Liminality
Liminality
!Initiation ritual of boys in [Malawi. The ritual marks the passage from child to adult male, a liminal stage in the context of their lives.](//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/31/InitiationritualofboysinMalawi.jpg/250px-InitiationritualofboysinMalawi.jpg)
Arnold van Gennep
Van Gennep, who coined the term liminality, published in 1909 his Rites de Passage, a work that explores and develops the concept of liminality in the context of rites in small-scale societies. Van Gennep began his book by identifying the various categories of rites. He distinguished between those that result in a change of status for an individual or social group, and those that signify transitions in the passage of time. In doing so, he placed a particular emphasis on rites of passage, and claimed that "such rituals marking, helping, or celebrating individual or collective passages through the cycle of life or of nature exist in every culture, and share a specific three-fold sequential structure".
Arnold van Gennep
This three-fold structure, as established by van Gennep, is made up of the following components:
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