Liminal Process Research Articles

The Nature of Taboo within Cultural Complexes: Theoretical and Clinical Applications.

The symbolic nature of taboo is examined as a container that differentiates developmental stages between the social values order/disorder through a ritual, liminal process of separating order as clean/blessed/safety and disorder as polluted/disassociated/risky. Unconscious/conscious taboos embody that perilous journey across margins in rites of passage and their emotional value and intensity in the form of symptomology varies cross-culturally. Two clinical cases are presented to illustrate the influence of taboo on obsessive compulsions and anorexia nervosa. Particular attention is given as to whether dirt as disorder/rubbish can be recycled at the margins between safety and risk and value redistributed to the intrapsychic and psychosocial anomalous bits and pieces that are discarded as rubbish.

Understanding the experiences of transition for newly qualified mental health nurses and their potential to stay in the role: A qualitative exploration

AimTo understand the experiences of transition from the perspective of newly qualified mental health nurses and the impact this may have on their potential to remain in the role. BackgroundDuring the transitional period following registration newly qualified nurses experience feelings of being overwhelmed and shock. Internationally there is limited research on factors influencing transitional experiences in the field of mental health. DesignA qualitative exploration was conducted using thematic content analysis to analyse the data gathered from semi-structured interviews Method18 Newly qualified mental health nurses from two NHS Mental Health trusts were interviewed, all within 18 months of registration. Data were analysed and themes generated addressing the research aim. Results/Findings:Five themes were co-created using this inductive technique: ‘Transition to new role’, ‘Support for new role’, ‘Professional identity’, ‘Role development’ and ‘Working environment’. These themes are representative headings with the sub-themes making up the contributory content. Themes highlighted issues concerning newly qualified nurses and the transition which included aspects of anxiety and feeling overwhelmed initially. This highlighted the feelings associated with transition and progression through the process of liminality. Supervision was identified in the context of formal support, the presence of which is conducive to a positive transition. Imposter syndrome and experiencing reality shock were common aspects of role development and acknowledging the sense of responsibility gained once registered. Safety was highlighted as many experienced their first role on in-patient environments which was busy and potentially hostile. ConclusionThe transition of newly qualified nurses in mental health services can prove to be a difficult experience, therefore it requires acknowledgment and careful consideration. Understanding the liminal process may allow staff to appreciate the effect of the transition and to understand that the NQN will face overwhelming and unfamiliar responsibilities. Despite the demands to boost the workforce in mental health services there is a need to understand how best to integrate NQN’s into their role during this transition. Caution must be used if we are not to lose more NQN’s, as despite concerns there are still NQN’s looking to mental health nursing as their future and chosen career.

A Spectral Archive: Mona Kareem's Feminist Imaginary in Ināth al-Ashbāḥ (Femme Ghosts)

Abstract: In this article I explore Mona Kareem's visionary feminism in her trilingual poetry collection Ināth al-Ashbāḥ ( Femme Ghosts ) (2019). I intervene in the classist colonial logic embraced by contemporary liberal feminism in Kuwait by offering a critical alternative in Kareem's poetics of the body. The article examines Kareem's engagement with the gendered, classed, and racialized body as a site of knowledge production that proves illegible to the oil-producing state. It argues that Kareem expresses a "spectral archive" from the embodied knowledge of marginalization in her poems "Eulogies for Futures to Come/Marthiyāt al-'uyūn" ("Who Hide Their Eyes"). The spectral archive is a haunting literary site of knowledge which exposes the violence of systemic oppression and exceeds nativist narratives of subjectivity constructed by official national history. It emerges in her deployment of the speculative, emphasis on the tension between the corporeal and the spectral, experimentation with poetic form and translation practices, and positing queerness as a liminal process of detaching normative gender from sex assigned at birth. The spectral archive underscores the failure of sovereign standards of subjectivity to grasp the role of feminist poetics in creating transformative imaginaries, it represents a new ethical approach to feminist discourse on social justice in Kuwait.

‘PLAY AND PLAYING’- CROSS-READING THE EAST-COAST BAJAU’S RITUAL PERFORMANCES AS A TRADITIONAL THEATER PERFORMANCE

The East-Coast Bajau ethnic group is clustered into the Bajau Laut ethnic division. Having a sea centered belief, the spirits of ancestor (Keombo’an) and the spirits of nature - these formerly pagan ethnic groups have achieved a syncretism of beliefs since the emergence of Islam. These changes in beliefs have been a factor in the occurrence of liminal processes; in their practice and beliefs of the sacred traditional healing ritual performances to the more secular form of traditional theater. The terms of 'play and playing' is a familiar term and a common practice of the traditional theater performances in which instead of acting, the performers play the role in accordance with its spontaneous and improvisational features. The playing skills of the traditional theater players (instead of performers) are always tested with their ability to develop performances based only on a given storyline. The elements of ‘play and playing’ are also an important part to the performance structure of the Bajau Laut’s healing ritual, most of which consist of secular elements in the ritual performances. The ‘play and playing’ element in the ritual performance is seen as the aesthetic potential of the Sabah’s indigenous traditional theater. This paper aims to synthesize the liminal performance of the Bajau’s traditional ritual as a traditional theater performance text. Through the cross-reading towards ‘Victor Turner’s-ritual theory’ and ‘Richard Schechner-performance theory’, the discourse analysis on the elements of ‘play and playing’ was carried out to obtain and to unfold the traditional theatrical features of the Bajau.

