Problem of Immigrant Identity In Buddha of Suburbia By Hanif Kureishi

The present study aims to lay bare how Kureishi examines the problem of immi-grant identity in The Buddha of Suburbia. Immigrants leave their homeland vol-untarily or involuntarily to have a better life. They can neither continue their own culture nor become involved in the new culture. In Homi Bhaba's words, they experience ‘in betweenneess’. This study refers to Homi Bhabha's main ideas about hybridity, mimicry, liminality and the third space. In this study Bhabha's theories will help highlight how Kureishi's characters create liminal areas and realize their identities in these areas. For the characters in the novel, migration is a never-ending process in which they live simultaneously between the past and the present. Because they have been subjected to many discrimination such as race, language, religion, color and have always been declared ‘other’ in society. Karim is one of the major characters who suffers from being stuck in between. Although he tries to pretend to be British by rejecting the culture of his father, who is Indian, he is never accepted by the racist society in which he lives and he stays in this liminal area without an identity.

LIMINALITY OF IGAL RITUAL THEATER: A SOLUTION OF TULAH

This paper work delves into the igal ritual practised by the Bajau ethnic group in Semporna, Sabah as a form of a ritual theater. In the traditional context, the igal ritual is presented for healing from tulah for the community’s wellbeing. Other than that, igal is presented as a symbol of change of the practitioners’ ethnic social status through the experiences of the communitas and liminality during the liminal stage of the performance. The ethnography method is applied as a strategy that concentrates on the relationship between behaviour and culture. Ethnographers work hard to understand and separate the emic perspective from the etic pespective. The analysis of the igal ritual has been studied by applying the theory of communitas and liminality as coined Victor Turner. The aim is to analyse how the two aspects assert that the igal ritual as a form of ritual theatre plays the role in influencing the process of change of the social status and the culture of Bajau ethnic for the wellbeing of the practitioners. The communitas experience is faced by the practitioners of the ritual at the liminal stage, which is the stage where players are unconscious during the performance. Liminality and communitas are a stage where the state of mind is able to accept change or the proposed change that happens. This research outcome justifies the ritual igal as a form of a ritual theatre with a significant role in influencing the process of social interaction of the Bajau ethnic through both experiences communitas and liminality for the benefit of the people.

La antigua ceremonia de las doncellas Cantaderas en León

La fiesta de las Cantaderas, que celebraba el pueblo y la iglesia de León en su catedral el 15 de agosto (Asunción de la Virgen), era un ritual en el que se superponían y exaltaban una serie de eventos, de carácter tanto cíclico (anual-vital) como históricolegendario. En primer lugar, la describimos, a través de las fuentes histórico-literarias, en un período que se extiende entre los siglos XVI y XVIII. Después, la analizamos como un ritual de paso y especialmente como una situación de liminaridad, lo que nos ayuda a comprender la interconexión de todos los elementos rituales.

Change within the change: pregnancy, liminality and adventure tourism in Mexico

Despite the growing number of pregnant women engaging in outdoor adventure activities, very few studies have explored pregnancy or the specific needs and challenges of pregnant women in tourism research. To fill this gap in the literature, we examine the participation of pregnant women in adventure tourism through the theoretical lens of liminality. Conceptualising pregnancy as a liminal stage in which women are ‘suspended’ between two statuses, opens diverse possibilities to delve into women’s experiences of embodiment, bodily image and control. In this sense, pregnancy is understood as an ‘internal change’, which adds specific challenges to women’s practice of adventure tourism, including bodily changes and different perceptions of risk-taking. Similarly, the context of adventure tourism provides an ideal space to reflect on liminal transitions and the ‘outside changes’ that pregnant women go through in the predominantly masculinised spaces that characterise this tourism segment. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 35 Mexican women who actively pursue adventure tourism and who had engaged in these activities during at least one pregnancy. The analysis indicates the importance of norms and social expectations experienced by pregnant women when doing adventure tourism. The concept of the ‘rhizomatic body’ proved to be a valuable tool when looking at the social taboos, prohibitions and rules that apply to pregnant women in specific sociocultural contexts (in this case, Mexico). By reframing and reconceptualising pregnant women and their practice of adventure activities, the social construction of pregnancy is elucidated. Finally, the study contributes to the understanding of alternative models and experiences of being a woman in gendered spaces, while shedding light on relevant behavioural patterns among pregnant tourists and the sociocultural impacts of these patterns.

