Will Smith

10/29/2014

An Analysis of Schism and Ritual in Victor Turner

Victor Turners Schism and Continuity in an African Society: A Study of Ndembu Village
Life is primarily a realist ethnography, based on several years of direct observation of the village
life of the Ndembu tribe in Zambia. Turner describes his work as a histological study; an
attempt to analyze in close detail the form and functioning of a sub-system, the village, within a
wider system, the totality of Ndembu society. (Turner1) Indeed, his ethnographical analysis
operates not at the level of Ndembu society as whole, but rather at the village level. The book
begins with a historical and ecological background of the Ndembu, and presents both
observational data on the Ndembu along with an accordant analysis of their society. Turner was
working under the umbrella of the Rhodes-Livingstone Institute, whose purpose was to
investigate the effects of British colonialism on various tribes in Africa (xv). His ethnography
endeavors to catalogue the data gathered from his fieldworkwhich involved a variety of
different data gathering methodsalong with his observations regarding the functioning of the
Ndembus society. In particular, Turner provides extensive genealogical data on the Ndembu in
his village. He includes hut diagrams mapping the village, based on censuses he took in order to
learn the size of the village and its vicinages. He attended major rituals and formal meetings in
the village, and ultimately develops narratives for sequences of conflict and the crises that lead to
them. The book often uses specific case studies to illustrate these narratives, and in general
focuses on the discrete events within Ndembu society.
Turner develops his theory of social drama from his fieldwork observations of crises
arising and the series of rituals necessary to redress them. Turner clearly states that social drama
is his principle unit of description and analysis in the study of social process (xvii). Turner

Will Smith
10/29/2014

develops the social drama concept from a process of repeated observation of visible
contradictions between crucial principles governing village structure, and conflicts between
persons and groups in sets of social relations.(xvii). Turner views ritual performances as the
mechanism through which Ndembu social processes are articulated, and resolved, but he often
treats ritual as only a kind of social glue, not something to be analyzed in and of itself within this
particular work. The concept of social drama gives a narrative to a series of rituals as being one
of a series, each of which contains the same principal characters, and each one of which reflects
different aspects of the same structural conflicts. (94). Social dramas can be analyzed in phases
of breach, crisis, redressive action, and reintegration/schism (xxvi). Turner states that analysis of
social dramas shows how persons and groups divided in one set of social relations are allied in
other sets. (288).
Turner does not take an analytic perspective in developing his concept of social dramas,
but instead orients his research in terms of the context and cultural criteria of the Ndembu, but
rather situates himself in an immersive perspective of the Ndembu village in which he lives. For
instance, he discusses the context of village life as the origin of specific misfortunes that lead
to crises, and subdivisions according to the context of the situation that govern virilocal
marriage (140; 235). He also places a central focus on the deep regularities of conditioning and
social experience, and the immediate aspirations, ambitions, and other conscious goals and
strivings of individuals and groups in the here and now. (xxv). The experiences and actions of
individuals participating in rituals are the building blocks of Turners social dramas, not the
unconscious synchronic structures investigated by most anthropologists. (xxv). This is the
approach he would later call the anthropology of experience, because it focused on collecting
and analyzing the experiences of the observed, as opposed to only their observed behavior (i.e.

Will Smith
10/29/2014

breaking a purely analytical frame and utilizing an immersive one) [this seems fine, or just delete
it if it is too much I would say]. Additionally, Turner investigates the Ndembu from a second
person perspective instead of the third person. Herein lies the distinction between Turners work
and other realist ethnography, in that the experiences of the observed people might not be
considered purely objective facts.
Turner argues that the two main relation-structuring principles of Ndembu Society
which are fundamentally at odds with one another and create constant social crisesare the
organizational principles of matrilineal descent and virilocal marriage. The doctrine of
matrilineal descent, followed by the Ndembu, encompasses the control of rights to residence,
succession to office, and inheritance of property being determined via the mothers genealogy. It
is therefore in the best interests of matrilineages to remain cohesive. This would mean that men
of a matrilineage have an interest in keeping their sisters co-resident so that the proper
matrilineal elders can raise their sons, who would be the matrilineal heirs. But virilocal marriage
says that husbands have a right to have their wives live with them in their village, which would
normally be the village of their matrilineage. Therefore obviously there is a constant tension
between whether a husband will stay in his wifes village to maintain her matrilineage, or go
back to his own matrilineage and take her with him. Although all boys could be sent back to their
mothers brothers at puberty to subvert this tension, the Ndembu do not enact a rule requiring it,
and instead leave the decision up to individuals. Turner observes that these principles are
situationally incompatible and concludes that they are the source of constant crises in Ndembu
village life and, on a larger scale, their society as a whole (330).
Turner begins with a historical and ecological background of the region that the Ndembu
inhabit, and reveals various organizational customs to derive from this information. The Ndembu