Becoming Other: Cannibalistic Translation as Liminal Transformation

Combining the translation theory of Haroldo de Campos and Eduardo Viveiros de Castro’s analysis of Indigenous metaphysics, this essay argues that the metaphorical consumption or cannibalization of texts through translation highlights the role literary influences play in expanding and transforming global literary networks. An understanding of how translated texts consume the source text in the process of their transcreation reveals a rhizomatic exchange and circulation of literature that destabilize at once traditional power structures and conventional translation binaries that give precedence to questions of originality and fidelity. Specifically, attention to rhizomatic literary influences acknowledges the inherent power dynamics and inequalities within postcolonial literature. A cannibalistic view of translation brings into focus these implicit power imbalances while also offering translation as a means to subvert and transform language and cultural hierarchies. Cannibalistic translation recognizes translation as a liminal process of becoming other that transforms not only the source and target texts but also the translator, readers, and literary networks, a process that reverberates through the dialogical relations connecting them all. By drawing on Viveiros de Castro’s works on Indigenous Amazonian ontologies, this article demonstrates ways in which the cannibalistic translation theory of the de Campos brothers can continue to be refined.

An exploration of lesbian and gay people’s experiences of religion, and their implications for psychotherapy: An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA)

ABSTRACT This qualitative research uses Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) to explore lesbian and gay people’s experiences of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, and the implications for psychotherapy. A total of six participants, three gay men and three lesbian women, were identified through an initial online survey and successive purposive sampling. Data were collected using unstructured interviews and analysed to determine three major themes: ‘Religious Tribalism’, ‘Liminal Processes’, and ‘Navigating Relationships’. In the context of a wider social discourse regarding heterosexist hegemony, this project has the potential to increase psychotherapists’ awareness of the intersection of homosexuality and religion, and the diverse ways in which this plays out. The research invites therapists to consider any potentially socially constructed positions, and encourages a life-course perspective. Recommendations include providing high-quality training for therapists to understand, appreciate and interact with people from different cultures or belief systems from their own. Suggestions for future research include exploring heterosexual perspectives from within religious institutions, and exploration of the positive role of religion for non-heterosexual people.

Affix ki in Old Kanembu verbs: A backgrounding progressive-completive category

Old Kanembu has an aspectual category that derives from imperfective stems by the affix ki. The ki-forms occur in conflicting aspectual domains, the main semantic discrepancy being between progressive and completive readings. The progressive-completive is a rare, but not non-existent category in world languages, and Old Kanembu seems to be one such language. Completive events presuppose a phase of duration prior to the phase of completion. The selection of the aspectual phases in a given ki-form is determined by aspectual lexical semantic as well as by pragmatic and discourse factors of the situations described in Old Kanembu texts. The main unifying semantic and pragmatic property of various occurrences of ki-forms can be described as liminal process which establishes background for the following (foregrounded) event.

Reconciling the Conservation of Cultural Heritage with Rural Development

Reconciling the Conservation of Cultural Heritage with Rural Development

PANDEMI, NEW NORMAL, DAN LIMINALITAS KEHIDUPAN BERAGAMA DI JAWA TIMUR

The Covid-19 pandemic affects almost all dimensions of human life, including religious life. As an entity also affected by the pandemic, religious life manifests as part of the social problems and dilemmas in the pandemic era. This article tries to explain the liminal movement of religious life in East Java. The aim is to find some urgent dimensions regarding the practice of religious life in the era of the Covid-19 pandemic. The qualitative approach was chosen as a technique to find several essential aspects in the liminal process. By conducting interviews and being supported by online data categorized thematically, this technique can reinforce views and patterns of religious experience. Interviews were conducted with academics, mosque managers, religious leaders, mosque congregations, and community leaders. The research findings are that as a form of experience in the pandemic era, liminality can transmit ritual practices and cultural codes into new ways of doing and adapting religious life into new everyday habits. Amid an increasingly blurred rationality and demands for survival that continue to whack, people take various ways to resist epidemics and disasters and seek protection with various patterns, including religion.