Beyond Turner’s Liminal Community: The Perpetual Crisis of Politics and the Everyday


 The social anthropologist Victor Turner describes the process of a communitas as orientated around crisis - a liminal stage by which the community compensates for any breaches within their existing understanding of the world. As a liminal stage, crisis is the means by which a community remains politically active, in so far as it relies on the local, autonomous management of change to the lived environment. This paper seeks to explore the nature of communication as a tool of crisis, arguing that the community relies upon a network of crisis occurring both from first-hand and communally-derived communication, for which it is the distance between its membership that allows a community to flourish. Invoking the critical theory of Jean-Luc Nancy, and systems theory of Niklas Luhmann to interrogate such a network, I will argue that it is the performed misuse of a communities shared symbols that allows it to maintain political resonance. With this in mind, I will propose that the advent of what I term ‘perpetual crisis’ seeks to fundamentally undermine such a resonance, usurping the lived crisis of our everyday interactions with Other, in favour of a perpetual state of epistemological violence that exists beyond the limits of our control. Exploring the tone and utility of political language within the mainstream media, I will seek to draw a parallel between the narrative disjunction of politicians and their policies as a means of highlighting the imposition of a crisis that impedes communitas by distancing a communities membership from meaningful political redress.

Communitas in fright tourism

Liminality offers an explanation of the threshold one passes through as they enter a tourist destination. Beginning with the anticipation phase of the experience a tourist travels to a destination for an on-site experience. Multiple thresholds occur for the tourist, yet during the periods prior to the actual event, motivations will likely draw or repel the individual. For dark tourism research none have reviewed these liminal experiences in fright tourism, the more entertaining and lighter aspect of the dark elder. To better understand the anticipation stage of the liminal experience, the influence of fear while entering a haunted attraction is explored. Fear is expected to contribute to the fun of these haunted attractions. During this liminal phase, communitas evolve where the social bonding of the visitors develops during the encounter. Characteristics of these groups are examined in this exploratory study.

Networked liminality

Networked liminality

‘Our words are stronger’: Re-enforcing boundaries through ritual work in a terrorist news event

This article investigates the ritual work in terrorist news events, using the Berlin truck attack as a case in point. The article connects with the larger cluster of anthropologically inspired communication research on media events as public rituals in news media and applies digital media ethnography as its method. Fieldwork is conducted in 15 online news sites. The article identifies three key phases through which the ritual work was carried out: the rupture in the news event (ritualised as the strike), the liminal phase (ritualised as the manhunt) and the reconstitution of order following the attack (ritualised as the mourning). The article concludes with an interpretation of the broader social implications of the ritual work and related naturalisation of ‘friends’ and ‘foes’ and suggests that this type of ritual work contributes to a collective mythologisation of terrorism in news media and society at large.

The association between Vitamin D deficiency and risk of pre-diabetes among older adults