Will Smith
10/29/2014

that Turner studies are warrior invaders from Lunda living in what was at the time Northern
Rhodesia on the border of Angola (2). The introductory portion of Turners work is the most
straightforwardly realist. He finds that the Ndembu in the region number approximately 17,000
and are the result of the Lunda empire fragmenting in the 18th century into various groups. By the
19th century activities such as slave raiding, cassava growing, and hunting lead these groups to
disperse even further. The presence of the British also caused political devolution to accelerate in
the region among the Lunda groups (xxiv). Turner ultimately finds that several elements of
Ndembu society are descended from the Lunda heritage. First he finds that the Ndembu have
kept the symbolic chieftainship of Lunda called Kanongesha (12). The local settlement pattern of
the Ndembu was a loose collection of villages that Turner terms vicinages, which are not
spatially defined areas with permanent boundaries, are taken from the invader traditions of the
Lunda (47). A typical village is a rough circle of approximately twelve square huts housing about
thirty people amid a clearing near thin forests on the high savannah plain (34; 63). However,
Ndembu villages are not necessarily enduring units with stable populations tied to particular
localities (61). A Ndembu village, at its bare roots, can constitute solely a headman, his uterine
siblings, and his and their children and grandchildren (235). As a final influence of Lunda
heritage, Turner attributes the sharp divide observed between men and womens work to the
Lunda hunter/warrior tradition. Since the Nembu descend from warriors, their society is based
around an older lineage of aristocratic customs related to being hunters and warriors. Turner
notes that the real aristocracy among the Jinga of western Angola a composed of hunters and
warriors and it is from these nobles that the Ndemdu descend (25). It follows from this that the
importance of huntingamong the Ndembu, a migrant group from Luunda, has its roots in
tradition. (27). This is why hunting remains the most vaunted activity within Ndembu society.

Will Smith
10/29/2014

However, cassava farming was also integrated into the subsistence system of the Ndembu that
was planted by both sexes (22). Although the women routinely maintained gardens planted with
cassava cuttings and cassava mush, the invariable staple of every meal, was prepared by a
woman and her daughters the food source of cassava was too important to the Ndembu for men
not to play a role in (21, 24).
Men actively participated in gardening activities when not hunting, and this together with
the main organizational principles of Ndembu society gives birth to the structure of the Ndembu
village, as well as to the nomadic nature of the villages. Women do most of the cooking,
planting, weeding, and harvesting (21, 22). Meanwhile, men are tasked with tree-felling and
clearing and burning the undergrowth (21). The activities that the Ndembu men engage in relate
to the construction of new villages, as the Ndembu are inherently nomadic, since they maintain
the ideals of their successful invader past, and the need to plant new crops requires moving to
new location to plant in fertile soil. Gardening is integral to Ndembu society though, and
transcends gender boundaries. Indeed the gardens usually indicated familial relations of the
Ndembu. Individual members of a family make adjacent gardens, and the wives of a man
would be placed at either side of his central cassava garden (22). The wife, or wives of a man
as well as the sister(s) of the wife or wives would be cultivated together, while the Brothers and
male matrilineal parallel cousins tend to cultivate in separate blocks of gardens. (22). The
gardening customs of Ndembu society are most likely the result of both of societys governing
organizational principlesmatrilineal descent and virilocal marriage. The gardens exemplify
these principles in their physical arrangement, as the matrilineal males are organized together,
with their wives and their female relations (i.e. matrilineal kin are located near the husband).

