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Rites of Passage
Article · September 2018
DOI: 10.1002/9781118924396.wbiea2002
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Rites of Passage
GREGORY FORTH
University of Alberta, Canada
“Rites of passage” is a translation of the French Les rites de passage, the title of a 1909
book by anthropologist and folklorist Arnold van Gennep. Since the book’s publication,
the category has been in regular use among anthropologists, and the phrase has entered
everyday English. Other disciplines, notably psychology, history, and religious studies
(e.g., Holm and Bowker 1994), have taken up the concept of rites of passage. As a result,
the term often appears in contexts that have no direct connection with anthropology
or, for that matter, ritual.
Encountered in Christianity and other world religions as well as in small-scale
societies, rites of passage are rituals concerned with transferring individuals or groups
between social statuses and marking their incorporation into a typically higher or
more valued status, such as when a student ceases to be an undergraduate and becomes
a graduate. (As this example shows, such rites need have no reference to religious ideas
and can be entirely “secular.”) The category pertains to all sorts of status change, but its
most salient examples are rituals concerned with the human life cycle: birth, initiation
into adulthood, marriage, and death. Such rites have also been described as “transition
rituals” (“transition” and “change” are two glosses of the French passage), although this
phrase more specifically refers to the middle phase of rites of passage, wherein individuals undergoing the ritual fully belong neither to their old social status nor to a new one.
Particularly as they comprise activities expressing and celebrating transitions, rites
of passage further subsume ceremonies marking the end of temporal periods and the
beginning of new ones, for example the change from an old year to a new or the commencement of a new agricultural cycle. Van Gennep analyzed rites of passage within
a framework of territorial passage, referring especially to ancient rites accompanying
journeys between areas not marked by definite boundaries but separated by neutral
zones that belonged neither to one territory nor the other. The zone then corresponded
to the middle, transitional phase of rites of social passage. (At the same time, Van Gennep described journeys in their entirety as transitions, delineated by rituals performed
on departure and rites conducted on the traveler’s return.) In regard to both spatial
and social passages, the rituals served to ensure that persons passed safely through this
interstitial condition and successfully gained entry into the succeeding condition.
Insofar as rites of passage primarily concern change in a person’s social condition,
their connection with bodily changes and physical maturation is typically indirect;
thus, as Van Gennep showed, rites initiating youths into adulthood, in which whole
cohorts of youths often undergo the ritual together, rarely coincide with physiological
puberty ([1909] 1960, 65–67). The point applies equally to rituals accompanying
birth and death. Many people conceive of these phenomena as processes rather than
The International Encyclopedia of Anthropology. Edited by Hilary Callan.
© 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Published 2018 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/9781118924396.wbiea2002
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single events; accordingly, a person may only be ritually established as “dead” long
after his/her physical demise or indeed sometime before (as in what has been called
“voodoo death”). In a related vein, passage rituals do not merely reflect or publicize
changes, either in the bodily condition of ritual subjects or in their social position.
Rather, they are generally regarded as also possessing efficacy, and therefore as essential
to enacting the change in question. This dimension is perhaps clearest in what Austin
(1962) called “performative” acts, as exemplified by Western marriages, which do
not acquire legal force until a recognized authority makes a public declaration (e.g.,
“I now pronounce you husband and wife”). In a similar way, deceased persons may
be considered unable to enter the afterworld until the requisite mortuary ritual has
been conducted, and certain rites must be performed—including, for example, a
name-giving ritual, haircutting, or exposure to the earth or sun—before a newborn
child is accepted as a proper member of the community. In some societies, initiation
into adulthood is not fully accomplished until a person is married, and a marriage is
not considered valid until a couple has borne children (Van Gennep [1909] 1960, 48).
Form
Rites of passage are distinguishable from other rites mostly by their form: they comprise
three sorts of rites, designated “rites of separation,” “rites of transition,” and “rites of
incorporation.” Invoking an image of society as a house divided into rooms, in which
people move from one room to another and thus necessarily pass over thresholds
(limen in Latin), Van Gennep further distinguished these rituals, and the stages to
which they pertain, as preliminal, liminal, and postliminal. As the name suggests, rites
of separation separate subjects from their original status (e.g., childhood in the case
of initiations into adulthood); they frequently involve a change of place (e.g., subjects
leave their homes and take up temporary residence in a special building or a hut in
a forest). In male initiations, spatial removal can be understood as mainly separating
boys from women and especially their mothers (Van Gennep [1909] 1960, 74–75, 76).
Initiands may also be required to change their clothes and undergo rites of cleansing or
purification.