AbstractIntroductionType 2 Diabetes Mellitus is one of the most common conditions affecting older adults, and is one of few diseases with a distinct liminal stage: prediabetes. Dietitians and healthcare practitioners currently recognize prediabetes as a lifestyle disease,and “reversing” it relies largely on dietary modifications and increased exercise.Some research suggests that vitamin D may also be a target since its deficiency has been tentatively linked to many chronic conditions,5 and a high prevalence has been observed among subjects with prediabetes and type 2 diabetes.6, 7 The purpose of this study was to examine the association between vitamin D deficiency and risk of pre-diabetes in people 50 + years of age living in the United States.Materials and MethodsThis was a cross-sectional analysis of the US National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (2007–2012) subjects, ages 50 + years, free of kidney/liver diseases and diabetes. Outcome: Prediabetes, was defined as: HbA1c level 5.7–6.5%, or fasting plasma glucose level 100–125 mg/dL, or Oral Glucose Tolerance Test result 140–199 mg/dL, with no laboratory value in the diabetic range. Those with normal glucose tolerance (NGT) with no marker in the prediabetes/diabetes range were the comparison group. Exposure: subjects' vitamin D status was classified based on total serum 25(OH)D levels as follows: deficient = < 50 nmol/L, insufficient = 50–75 nmol/L, and sufficient = > 75 nmol/L. The final sample (n = 2,286) was sufficient to detect a 7% difference in odds of prediabetes (the average difference observed in the literature) with 80% power and 95% confidence. Multivariate logistic regression analysis included strata, cluster and weight variables. Models were adjusted for BMI, ethnicity, age and gender.ResultsThe final sample was 2,286 subjects, predominantly white (80.4%) and female (56.6%), with a mean age of 62.3 years; 1,387 had prediabetes (59.1%) and 899 were NGT (40.9%). Vitamin D status was associated with pre-diabetes (p = 0.03). Those with vitamin D deficiency were more likely to have prediabetes compared to vitamin D sufficient individuals (crude OR = 1.48 95%CI 1.15–1.91), which remained significant after adjustment for ethnicity, BMI, age and gender (aOR = 1.39 95%CI 1.02–1.89). There was no effect modification by BMI, gender or ethnicity.DiscussionOur results contributed to this existing literature by demonstrating that vitamin D status is associated with pre-diabetes in a nationally representative sample of older US adults.Vitamin D status was significantly associated with risk of prediabetes in Americans 50 + years of age. Prevention efforts should incorporate awareness of vitamin D.

The semantics of death and rebirth in the Poturia wedding tradition: the case of transition rites

Relevance of the study. Forms of folk beliefs about death and rebirth back to the archaic times of Ukrainian culture and are an integral part of the mythological consciousness, which is fully reflected in the folk-ritual creativity. In the national scientific thought, the problem of liminal transition is covered in the context of rituals of the family cycle, as well as one of the structural and ceremonial aspects of weddings in Central Polissya. But the issue of the semantics of death and rebirth in the context of the wedding ceremony of local territories is still open and require detailed investigation.Scientific novelty. The article first examines the problem of death and rebirth as an example of the rituals of the Poturia wedding ceremony, one of the least explored ethnic regions of Western Volyn. The article also covers for the first time the results of the author’s expeditionary studies on the territory of Poturia during 2011–2015.The main objectives of the study is to investigate the forms, functional load of each stage of the liminal period, symbols of death and rebirth as integral psycho-physiological aspects of the transition to a new status.Methodology. Cross-curricular and integrative approaches, as well as structural and functional methods of analysis, have played an important role in the study of the problem. The methodology of the study is based on the analysis of the symbolism of the main stages of the Poturia wedding rite in the context of the three-stage theory of Arnold van Gennep and the elimination-integrative theory.Results. It is found that in the wedding system of the Western Volyn region there are all three liminal (transitional) stages, each of which has its own distinct structural and semantic markers. Symbols of death and rebirth have their own peculiarities, functional load and are embodied through various forms of ritual passage on Poturia. On the one hand, the liminal period in a traditional wedding is a multi-stage probationary period, and on the other, it becomes a new, higher social status. An integral aspect of the liminal process is the eliminative-integrative function, which is most clearly is traced again in the context of the bride's transition.This study does not exhaust the depth of the problem. In order to study the liminal transition in Poturia's wedding ceremony, it is necessary to see a detailed analysis of clothing, wedding requisites and the mental and personal rebirth of participants in the wedding celebration in the context of myth-ritual creativity.

Liminality and head and neck cancer: core concepts and applications for clinical practice.