How do exhibitors develop exhibition attachment? Evidence from China

Existing studies on exhibition attachment employ the concept of place attachment and use quantitative methods to explore its influencing factors and outcomes on the premise that exhibition attachment has been formed. However, the theoretical issue of how exhibition attachment is formed has rarely been explored. This study proposed a theoretical framework of the formation mechanism of exhibitors' exhibition attachment through the liminal state. We conducted field observations and in-depth semi-structured interviews of exhibitors attending the Guangzhou (China) International Professional Light and Sound Exhibitions for three years to collect data and employed grounded theory to explore these exhibitors' various changes during the entire exhibition liminal process. Our findings reveal that the formation of exhibition attachment is a complex process, involving four-dimensional changes in time, space, subject behavior, and psychology. In time, exhibitors are in pre-liminal (before the exhibition), liminal (during the exhibition), and post-liminal (after the exhibition) phases. Accordingly, the spatial perception of the exhibition evolved from a physical to an interactive space, and thereafter to an emotional space. By integrating the network platform constructed by the organizers and acquiring experience value, exhibitors can identify with and ultimately develop their attachment to the exhibition. Their psychological perception of the exhibition gradually changed from a functional business place to an important event that stimulates their personal and corporate growth. This study provides empirical evidence for the nature of liminality and expands our understanding of exhibition attachment. In addition, the transformation of brand identity before exhibition into exhibition identity after exhibition provides theoretical reference and practical guidance for the exhibition's organization and management.

Chestvovanie inklyuzivnosti: organizatsiya i ritual sporta massovogo uchastiya

We describe the best organizational practices, ceremonies, and rituals of mass participation sports events. In addition to participant observation of endurance races in distance running, triathlon, cycling, swimming, and cross-country skiing between 2003 and 2019, statistical and document analysis was used as the research methodology. Special focus was placed on triathlon in Europe. We argue that the phenomenon of mass participation sports is a consequence of the Expressive model of sports (EMS) as a social construct shared by the community. We explain how the EMS is implemented in the organization of events through rituals, conventions, and institutions. Firstly, within the EMS, the race finish is recognized as an achievement by the organizers and the participant’s community. Secondly, the EMS focuses on ordinary, non-elite amateurs as main event participants. This means an open entry to participation, with no selection by skill level; permissive time limits; equal distances, entry fees, and service levels for both elite and non-elite athletes; a joint festival and event venue; competition schedule comfortable for amateurs (non-elite races on the weekend). Thirdly, the EMS revises the linear ranking of competitions through a new hierarchy model, an age-weighted presentation of results, and an inclusive celebration ritual. This includes the grouping of athletes into ordinary amateurs with no reward and elite/professionals, who compete for absolute an ranking and/or prizes, a broad division of amateurs by age groups (95–99, 90–94, 85–89 and down to 20–24, 15–19) and the celebration of the oldest athletes and last finishers. The theoretical framework combines the insights from the civilization process, evolutionary and symbolic anthropology. Since endurance races are seen as rites of passage and liminal processes, we emphasize the importance of rituals as a means of a reconciliation of communitas.

Private Speech and Imagination: The Liminal Experience Between Myself and Others

This article presents the results of a theoretical investigation that aimed to develop a comprehensive model regarding the phenomenon of imagination and private speech as liminal experiences of consciousness. A theoretical articulation between the phenomena was developed to explain how imagination and private speech allow to make sense in the liminal space between inner and outer worlds. It is concluded that the double role of iconic and verbal signs allows to configure future experiences and to construct meanings in the transitional space between oneself and others. The iconic and verbal signs used in imaginative and private speech processes, respectively, allow to experience situations ‘as if they were real’, and at the same time, to distance from them as a mental play separated from reality. This is all based on an affective matrix which determines the emergence of mental meanings and mental content. This article constitutes a contribution to the study of micro-genetic intrapsychic liminal processes.

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.

The Texture of Entrepreneurship Programs: Revisiting Experiential Entrepreneurship Education Through the Lens of the Liminal–Liminoid Continuum

Positioning the liminal and the liminoid on a continuum, we define a “space” within which practice-led, experiential learning occurs. The more liminal processes within this space are associated with familiarity, wide social recognition, and relative security, the more liminoid are allied with risk-taking, innovation, creativity, and higher levels of uncertainty. Our research was conducted among student or founders on M-Entrep, an integrated Masters and venture creation program. Our findings suggest it is the coexistence of the liminal program experiences, such as the “rite of passage” of obtaining a Masters qualification, that act as a safety net as students embrace the fluidity and lack of security associated with the more liminoid experiences many associate with the venture creation endeavor. We argue that M-Entrep is an example of a program that interweaves liminal and liminoid processes, creating a texture that is both open and containing, facilitating “entrepreneuring” and encouraging students to reimagine themselves in new roles and statuses. By exploring entrepreneurship education through the lens of the liminal and the liminoid continuum, facilitators of entrepreneurship education programs can better appreciate, design, and influence the texture of this space to benefit the student learning experience.