Will Smith
10/29/2014

Although mens and womens roles occasionally overlap, mens role in the productive
system is autonomous, and not seen as ancillary to womens work. Hunting is the most
prestigious activity in Ndembu society, as Turner points out it may almost be said that the
Ndembu social system is pivoted on the importance of hunting. (25) Interestingly, Turner notes
that the high value of hunting does not derive from the objective contribution made to the food
supply, but instead from social identification of both high social status and masculinity with the
activity (25). The hunters in neighboring Central and West African tribes compose the
aristocratic class, and this tradition is also present in Ndembu society. For the Ndembu hunting
and masculinity, or virility are symbolically equivalent, but also mystically dangerous to
female fertility (27). Because of this the Ndembu men must remove their hunting gear from the
hut of a woman in labor, and Ndembu women are not supposed to approach hunters village
shrines while pregnant, or trying to conceive (27).
The rituals of hunting help delineate hunters are the superior gender symbolically in
Ndembu society. Hunters fall into two groups: hunters with guns and hunters with bows and
traps (28). The hunters with guns participate in a cult that gives them free reign over Ndembu
territory as well as neighboring territory (29). This is an important way in which hunting
directly develops the effective aristocrat of Ndembu society, since these big game hunters have
the largest degree of freedom in the entire tribe. Their hunting activities are frequently solitary as
they are free to roam and interface with other individual cult members who control hunting rights
in various territories. These hunters may lead groups of boys and other men on weeklong
expeditions where they build a grass or leaf hut near an area known to be frequented by game
(29). Hunters usually have apprentices, and all of them school their sons in hunting and
woodcraft. Turner observes A hunter father is entitled to bestow one of a limited number of

Will Smith
10/29/2014

names normally reserved for hunters on his son, even although the latter may not be a hunter,
showing that the father-son link is highly ritualized in hunting (29). The presence of the ritual
creates an ongoing social drama of hunters as aristocrats, which is preserved through their
descendants, allowing for a mechanism that enabled a sustained aristocracy. Gun hunters are
given their aristocratic status because their number is very limited based on the skill of the
hunter, while most men remain hunters with traps and bows, and cannot ascend to the higher
ranks of the Wuyang cult (30).
The Ndembu are both highly mobile and individualistic leading to many vicinages being
split off from each village through fission due to the tension between matrilineal descent and
virilocal marriage, as well as pursuit of the best headmaster to live under. Chibwakata Village is
the principle village that Turner observes, and he notes that this village has given rise to no less
than twenty further villages by fission over the course of a two hundred year history (49). The
struggle between which principles to follow, matrilineal descent or virilocal marriage often
results with the custom that males go to their own mothers brothers villages in their early
teens (52). However, matrilineal kin are spread out through all of Ndembu villages, such that
upon death of the father, or divorce of the mother, males have a choice of matrilineal villages
they may choose to live in, and since marriage is brittle amongst the Ndembu, this creates a
high degree of movement within Ndembu society, often leading to fission within villages (52;
62). Families also often choose to leave villages with headmen seen as weak, and seek to move
to villages run by headmen with the reputation of being a wise and generous man (52). When
mothers have their children they are taken to the village of her closest matrilineal kin before
being returned to her husbands village after the birth (54). The birthing custom gives a clear
indication of the matrilineal organizing principle, however, the virilocal marriage and return of

Will Smith
10/29/2014

the wife to the husbands land for living purposes creates a confusion in people as to their natal
village, since it could be either the village of birth, or the village of residence (55). Turner also
states that the high mobility of Ndembu society is enhanced by the productive economy in
which men hunt for meat and women grow crops, and in which the mens role is valued higher
than the womens (59).
Women are the social glue holding Ndembu villages together as cohesive units. Turner
notes that women objectively contribute far more to the Ndembu village than men. It is entirely
womens work that even allows for the cohesion of the Ndembu village. Regularity, cohesion,
and persistenceare related to the roles of women both in production of crops and in
reproduction. (59). Womens labor literally produces the staple for physical survival of
Ndembu society and children always follow their mothers within that society (59, 62). This
creates a society where the social order at any given moment bears the stamp of male activity
but the past and future of the society are dominated by the mothers (60). Despite the fact there
is an extremely powerful bond between mother and her own children, the principle of virilocal
marriage that results from the high status of men disrupts the matricentric family by separating
daughter from mother and sister from brother (67). So, Turner identifies the conflicting
principles of matrilineal descent and virilocal marriage as both establishing Ndembu society by
giving women the role of creating the stable architecture of village units, and simultaneously
creating a society with an inherent instability in it by limiting deep lineages (223).
Hunting and other social rituals are ultimately responsible for the higher value of mens
labor over womens labor, while it contributes less. Womens work lacks any clear set of rituals
to symbolically bolster it in Ndembu society. The value of womens labor is lesser in some sense
because of the lack of ritualization. At the same time, there is a clear set of rituals surrounding