This article explores the concept of liminality and its potential application to understand the experience of being diagnosed and receiving treatment for head and neck cancer.The article describes how we identified liminality in people who had received surgical treatment of head and neck cancer and why it is important that the clinical team understand and consider liminality in their interventions, to improve outcomes.BackgroundHead and neck cancer is a disease that may affect the way an individual looks and functions, specifically with regard to eating and drinking. This qualitative study identified the perceptions of people who had been diagnosed with head and neck cancer and had undergone surgical treatment, to develop our understanding of what happens to people beyond their physical recovery in hospital.MethodsWe carried out 1:1 face-to-face interviews with people in the acute phase of recovery following head and neck cancer surgery. We analysed and verified themes from the data, using an interpretive phenomenological methodology.ResultsThe study identified a liminal phase which people described during their recovery from head and neck cancer surgery. Individuals described no longer being the people they were before surgery, but not yet the people they would be. We explored this concept and suggest ways in which the clinical team may identify and explore liminality post head and neck surgery. This information may help clinical teams to support people manage complex issues related to the sense of self, identity and recovery after head and neck cancer surgery.

The Rise, Fall, and Afterlife of Learning Styles: An Essay on Megarianism and Emancipation in Educational Potentiality

The status of learning styles theory in educational studies is uncertain as we inhabit the liminal phase between the theory’s death as proclaimed by educational psychologists who avow to have disproven it and whatever afterlife will follow. At this moment, with both past and future in view, that we have an opportunity to reflect on the foundational assumptions of the theory. Engaging in the growing community of Agambenian philosophy of education and the ongoing dialogue around educational potentiality, this article approaches learning styles theory as a paradigm of educational Megarianism. In this frame, the error of the learning styles theorists was not in the construction of a particular typology, but in the metaphysical approach to pedagogy. The reflection upon learning styles as paradigm also contributes a paradigmatic case of educational Megarianism to the discussion of potentiality in Agambenian philosophy of education.

Improving Perinatal Care Through Theory Application.

Theories from various perspectives can increase nurses' understanding of maternal behaviors throughout the developmental process of pregnancy and postpartum. The purpose of this article is to present relevant theories that maternity nurses will likely find useful, and to demonstrate their applicability through an unfolding exemplar case. Nurses can provide improved and more sensitive care when guided by psychosocial theories such as Rubin's tasks of pregnancy, prenatal attachment, pregnancy as a liminal phase, and the grief work in postpartum as proposed by Mercer. Use of relevant theories can promote holistic nursing care, increase critical thinking, and improve nursing responsiveness to unique family situations such as pregnancy after loss and premature birth.

Leadership in a Constant Liminal Loop: How can i be Authentic when i don't know who i am?

The search for leader authenticity implies that somewhere there is a true self. Yet the self, like anything else, is constantly changing, passing through a series of liminal phases. Authenticity, therefore, would capture the liminal condition within which all leaders operate. What this process yields, however, is a web of paradoxes, such as the need to stabilize while remaining open to a shifting reality and interpreting that reality at both the micro and the macro levels in a never‐ending loop known as the hermeneutic circle. Only a complex and fluid leader can cope with a complex and fluid reality. Fortunately, the literature presents a conceptual toolkit, including Boyd's OODA loop, paradoxical thinking, design thinking, and systems thinking–gathered in this article to assist the leader whose authentic self is always a work in progress.

On the power of a spatial metaphor: Is female to land as male is to sea?

The spatial metaphor that links women to land and men to sea has modelled the explanations of many social scientists interested in women’s roles in the fisheries sector worldwide, which—in turn—inspired development interventions and policy development in fisheries. The metaphor is also reflected in many culturally underpinned normative emic models that structure the sexual division of labour in fishing, fish processing and marketing and in family traditions in fisher communities across cultures and countries. Building upon an ethnographic example from Galicia (Spain) and linking the analysis to global examples available in the literature, we bridge the gap between the local and the global by analysing the denials that the use of the spatial metaphor portrays. In doing so, the paper explores the dual power of this metaphor—in both etic accounts and emic models—and its performative dimensions. Whereas in some socio-cultural contexts, land-based activities can be a source of power and the spatial metaphor may be a useful tool with analytical potential; we conclude that its use may result in a denial of the variety of women’s actual roles, contributions and importance in the sector. Additionally, the metaphor removes the interconnections between spaces, blurs the liminal areas of the coastal fringe and denies diversity, including class differences. In sum, the metaphor strengthens the ideological connection between fishing and capturing fish at sea, preventing women from enjoying full rights as fishers.