Victor Turner and Contemporary Cultural Performance

by Graham St John (Editor)

Upon the 25th anniversary of his passing, this collection addresses the wide application of Victor Turner’s thought to cultural performance in the early 21st century. From anthropology, sociology, and religious studies to performance, cultural, and media studies, Turner’s ideas have had a prodigious interdisciplinary impact. Examining his relevance in studies of performance and popular culture, media, and religion, along with the role of Edith Turner in the Turnerian project, contributors explore how these ideas have been re-engaged, renovated, and repurposed in studies of contemporary cultural performance.

368 pages, Library Binding

First published January 1, 2008

About the author

Graham St John, PhD, is a cultural anthropologist and historian with a research interest in transformational events, movements and figures. Among his books are Strange Attractor: The Hallucinatory Life of Terence McKenna (MIT Press 2025), Mystery School in Hyperspace: A Cultural History of DMT (North Atlantic Books 2015), Global Tribe: Technology, Spirituality and Psytrance (Equinox 2012), Technomad: Global Raving Countercultures (Equinox 2009), and the edited collections Weekend Societies: Electronic Dance Music Festivals and Event-Cultures (Bloomsbury 2017), The Local Scenes and Global Culture of Psytrance (Routledge 2010), Victor Turner and Contemporary Cultural Performance (Berghahn 2008), Rave Culture and Religion (Routledge 2004) and FreeNRG: Notes From the Edge of the Dance Floor (Commonground 2001). He was recently a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions fellow in the Dept of Arts, Humanities and Media at the University of Huddersfield and is currently Senior Research Fellow in the department. He is Executive Editor of Dancecult journal.