Will Smith
10/29/2014

womens procreative function. Womens main function in Ndembu society is procreation, as

evidenced by the popular Ndembu saying, For the man, huntsmanship; for the woman,
procreation. This also reiterates the strict separation of roles between the sexes (27). The rituals
of the Wuyang cult, for example, enhance the social status of hunters at each successive level
within the cult that they attainthe new level of social status is conferred regardless of the actual
amount of food that a hunter producers. This shows that ritualization is an important part of
giving value to labor in Ndembu society.
Finally, Turner shows that public rituals are what socially bind Ndembu villages and
Ndembu society as a whole. Turner identifies two main categories of public rituals in Ndembu
village life: life crisis rituals, and cults of affliction (292). Life crisis rituals are performed
during social and biological development of individuals. They also help to handle disturbances
in the social structure set up by the change in social status of the principle subject, or subjects of
the ritual, while also being a demonstration of the unity of all Ndembu (292). The three most
important life-crisis rituals of the Ndembu are the circumcision ritual for boys, puberty ritual for
girls, and the funeral ritual. Cults of affliction are rituals performed for individuals who have
been caught by the spirits of the deceased relatives whom they have forgotten to honor with
small giftsor by omitting their names during prayers (292). There is a spirit of a known
deceased relative in these cases that inflicts a living person known as a patient who is a potential
candidate for initiation into the cult, while a doctor is effectively an adept in that cult (292).
The initiation rituals contain elements that are similar to the afflictions, such as red clay in the
treatment of an affliction of menstrual disorders of women called Nukla (292). The doctorpatient relationship transcends kinship, and the more rituals one goes through, the higher ritual
status one gains within the cult (293). These rituals provide inter-village opportunities during an

Will Smith
10/29/2014

10

exoteric phase which involves big secular dances which typically take place in the village
clearing and are often cause for people from other villages to come and join the village of the
afflicted to dance, sing, drink, gossip, and so on. (294). The esoteric phases are carried out in
the privacy of the patients hut or the bush (294). Members of these cults are seen as
representative of the Ndembu as a whole, and the cults have members in most (and in some cases
all) of the Ndembu villages. (295) Hence, the cults rituals act as the social glue that effectively
holds Ndembu society together so long as the rituals are regularly performed (296).
Turner provides his final analysis of Ndembu society as being formed through a perpetual
re-integrative phase of social drama. He states a society continually threatened with
disintegration is continually performing reintegrative ritual, such that the [unity of all]
Ndembu is only perceived out of [breach of specific] relations, usually couched in terms of
kinship. (303). Hence, it is from the antagonistic relationship between the governing principles
of matrilineal descent and virilocal marriage, as well as the specifically formulated ritualization
of breaches of kinship that are symbolically denoted by the cults of affliction in their association
of afflictions with the breaking of social contracts through deceased kin. The exoteric rituals then
act as re-integrative rituals at the social level, leading to social dramas that produce social
cohesion that goes beyond kinship. In turn these series of rituals (i.e. social dramas) express the
unity of all Ndembu. By expressing this unity, the rituals producing Ndembu society, and
ultimately allow for village cohesion.

Will Smith
10/29/2014

11

Works Cited
Turner, Victor W. Schism And Continuity In An African Society; A Study Of Ndembu Village
Life. [New ed. Manchester, Eng.] Published on behalf of the Institute for Social Research,
University of Zambia, by Manchester University Press [1972: N.p., 1957. Print.