Rites of transition are those acts enjoined during the transitional stage. The stage can
be brief or can last for months or years. During this ambiguous phase, participants are
commonly viewed as both powerful and vulnerable; they may be considered as being
close to the world of spirits and therefore possibly regarded as dangerous to other
people as well as in danger themselves. Recalling Durkheim’s ([1912] 1915) definition
of religion as pertaining to what is set apart from “profane” or ordinary things, Van
Gennep described both the transitional phase and persons undergoing transition as
“sacred.” To protect participants and to ensure their separation from the larger community, both participants and other people are typically subject to a series of taboos. At the
same time, owing to their sacredness and association with divine beings, participants
may be granted special license, being allowed to steal from other community members
unopposed or to engage in normally prohibited sexual relations (Van Gennep [1909]
1960, 114–15), a feature also of transitional periods within temporal cycles.
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Another common component of the transitional phase of initiation rites is physical
operations: subjects may be required to undergo genital mutilation, scarification of the
face or body, or tattooing. Apart from effecting physical changes, these often painful
operations can be conceived as ordeals that subjects must survive in order to achieve a
new, desirable status; they have also been interpreted as producing dissonance, thereby
making the transition especially memorable and valued—a function also served by subjecting initiands to beatings and frightening images or stories. Stories told to youths
undergoing initiation also impart new knowledge (e.g., origin myths) that only adults
should properly know (Van Gennep [1909] 1960, 78–79, 82). On the other hand, physical hardships are further interpretable as means by which senior members of society,
and especially males, manifest and consolidate their control over juniors (La Fontaine
1986). Whether concerned with entrance into adulthood or a particular status or association (e.g., an age grade or secret society), initiations often involve not an individual
but a collectivity whose members undergo the rites at the same time and can as a result
develop a special lifelong relationship.
While initiations provide some of the clearest examples of rites governing the transitional stage, similar ideas and practices also apply to birth, marriage, and death. With
birth rituals, this stage typically extends from the child’s delivery to the time the child
is fully incorporated into the larger community. During this period, the child is often
conceived as especially vulnerable, so rites may be performed to lend it protection (e.g.,
against malevolent spiritual forces), and the mother, father, and other family members
may be subject to taboos. Van Gennep distinguished birth rituals focused on newborn
children from rites of passage pertaining to the expectant mother, or the mother and
father. In the second case, the transitional stage—also marked by prescriptions and
taboos on parental behavior intended to ensure the child’s safety and healthy development (for instance, couvade)—lasts from the time pregnancy is recognized until sometime after the delivery and so overlaps with transition rites concerning the child. As Van
Gennep showed ([1909] 1960, 41, 46), pregnancy can involve rites separating the expectant woman (and perhaps her husband as well) from society at large, while rites of childbirth concern her reincorporation (the Christian “churching” of mothers provides an
example) as well as the child’s separation from the womb and, in part, from the mother.
Whereas transitional rituals associated with newborn children may be concluded
quickly, the transitional phase of mortuary ritual can be far longer. Especially where the
dead person is subjected to secondary treatment (e.g., reburial of bones after the corpse
has decomposed), the liminal period can last years, and during this time survivors,
especially the deceased’s closest kin, must conduct rituals on behalf of the deceased,
observe special taboos, and keep separate from the larger community. In this way they
suffer deprivation comparable with what is often required of youths undergoing initiation and, according to Robert Hertz, paralleling the suffering of the deceased’s soul
before its full incorporation into the afterlife.
In many societies, marriage too is a process that proceeds in stages. Where a bride
takes up residence with her husband’s group (patrilocality), incorporation into this
group may occur long after the process of contracting the marriage begins, and also
after the couple can rightfully cohabit. In this situation, rites of incorporation involve
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the bride’s induction into a house or settlement spatially separate from her natal residence (Van Gennep [1909] 1960, 116). In a conceptual sense, this equally applies to
death and birth rituals, where respectively rites of incorporation concern the stage at
which the deceased soul is imagined to become fully incorporated into a community
of the dead (often associated with a relatively distant yet still earthly location, such as
an offshore island or a mountaintop) or a newborn child becomes a full member of the
community of the living (contrasting to an imagined world of the unborn).
With death, of course, such rituals have particular significance where people regard
spirits of the dead, or ancestors, as maintaining relations with the living and holding
power over them, just as living seniors do over juniors. As Hertz demonstrated, mortuary rites of incorporation can be especially elaborate and involve extended celebration
and considerable material expenditure. On a related note, Van Gennep showed how
the emphasis placed on separation, transition, and incorporation in rites of passage can
vary from society to society and that (somewhat contrary to expectation) death and
marriage rites often emphasize incorporation, whereas with birth rites the stress can be
on separation.
