Introduction
From the Latin, communis (community, fellowship, condescension, affability), various meanings of communitas (a term taken up under the aegis of the Roman Catholic Church traditions) include joint possession in the hands of a religious community, stockbreeding society, land subject to rights of common, the whole of the clergy and the people, common property tax in mass, sworn association, urban commune, the commonality of the inhabitants of a city having the status of a commune (especially in connection with a military expedition), the Commons (estate of the realm), and the common people. This Latin term was taken and developed by cultural anthropologist Victor Turner (1920–1983) to describe a society during a liminal period that is unstructured or rudimentarily structured with a “relatively undifferentiated comitatus, community, or even communion of equal individuals who submit together to the general authority of the ritual elders” (Turner 1969a: 96).
The Moment and...
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Bibliography
Aland, B., et al. (Eds.). (1998). Kατά Iωάννην [According to John]. In Greek-English New Testament (8th Rev. ed., pp. 247–319). Stuttgart, Germany: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft.
Buber, M. (1947/2002). Between man and man (trans: Smith, R.G.). London: Routledge.
Durrell, G. M. (1956/1984). My family and other animals. London: Penguin.
Eade, J. (1991/2000). Order and power at Lourdes: Lay helpers and the organization of a pilgrimage shrine. In J. Eade & M. J. Sallnow (Eds.), Contesting the sacred: The anthropology of Christian pilgrimage (pp. 51–76). Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Eade, J., & Sallnow, M. J. (1991/2000). Introduction. In J. Eade & M. J. Sallnow (Eds.), Contesting the sacred: The anthropology of Christian pilgrimage (pp. 1–29). Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Kristeva, J. (1989/1991). Strangers to ourselves (trans: Roudiez, L.S.). New York: Columbia University Press.
Lacan, J. (2005). Le triomphe de la religion, précédé de discours aux catholiques (J. A. Miller Ed.). Paris: Éditions du Seuil.
Niemeyer, J. F., van de Kieft, C., & Lake-Schoonebeek, G. S. M. M. (1976/1993). Mediae latinitatis lexicon minus. Leiden: Brill.
Office of the General Assembly. (2002). The [Westminster] larger catechism. In The constitution of the Presbyterian Church (U. S. A.), Part i: Book of confessions (pp. 195–243). Louisville, KY: Presbyterian Distribution Services.
Raff, J. (2000). Jung and the alchemical imagination. York Beach: Nicholas-Hayes.
Turner, E. (2004). Rites of communitas. In F. A. Salamone (Ed.), Encyclopedia of religious rites, rituals, and festivals (pp. 97–101). New York: Routledge.
Turner, V. (1969a). Liminality and communitas. In The ritual process: Structure and anti-structure (pp. 94–130). Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Turner, V. (1969b). Communitas: Model and process. In The ritual process: Structure and anti-structure (pp. 131–165). Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Turner, V. (1974). Passages, margins, and poverty: Religious symbols of communitas. In Dramas, fields, and metaphors: Symbolic action in human society (pp. 231–271). Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Turner, V. (1982). Liminal to liminoid in play, flow, ritual: An essay in comparative symbology. In From ritual to theatre: The human seriousness of play (pp. 20–60). New York: Performing Arts Journal.
Turner, V. (1983/1987). Carnaval in Rio: Dionysian discourse in an industrializing society. In The anthropology of performance (pp. 123–138). New York: Performing Arts Journal.
Turner, V. (1987). The anthropology of performance. In The anthropology of performance (pp. 72–98). New York: Performing Arts Journal.
Turner, V., & Turner, E. (1978). Image and pilgrimage in Christian culture: Anthropological perspectives. New York: Columbia University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2014 Springer Science+Business Media New York
About this entry
Cite this entry
Killinger, J.E. (2014). Communitas. In: Leeming, D.A. (eds) Encyclopedia of Psychology and Religion. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6086-2_121
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6086-2_121
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
Print ISBN: 978-1-4614-6085-5
Online ISBN: 978-1-4614-6086-2
eBook Packages: Behavioral Science