A Different Take on the Liminal Process of Veterans Reintegration in Cultural Psychology

This article explores how a cultural psychological perspective may enhance the knowledge available regarding the reintegration of veterans. In order to achieve a clear understanding of this phenomenon, a literature review was conducted. The review found that culture could be used to combine the different aspects of transitioning, to create a more complex and coherent understanding of the process. Through the analysis, the following themes emerged: stigmatization of veterans, concerning political, scientific, and societal aspects, which may play a role in the reintegration process. Secondly, an unclear definition of culture was largely present in the articles treated, which may relate to the notion that cultural psychology is remarkably unrepresented in relation to this phenomenon. The role of stigmatization of veterans was discussed in relation to how individual veterans are viewed by others, but also by the veterans themselves. Finally, thoughts regarding further application of the cultural psychological perspective on reintegration were presented.

Liminaridad y mímesis monstruosa en La lengua de las mariposas y Pa negre

Butterfly (José Luis Cuerda, 1999) and Black Bread (Agustí Villaronga, 2010) are two films centered on children coming of age and the impact, respectively, of the war and postwar on that liminal process. Liminality shows that in times of uncertainty, mimesis is important vis-à-vis incorporation into the new state. René Girard illuminated how desire was not a romantic construction in terms of subject-object, but was mediated by a third factor that could usually generate rivalry and conflict. I analyze the mimetic conflictive operations in these films, which flourish during coming-of-age experiences in times of social crisis. Butterfly shows a sudden—much as the coup—mediation though deposition that incorporates the child into the Francoist communitas. In the case of Black Bread, this incorporation is gradual and operates in terms of putrefaction instead of deposition. These depictions read Franco's Spain as a monster-maker, a pledging society that both creates and accepts the monster-child as a peer.

Defending the Nation from her Nationalism(s)

This article offers and applies a framework for understanding nation-(re)-building after a major transition and crisis, like a war. It suggests socioanthropological concepts: liminality, mimesis, rites of passage, and tricksters. An understanding of the logic behind the emergence of nationalist tricksters can offer knowledge for an arguably better conflict-handling mechanism in deeply divided societies. It addresses, via the case study of Bosnia and Herzegovina (B&H), the following question: What is an adequate understanding of the postconflict self in B&H? The aim is to reconceptualize nationalism and the break-up of Yugoslavia (as well as the post-Dayton B&H) as a liminal process, in which trickster nationalists perpetuate schismatic conflict. The article concludes that trickster nationalists seem to be responsible for the current state of permanent liminality in B&H societies.

Liminality and the Limits of Law in Health Research Regulation: What are we Missing in the Spaces in-Between?

This article fundamentally challenges the way in which law currently regulates human health research. It invokes the anthropological concept of liminality—the quality of in-between-ness—to suggest deeper ways of understanding ongoing challenges in delivering acceptable and effective regulation of research involving human participants. In stark contrast to the structural regulatory spaces constructed by law, the metaphor of the liminal space is explored to explain what is lost through our failure to see health research regulation as an inherently human experiential process, involving potentially profound transformative events for participants and researchers alike. The implications for the future of health research regulation are then examined. In particular, the analysis calls into question key features of the current regulatory paradigm, and demands that we reconsider our own demands of law in this context. The argument is made that health research is a liminal process and that we fail to treat it as such. This requires a rethink of corollary regulation also in processual terms. Ultimately, the charge is to undertake a radical reimagining of regulatory space to accommodate and promote liminal regulatory spaces.

The revolutionary and Napoleonic wars in the Prussian political imaginary: a politico-anthropological genealogy of the ‘special’ German–French relations

This paper captures the processes by which the French revolutionary and Napoleonic wars redefined enduringly the logics of interaction between Prussia/Germany and France. It explains transformations of power, political imagination and social organisation that are key to understanding the ‘special’ nature of contemporary German–French relations. The paper finds that historical and international relations narratives fail to address the entire range of system-level transformations in the international order. Making use of approaches and concepts such as liminality, communitas, mimetic theory and the sacred, this paper proposes a novel, political anthropological perspective on such transformations, conceiving them as the interlocking of mimetic binds. First, I present wars and revolutions as liminal moments of collective threshold experiences. Second, I show how the liminal process functions at the international system-level. Third, I explain the challenge that the approach of liminality is posing to theories of international and systemic change. Fourth, I analyse the liminal process in Prussia and show how the said wars brought the French and the Prussians/Germans in a long-term mimetic rivalry. Finally, I argue that the proposed theoretical framework can take the research on international institutions and nationalism beyond the narratives of sociology, political science and historical studies.

Vägivaldne surm Aischylose tragöödias „Agamemnon“

Vägivaldne surm Aischylose tragöödias „Agamemnon“