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Liminality and the Modern: Living Through the In-Between
This book provides the history and genealogy of an increasingly important 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.
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.
263 pages, Kindle Edition
First published August 28, 2014
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About the author
Bjørn Thomassen
13 books1 followerBjørn Thomassen is Professor at the Department of Social Sciences and Business at Roskilde Universitet, Denmark. His book Liminality and the Modern: Living Through the In-Between (2014) paved the way for novel understandings and applications of the liminality concept.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
November 29, 2016
This book will make you fall in love with anthropology, philosophy, theory and sociology.
Reading it felt like a total discovery, at least to me who had not heard anything of Liminality except through a critique of an Iranian novel.
The book introduces the concept of Liminality (though, as mentioned in the book, it is not a concept in the normal sense of the word, but more of a transitional idea). The writer manages to introduce difficult concepts and theoretical whatevers through an incredibly accessible language and an air of suspense specific to detective novels and Harry Potter.
Arnold Van Gennep and his interesting life story and professional trajectory serve as the background by means of which we learn about the idea of the liminal. The later chapters study the possibilities this idea provides for studying society, politics, anthropological phenomena and (most interestingly of all, to me at least) revolutions. Also, it introduces a lot of interesting theories from unknown theorists and anthropologists that totally feels like fresh air to someone who has only read the Routledge Series of twentieth century thinkers!
And, this book will make you HATE Emile Durkheim. So, if you like him or have admired, at some point in your life, him and his theories, be warned!
Reading it felt like a total discovery, at least to me who had not heard anything of Liminality except through a critique of an Iranian novel.
The book introduces the concept of Liminality (though, as mentioned in the book, it is not a concept in the normal sense of the word, but more of a transitional idea). The writer manages to introduce difficult concepts and theoretical whatevers through an incredibly accessible language and an air of suspense specific to detective novels and Harry Potter.
Arnold Van Gennep and his interesting life story and professional trajectory serve as the background by means of which we learn about the idea of the liminal. The later chapters study the possibilities this idea provides for studying society, politics, anthropological phenomena and (most interestingly of all, to me at least) revolutions. Also, it introduces a lot of interesting theories from unknown theorists and anthropologists that totally feels like fresh air to someone who has only read the Routledge Series of twentieth century thinkers!
And, this book will make you HATE Emile Durkheim. So, if you like him or have admired, at some point in your life, him and his theories, be warned!
February 20, 2023
In quite a number of ways, this book is a serious and important work. Understanding the concept of "liminality" (the "betwixt and between" state Victor Turner described), lies at the core. But there is much more happening as well. Thomassen gives a thorough sketch of the life and contributions of Arnold van Gennep, whose initial exploration of the liminal was picked up by Turner and made into an applicable critique of modern society. So the first half of the book is heavy with theory, although the chapters on van Gennep often amount to a critical biography that provides a reading of his books--many of which are not available in English. The conflict between van Gennep and Durkheim is center stage, and it is the eminent sociologist, Durkheim, who comes off as rigid, vengeful, and doctrinaire.
The chapters on van Gennep alone make this book worth reading. But then Thomassen goes on to critique Turner as well. While giving full credit to Turner's updating and expansion of van Gennep's ideas, he also notes, I think, the central weakness. That was Turner's tendency to write out the aspect of a rite of passage and return home in people, things, and situations Turner called liminoid, or liminal-like. This is important. And I thoroughly agree with Thomassen, here. The adoption of what amounts to being "liminoid" in many contemporary discussions of liminality allows for the romanticizing of the permanent outsider. As Thomassen will later note, when warning against a state of ongoing and unending liminality, such a social fixture produces social discord and a fragmented order that cannot survive. Or if it does survive it ushers in the manipulating "trickster" who constantly divides and manipulates the masses towards his own narcissistic ends. At the personal level, meanwhile, an unbounded liminality with no end yields individuals who are psychotic and sociopathic.
Beyond the chapters on van Gennep and Turner are extensive contextual analyses of Descartes and Hobbes as the intellectual representation and manifestation of the origins of the modern era in the seventeenth century. This is a time Thomassen considers liminal in and of its era. I do feel he shoehorns some of his discussion here to make it fit. But no matter, overall it solidly contributes to his thesis.