In other cases, the final ritual involves not so much incorporation as reincorporation, for example in initiations, where initiands are reintroduced into the same
community from which they were separated during the transitional stage. However,
they are reintroduced in a new social status—as adults and no longer as children or
adolescents—and in this respect can be regarded as new persons, like strangers who are
ritually inducted into a new community. Rites of passage cover not just initiations into
adulthood but also promotion to a higher age grade and entrance into secret societies,
exclusive clubs, and religious orders, and furthermore the installation of chiefs and
kings. As counterparts of initiation and marriage rites respectively, rites of banishment
and rituals formalizing divorce and widowhood also count as rites of passage (Van
Gennep [1909] 1960, 113, 144–45).
Although rites of separation, transition, and incorporation logically follow one
another in a linear sequence, as Van Gennep recognized (see, e.g., [1909] 1960, 54, 63,
78, 106), acts suggestive of two or more themes often occur in one and the same ritual
performance. Acts expressing separation from a former condition or relationship (e.g.,
circumcision) can thus appear in the transitional stage or in conjunction with rites
mainly devoted to incorporation. Or, indeed, a single act can simultaneously suggest
both themes. In addition, the three sorts of ritual may be found further divided into
substages (Van Gennep [1909] 1960, 43, 82, 149)—for example, when acts of separation
mark initiands’ exit from the transitional phase as a prelude to rituals (re)incorporating
them into their communities, or when a further period of transition follows after
a bride is introduced into her husband’s residence. Nevertheless, the sequence of
separation, transition, and incorporation appears generally to hold in regard to any
single set of rites concerning status change at a particular point in the life cycle.
Another enduring value of Van Gennep’s theory is his demonstration that rituals previously identified as, for example, fertility rites, blessings, and so on are alternatively
or additionally performances expressing and effecting transitions within the life cycle
or other changes of social status. He also called attention to how passage rituals regularly involve the same sorts of acts, conveying a similar symbolism, the world over.
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Thus, besides changes in spatial location signaling social transitions, Van Gennep (e.g.,
[1909] 1960, 38, 67, 77, 81, 91) described instances from various societies where transition rituals other than funerals involve acts expressing themes of death and rebirth,
by representing participants as dying in their previous status and being reborn in a new
one. At the same time, marriage provides the model for some initiations, as Van Gennep
demonstrated in regard to the investiture of nuns and sacred prostitutes (where a union
is contracted with a divinity).
Other widespread themes are exchange or gift giving and the taking of special
meals, especially as necessary components of incorporation rituals (Van Gennep
[1909] 1960, 34, 55–57). Familiar Western examples include birthdays and wedding
anniversaries. Another common theme is the special license permitted participants
in the transitional phase. Subsequent authors have identified several usages found
frequently in rites of passage but these find little or no mention in Van Gennep’s work.
For example, Leach (1961) drew attention to inversion or reversal—doing things
backward or acting in ways opposite to what is expected in ordinary life, examples of
which include dressing in clothes of the opposite sex, and social inferiors being waited
on or taking liberties with superiors. Inversion pertains especially to the transitional
phase of rites of passage and, among life-cycle rituals, has a special prominence at
funerals (see Forth [2009], who shows how affinal relationships, otherwise described
as enduring over generations, are represented as temporarily suspended during certain
Indonesian funerals). The same applies to the production of loud sounds (by playing
percussion instruments, discharging guns, and so on), identified by Needham (1967)
as a widespread practice in transition rituals.
Later developments
To a remarkable degree, Van Gennep’s thesis has stood the test of time, and, rather than
proffering substantial changes, anthropological successors have mostly elaborated on
themes already present in his work. However, there remains a question of how far rites of
passage compose a distinct class of rituals, since many features of the rites also occur in
rituals not concerned with status change. One example may be shamanic séances, which
involve shamans separating themselves from the community and repairing to a special
place where, typically after they become dissociated, their souls go on a journey to interact with spiritual beings; finally, the shaman regains consciousness and becomes reintegrated into the community. On the other hand, it could be argued that such shamanic
rituals are merely instances of transition ritual governing a form of territorial passage.
(Van Gennep mentioned rites inaugurating a person as a shaman, showing these to
be fundamentally similar to other rites of passage; however, it is not clear whether he
recognized these to be, in the same measure, identical to subsequent rites a shaman performs on belief of clients.) Yet it may still be questioned whether features Van Gennep
saw as distinctive of transitional rituals are not discernible in all ritual performances,
especially insofar as “rite” and “ceremony” describe activities that are typically “framed”
(Bateson [1972] 2000)—that is, separated in time and space from other activities—and
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in which participants are subject to special rules contrary to those that apply in ordinary life.
