This book breathes new life into the study of liminal experiences of transition and transformation, or ‘becoming’. It brings fresh insight into affect and emotion, dream and imagination, and fabulation and symbolism by tracing their relation to experiences of liminality. The author proposes a distinctive theory of the relationship between psychology and the social sciences with much to share with the arts. Its premise is that psychosocial existence is not made of ‘stuff’ like building blocks, but of happenings and events in which the many elements that compose our lives are temporarily drawn together. The social is not a thing but a flow of processes, and our personal subjectivity is part of that flow, ‘selves’ being tightly interwoven with ‘others’. But there are breaks and ruptures in the flow, and during these liminal occasions our experience unravels and is rewoven. This book puts such moments at the core of the psychosocial research agenda. Of transdisciplinary scope, it will appeal beyond psychosocial studies and social psychology to all scholars interested in the interface between experience and social (dis)order.

Liminality has become a key concept within the social sciences, with a growing number of publications devoted to it in recent years. The concept is needed to address those aspects of human experience and social life that fall outside of ordered structures. In contrast to the clearly defined roles and routines that define so much of industrial work and economic life, it highlights spaces of transition, indefiniteness, ambiguity, play and creativity. Thus, it is an indispensable concept and a necessary counterweight to the overemphasis on structural influences on human behavior. This book aims to use the concept of liminality to develop a culturally and experientially sensitive psychology. This is accomplished by first setting out an original theoretical framework focused on understanding the ‘liminal sources of cultural experience,’ and second an application of concept to a number of different domains, such as tourism, pilgrimage, aesthetics, children’s play, art therapy, and medical diagnosis. Finally, all these domains are then brought together in a concluding commentary chapter that puts them in relation to an overarching theoretical framework. This book will be useful for graduate students and researchers in cultural psychology, critical psychology, psychosocial psychology, developmental psychology, health psychology, anthropology and the social sciences, cultural studies among others.

This book provides the history and genealogy of an increasingly important subject: liminality. Coming to the fore in recent years in social and political theory and extending beyond is original use as developed within anthropology, liminality has come to denote spaces and moments in which the taken-for-granted order of the world ceases to exist and novel forms emerge, often in unpredictable ways. Liminality and the Modern offers a comprehensive introduction to this concept, discussing its development and laying out a conceptual and experiential framework for thinking about change in terms of liminality. Applying this framework to questions surrounding the implosion of ’non-spaces’, the analysis of major historical periods and the study of political revolution, the book also explores its possible uses in social science research and its implications for our understanding of the uncertainty and contingency of the liquid structures of modern society. Shedding new light on a concept central to social thought, as well as its capacity for pushing social and political theory in new directions, this book will be of interest to scholars across the social sciences and philosophy working in fields such as social, political and anthropological theory, cultural studies, social and cultural geography, and historical anthropology and sociology.

Liminality and the Modern offers a comprehensive introduction to this concept, discussing its development and laying out a conceptual and experiential framework for thinking about change in terms of liminality. Applying this framework to questions surrounding the implosion of ‘non-spaces’, the analysis of major historical periods and the study of political revolution, the book also explores its possible uses in social science research and its implications for our understanding of the uncertainty and contingency of the liquid structures of modern society.

The urgent question for Christian mission in North America today has to do with churches and congregations and the crisis of their identity in the culture of modernity. According to Alan J. Roxburgh, the church has shifted from the center of culture to the margins. This text examines this shift and explores Victor Turner's work on liminality (a term describing the transition process that accompanies a change of state or social position).

Liminality is not typically associated with tourism, even though it can be viewed as an intrinsic element of the social/cultural experiences of tourism. Liminality in Tourism: Spatial and Temporal Considerations aims to build upon the tradition of liminality as expounded in social and anthropological disciplines, elaborating on the theoretical principles and concepts found within certain aspects of the tourist journey and tourist product. The emergence of post-modern society has impelled a change in the tourist gaze towards a more experiential and adventuresome globalised experience. An important aspect of the tourist phenomenon of liminality is where a transformative experience is triggered by entering a liminoid tourist space, leaving the tourist permanently psychologically transformed, before returning to normalised society. The narrative provides a new perspective on the tourist experience with a provocative examination into the multidimensional aspects of tourism, by exploring tourism within the spatial and temporal aspects of liminal landscapes. Covid-19 has further changed the rubric of tourism. Until the current pandemic, tourism has basically been a fun experience. In a post pandemic world, however, the tourist is now facing an unknown future which will almost certainly affect tourism liminality. This book presents the reader with a wealth of examples and case studies closely illustrating the association between tourism and liminal experiences. The geographical perspectives explore the more subconscious outcomes of destination and tourist product consumption. The book should be a useful reader to tourism geography where the theory of liminality can be synthesized into tourist experiences. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal Tourism Geographies.

In a time of flexible and mutable work arrangements, there is hardly a domain of organizing that has not been affected by liminality. Temporary workers who switch companies based on projects, consultants who operate at the boundaries between the consultant and the client companies, or ‘hybrid entrepreneurs’ who start new ventures, while still keeping their previous job, are examples of liminality in organizations. Liminality is also felt by managers who handle interorganizational relationships within customer-supplier networks or scientists who, albeit affiliated with R&D units, have strong ties with their scientific communities, acknowledging that they belong to neither setting thoroughly. Precious hints for enriching our comprehension of liminality in organizational settings can be conveyed by the reflection that has flourished in different fields. This book advances knowledge of liminality management by elaborating on a model that puts together aspects of the liminal process that have been mostly described in a separate way so far, benefiting from the input provided by experience in sociology, medicine, and education. Through the articulation of a model that accounts for the antecedents, content, and consequences of liminality in organizations, the book intends to prompt quantitative research on this topic. It will be of value to those interested in organizational behavior, organization and management, marketing, sociology of work, and sociology of organizations.

Beyond Liminality: Ontologies of Abundant Betweenness examines the concept of liminality in the social sciences and humanities, and advocates for a more critical use of the concept while offering more precise alternatives. Originally conceived in response to the near-universal ritualization of changes of status (i.e., "rites of passage"), liminality was a welcome and much-needed correction to the reigning static and structural models of culture at the time. However, it soon escaped its initial realm and was enthusiastically—and mostly uncritically—absorbed by many if not all scholarly disciplines. The very success of the concept suggests that there is something about it that resonates with our own cultural sentiments. However, the assumptions that underlie diagnoses of liminality are seldom noted and even more seldom analyzed and critiqued. This book examines the history of the concept, its evolution, and its current status, and asks whether liminality accurately reflects lived realities which might better be described by fluidity, hybridity, multiplicity, constant motion and recombination, and abundant betweenness. Beyond Liminality: Ontologies of Abundant Betweenness is key reading for scholars and students across the social sciences and humanities interested in ritual, performance, identity formation, rights, ontology, and epistemology.

U2’s ongoing popular appeal is constructed in the spaces between band and fan, commercialism and community, spirituality and nihilism; finding meaning in a surface-oriented popular culture and contradiction in the depths of political and faith-based institutions. The band’s long-term success and continued relevance is a result of their ability to hold these energies in tension without one subsuming the other—to live in the liminal space that such contradictions invite. U2’s mythic trajectory was born from a bygone electronic era, realized in our current digital era but with an eye on the forthcoming virtual era; it is a new myth for the whole world, found in the most unlikely of places, popular culture. This book approaches the band’s mythic trajectory through a combination of rhetorical analysis and autoethnographic explorations that unveil the more personal experiences most of us have with media. Drawing heavily upon the works of Marshal McLuhan, Joseph Campbell, Thomas S. Frentz, and Janice Hocker Rushing, Myth, Fan Culture, and the Popular Appeal of Liminality in the Music of U2 unpacks U2’s popular appeal through the lenses of Agape (spiritual, communal love), Amor (romantic love), and Eros (erotic love). Check out the book's official website for additional information: https//:www.u2mythos.com

Betwixt and Between Liminality and Marginality: Mind the Gap offers an interdisciplinary thinking on “the marginal” within society. Using the framework of Victor Turner’s earlier notions of liminality, the book both challenges Turner’s symbolic anthropology, and celebrates its continued influence across disciplines, and under new theoretical constraints. Liminality in its simplest forms provides language for meaningful approaches to articulate transition and change. It also represents complex social theories beyond Turner’s classical symbolic approach. While demonstrating the enduring relevance of Turner’s language for expressing transition, this volume keeps an eye toward the validity of critiques against him. It thus theorizes with Turner’s work while updating, even abandoning, some of his primary ideas, when applying it to contemporary social issues. A central focus of this volume is marginality. Turner recognized that marginals, like liminars, are betwixt and between; however, they lack assurance that their ambiguity will be resolved. This volume explores the dialogic relationship of space and agency, to recognize marginal groups and people, and inquire, without a harmonious resolution, what happens to the marginals? Have race, class, gender, and sexual orientation become the space for thinking about reintegration and communitas? Each chapter examines how marginal groups, or liminal spaces and ideas, destabilize, shape, and affect the dominant culture.