As an example of liminality in modern life, Thomassen gives us a chapter on bungee jumping. At first, I thought this tiresome. But he soon makes clear the chapter is about the role of games in modern liminality and the "rush" to gain experience. In this case, the experience is a sense of death that is simultaneously safe to go through with. Still, I was irritated that Thomassen seemed to be counting on an example that was so First World oriented and dependent. I was thinking of the similar "rites" in other cultures. And what happens? Thomassen then turned to many of those cultures and examined their anthropological record extensively. What had seemed a weakness for the book became a strength.
In the final chapter, Thomassen gets to his ultimate goal: to make liminality central to a reading of the anthropology of revolutions. Overall, this, too, is well argued. I might disagree, however, with his foregrounding of the public square as the liminal indicator of a successful revolution, where the old order is toppled institutionally and symbolically (think statues). I think this is a nineteenth century reading of things. Revolutions haven't been carried out successfully in urban settings for most of the twentieth century (think of Hitler's failed Beerhall putsch or maybe, even in some quarters Trumps January 6 protest or insurgency--depending on your politics. No the truly successful revolutions have taken root in the countryside and then moved to the urban public square. This is how Mao won in China, Ho Chi Minh became victorious in Vietnam, Castro emerged in Cuba. Even the Bolshevik Revolution was fought outside the cities between the Red Army and the White Armies. And the interesting point of this reading is that it still fits within the confines of a liminal revolt. For me, the jungle, the countryside, the wilderness are even more liminally representative than is the battle for the town square.
Thomassen tries to usher in the Arab Spring as an exemplar of a successful "public square" revolution as well. But he was writing too close (2014) to the time of the events themselves. In retrospect all those revolts floundered and died.
That leaves Thomassen with a discussion of the liminal and the modern. Here, he focuses on globalization, financial bubbles, and the erasure of borders in the modern world. That, too, might be a bit premature, as globalization is now clearly failing, the concept of national economies rebounding, and national conflict over boundaries building rather than receding (South China Sea, Ukraine, India-China frontier, Nepalese and Bhutanese borders with China, etc.). Liminality still has application to those issues and crises as well. But it does tend to break down some of Thomassen's arguments of a decade or so just a bit. Still, this is an excellent book.
The chapters on van Gennep alone make this book worth reading. But then Thomassen goes on to critique Turner as well. While giving full credit to Turner's updating and expansion of van Gennep's ideas, he also notes, I think, the central weakness. That was Turner's tendency to write out the aspect of a rite of passage and return home in people, things, and situations Turner called liminoid, or liminal-like. This is important. And I thoroughly agree with Thomassen, here. The adoption of what amounts to being "liminoid" in many contemporary discussions of liminality allows for the romanticizing of the permanent outsider. As Thomassen will later note, when warning against a state of ongoing and unending liminality, such a social fixture produces social discord and a fragmented order that cannot survive. Or if it does survive it ushers in the manipulating "trickster" who constantly divides and manipulates the masses towards his own narcissistic ends. At the personal level, meanwhile, an unbounded liminality with no end yields individuals who are psychotic and sociopathic.
Beyond the chapters on van Gennep and Turner are extensive contextual analyses of Descartes and Hobbes as the intellectual representation and manifestation of the origins of the modern era in the seventeenth century. This is a time Thomassen considers liminal in and of its era. I do feel he shoehorns some of his discussion here to make it fit. But no matter, overall it solidly contributes to his thesis.
As an example of liminality in modern life, Thomassen gives us a chapter on bungee jumping. At first, I thought this tiresome. But he soon makes clear the chapter is about the role of games in modern liminality and the "rush" to gain experience. In this case, the experience is a sense of death that is simultaneously safe to go through with. Still, I was irritated that Thomassen seemed to be counting on an example that was so First World oriented and dependent. I was thinking of the similar "rites" in other cultures. And what happens? Thomassen then turned to many of those cultures and examined their anthropological record extensively. What had seemed a weakness for the book became a strength.