Despite this lack of definitional clarity (or perhaps because of it), Van Gennep’s
analysis of rites of passage has inspired subsequent anthropological understandings,
not just of ritual but also of other forms of social and cultural experience. Most notably,
Victor Turner ([1969] 1995, 1974) focused on the transitional (or liminal) phase of
passage rituals as an ambiguous state wherein participants are “betwixt and between”
recognized social statuses. Highlighting the common bonds that develop among people
undergoing transition rites together, he then proposed a concept of “communitas” as
a property characteristic of a great variety of phenomena other than life-cycle rituals,
including not only practices such as pilgrimage but also entire ways of life, such as
those of hippies, Gypsies, members of religious orders, and participants in millenarian
and other religious and sociopolitical movements. For Turner, “communitas” involved
“antistructure,” characterizing forms of activity marginal or exterior to established
social statuses and relationships and thus conducive to creativity and change. This
extension of Van Gennep’s interpretation of a particular class of rites has been criticized
by several authors. Among other things, it has been pointed out that activities and
conditions falling under the rubric of “communitas” can be “structured” and socially
regulated as much as are dominant institutions.
Similarly focusing on the transitional phase of passage rituals, Mary Douglas ([1966]
2002) drew on Van Gennep’s thesis in elaborating her theory of pollution and taboo.
Whereas Turner emphasized positive aspects of liminal and ambiguous states, however, Douglas stressed the negative, identifying anomalous phenomena—entities that,
like participants in rites of passage, are neither quite one thing nor the other—as impure
and potentially polluting and therefore dangerous. Dealing with specific rituals in particular societies, several authors have shown how rites of passage can acquire significance and serve purposes other than effecting the transfer of people between social
statuses and articulating the social categories that compose a social system. To cite one
example, Bloch (1986) has shown how, over a period of several centuries, a male initiation ritual on Madagascar has successively served different sociopolitical functions
even while the basic form of the ritual and meanings attached to particular ritual actions
have remained the same.
SEE ALSO: Age Systems and Kinship; Aging; Birthing Practices; Body Ornamenta-
tion, Evolutionary Approaches to; Consciousness, Altered States of; Couvade; Cults,
Male and Female; Death and Burial; Death and Dying; Douglas, Mary (1921–2007);
Durkheim, Émile (1858–1917); Elementary Forms of Religious Life, The / Les formes
élémentaires de la vie religieuse; France, Anthropology in; Global Mental Health;
Health, Youth, and Adolescence; Homosexuality, Ritualized; Hospitality; Initiation;
Life History: Evolution of Infancy, Childhood, and Adolescence; Liminality and the
Liminoid; Mauss, Marcel (1872–1950); Menstruation, Biosocial Perspectives on;
Personhood, Self, and Individual; Pilgrimage; Religion and Embodiment; Ritual; Ritual
and Cognition; Sacred Time; Sikhism; Turner, Victor (1920–83); United Kingdom,
Anthropology in; Value; Van Gennep, Arnold (1873–1957)
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REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING
Austin, John. 1962. How to Do Things With Words. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Bateson, Gregory. (1972) 2000. Steps to an Ecology of Mind. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
Bloch, Maurice. 1986. From Blessing to Violence: History and Ideology in the Circumcision Ritual
of the Merina of Madagascar. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Douglas, Mary. (1966) 2002. Purity and Danger. London: Routledge.
Durkheim, E. (1912) 1915. The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. Translated by J. W. Swain.
London: Allen & Unwin.
Forth, Gregory. 2009. “Separating the Dead: The Ritual Transformation of Affinal Exchange in
Central Flores.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (n.s.) 15: 557–74.
Holm, Jean, and John Bowker, eds. 1994. Rites of Passage. London: Pinter.
Horvath, Agnes, and Bjorn Thomassen, eds. 2015. Breaking Boundaries: Varieties of Liminality.
New York: Berghahn Books.
La Fontaine, Jean. 1986. Initiation. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Leach, Edmund. 1961. Rethinking Anthropology. London: Athlone Press.
Metcalf, Peter, and Richard Huntington. 1991. Celebrations of Death: The Anthropology of
Mortuary Ritual. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Needham. 1967. Percussion and transition. Man (n.s.) 2 (4): 606–14.
Turner, Victor. (1969) 1995. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-structure. Hawthorne, NY:
Aldine.
Turner, Victor. 1974. Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors: Symbolic Action in Human Society. Ithaca,
NY: Cornell University Press.
Van Gennep, Arnold. (1909) 1960. The Rites of Passage. Translated by M. B. Vizedom and G. L.
Caffee. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
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