Editing Ritual (section)

===Structure and anti-structure===
[[Victor Turner]] combined [[Arnold van Gennep]]'s model of the structure of initiation rites, and Gluckman's functionalist emphasis on the ritualization of social conflict to maintain social equilibrium, with a more structural model of symbols in ritual. Running counter to this emphasis on structured symbolic oppositions within a ritual was his exploration of the liminal phase of rites of passage, a phase in which "anti-structure" appears. In this phase, opposed states such as birth and death may be encompassed by a single act, object or phrase. The dynamic nature of symbols experienced in ritual provides a compelling personal experience; ritual is a "mechanism that periodically converts the obligatory into the desirable".{{sfnp|Turner|1967|p=[https://archive.org/details/forestofsymbolsa00turn_1/page/30 30]}}

[[Mary Douglas]], a British Functionalist, extended Turner's theory of ritual structure and anti-structure with her own contrasting set of terms "grid" and "group" in the book ''Natural Symbols''. Drawing on Levi-Strauss' Structuralist approach, she saw ritual as symbolic communication that constrained social behaviour. Grid is a scale referring to the degree to which a symbolic system is a shared frame of reference. Group refers to the degree people are tied into a tightly knit community. When graphed on two intersecting axes, four quadrants are possible: strong group/strong grid, strong group/weak grid, weak group/weak grid, weak group/strong grid. Douglas argued that societies with strong group or strong grid were marked by more ritual activity than those weak in either group or grid.<ref>{{cite book|last=Douglas|first=Mary|title=Natural Symbols: Explorations in Cosmology|year=1973|publisher=Vintage Books|location=New York}}</ref> (see also, [[#Ritual as a methodological measure of religiosity|section below]])

====Anti-structure and communitas====
{{main|Communitas}}
In his analysis of [[Rite of passage|rites of passage]], Victor Turner argued that the liminal phase - that period 'betwixt and between' - was marked by "two models of human interrelatedness, juxtaposed and alternating": structure and anti-structure (or ''communitas'').{{sfnp|Turner|1969|p=96}} While the ritual clearly articulated the cultural ideals of a society through ritual symbolism, the unrestrained festivities of the liminal period served to break down social barriers and to join the group into an undifferentiated unity with "no status, property, insignia, secular clothing, rank, kinship position, nothing to demarcate themselves from their fellows".{{sfnp|Turner|1967|pp=[https://archive.org/details/forestofsymbolsa00turn_1/page/96 96]–97}} These periods of symbolic inversion have been studied in a diverse range of rituals such as [[pilgrimage]]s and [[Yom Kippur]].<ref>{{cite book|last=Bell|first=Catherine|title=Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice|year=1992|publisher=Oxford University Press|location=Oxford|page=128}}</ref>

====Social dramas====
Beginning with Max Gluckman's concept of "rituals of rebellion", Victor Turner argued that many types of ritual also served as "social dramas" through which structural social tensions could be expressed, and temporarily resolved. Drawing on Van Gennep's model of initiation rites, Turner viewed these social dramas as a dynamic process through which the community renewed itself through the ritual creation of communitas during the "liminal phase". Turner analyzed the ritual events in 4 stages: breach in relations, crisis, redressive actions, and acts of reintegration. Like Gluckman, he argued these rituals maintain social order while facilitating disordered inversions, thereby moving people to a new status, just as in an initiation rite.<ref>{{cite book|last=Kuper|first=Adam|title=Anthropology and Anthropologists: The Modern British School|url=https://archive.org/details/anthropologyanth0000kupe|url-access=registration|year=1983|publisher=Routledge & Kegan Paul|location=London|pages=[https://archive.org/details/anthropologyanth0000kupe/page/156 156–57]|isbn=9780710094094 }}</ref>