In the final chapter, Thomassen gets to his ultimate goal: to make liminality central to a reading of the anthropology of revolutions. Overall, this, too, is well argued. I might disagree, however, with his foregrounding of the public square as the liminal indicator of a successful revolution, where the old order is toppled institutionally and symbolically (think statues). I think this is a nineteenth century reading of things. Revolutions haven't been carried out successfully in urban settings for most of the twentieth century (think of Hitler's failed Beerhall putsch or maybe, even in some quarters Trumps January 6 protest or insurgency--depending on your politics. No the truly successful revolutions have taken root in the countryside and then moved to the urban public square. This is how Mao won in China, Ho Chi Minh became victorious in Vietnam, Castro emerged in Cuba. Even the Bolshevik Revolution was fought outside the cities between the Red Army and the White Armies. And the interesting point of this reading is that it still fits within the confines of a liminal revolt. For me, the jungle, the countryside, the wilderness are even more liminally representative than is the battle for the town square.
Thomassen tries to usher in the Arab Spring as an exemplar of a successful "public square" revolution as well. But he was writing too close (2014) to the time of the events themselves. In retrospect all those revolts floundered and died.
That leaves Thomassen with a discussion of the liminal and the modern. Here, he focuses on globalization, financial bubbles, and the erasure of borders in the modern world. That, too, might be a bit premature, as globalization is now clearly failing, the concept of national economies rebounding, and national conflict over boundaries building rather than receding (South China Sea, Ukraine, India-China frontier, Nepalese and Bhutanese borders with China, etc.). Liminality still has application to those issues and crises as well. But it does tend to break down some of Thomassen's arguments of a decade or so just a bit. Still, this is an excellent book.
December 21, 2022
This might be the best book I've read this year. There is so much information about all kinds of interesting topics and they are provided through the content in such a way that it's impossible to forget them after you've read the book, they just stick in your memory because they are explained so clearly. The author is skilled in his writing, I only have praise for this book, endless gratitude for deciding to read it and genuine recommendations for anyone who wants to find new stuff to think about.
January 14, 2025
How do casinos, the cosmos, magic wands, bungee jumping, thrill seeking, nomadism, the 2008 housing collapse, and street names share a space together? Read this book and join in the questioning.
Potentially timeless work that puts down how, not the merely marginal, but liminal, in-between space has been glued to our eyelids in a homeless world, where rites of passage aren't given the time and focus that we need as a nourishment for our daily lives.
Can easily see accelerations namely in the uptick sport gambling activity in America, or the global rise in tricksters and influencers and overall weird Era we entered almost immediately following this book's publication.
There's so much to unpack about play, about being human in here.
I think about cliff diving and swinging form a rope into a river in the summers, how much that meant to us. Turns out there is a long and partially-well documented practice of man's relationship to falling, and that signifying something special.
Meanwhile, in an office park somewhere, someone gets promoted, and it's not mentioned, discussed or acknowledged. No ceremony to transition someone from one position to another, to acknowledge the passage of time. Not even a farce.
We are stuck. Turning hysterical misery to common unhappiness seems tougher bc commonness is escaping us, bc interiority was theorized and sold and ultimately imposed as a solution to religiosity and primitivism. It's tough seeing ourselves being seen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7w6R4...
Potentially timeless work that puts down how, not the merely marginal, but liminal, in-between space has been glued to our eyelids in a homeless world, where rites of passage aren't given the time and focus that we need as a nourishment for our daily lives.
Can easily see accelerations namely in the uptick sport gambling activity in America, or the global rise in tricksters and influencers and overall weird Era we entered almost immediately following this book's publication.
There's so much to unpack about play, about being human in here.
I think about cliff diving and swinging form a rope into a river in the summers, how much that meant to us. Turns out there is a long and partially-well documented practice of man's relationship to falling, and that signifying something special.
Meanwhile, in an office park somewhere, someone gets promoted, and it's not mentioned, discussed or acknowledged. No ceremony to transition someone from one position to another, to acknowledge the passage of time. Not even a farce.
We are stuck. Turning hysterical misery to common unhappiness seems tougher bc commonness is escaping us, bc interiority was theorized and sold and ultimately imposed as a solution to religiosity and primitivism. It's tough seeing ourselves being seen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7w6R4...
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews