Edith Turner (June 17, 1921 – June 18, 2016) was an English-American
anthropologist, poet, and post-secondary educator. In addition to collaborating with her husband,
Victor Witter Turner
Victor Witter Turner (28 May 1920 – 18 December 1983) was a British cultural anthropologist best known for his work on symbols, rituals, and rite of passage, rites of passage. His work, along with that of Clifford Geertz and others, is often ...
, on a number of early socio-cultural research projects concerning healing, ritual and ''
communitas
''Communitas'' is a Latin noun commonly referring either to an unstructured community in which people are equal, or to the very spirit of community. It also has special significance as a loanword in cultural anthropology and the social sciences. V ...
'', she continued to develop these topics following his death in 1983, especially ''communitas''. Edith Turner contributed to the study of humanistic anthropology and was a dedicated social activist her entire life.
Early life
Edith Lucy Brocklesby Davis was born in
Ely, England, on June 17, 1921, to Reverend Dr. George Brocklesby Davis and his wife Lucy Gertrude Davis (formerly Howard).
She attended the
Perse School for Girls
The Stephen Perse Foundation is a family of independent schools in Cambridge and Saffron Walden for students aged 1 to 18.
The Foundation is made up of 3 nurseries (2 in Cambridge and 1 in Saffron Walden, Essex) for ages 1–5, 2 Junior Schoo ...
, Cambridge, from 1933 to 1936 for her secondary education. She earned her bachelor's degree in 1938 from Alde House Domestic Science College.
Davis met her husband Victor Turner during World War II, while working as a "land girl" (agricultural labourer) in the
Women's Land Army
The Women's Land Army (WLA) was a British civilian organisation created in 1917 by the Board of Agriculture during the First World War to bring women into work in agriculture, replacing men called up to the military. Women who worked for the W ...
. He was serving as a noncombatant.
They were married on January 30, 1943, and had a total of five children together.
They include scientist
Robert Turner, poet
Frederick Turner, Irene Turner Wellman (author), and Rory Turner, an anthropology professor at
Goucher College
Goucher College ( ') is a private liberal arts college in Towson, Maryland. It was chartered in 1885 by a conference in Baltimore led by namesake John F. Goucher and local leaders of the Methodist Episcopal Church.https://archive.org/details/h ...
.
Move to the United States
In the 1950s she and her family moved to the United States, where her husband had a position at the
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chic ...
.
As Edith Turner, she completed her master's degree in literature 1980 through the
University of Virginia
The University of Virginia (UVA) is a public research university in Charlottesville, Virginia. Founded in 1819 by Thomas Jefferson, the university is ranked among the top academic institutions in the United States, with highly selective ad ...
. Her master's degree was titled "The Mysterious Duke: Shakespeare in the Light of Liminality."
In addition, she studied at University of Cape Town,
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...
, and
Smith College.
Academic life
In 1984, Edith Turner was appointed as a lecturer in anthropology at the University of Virginia.
To this day, she has some of the most widely spanning ethnographic fieldwork across the globe including, "the Ndembu of
Zambia
Zambia (), officially the Republic of Zambia, is a landlocked country at the crossroads of Central, Southern and East Africa, although it is typically referred to as being in Southern Africa at its most central point. Its neighbours are t ...
(1951–1954), the
Bagisu
The Gisu people, or ''Bamasaba'' people of Elgon, are a Bantu tribe of the Masaba people of eastern Uganda, closely related to the Bukusu people of Kenya. Bamasaba live mainly in the Mbale District of Uganda on the slopes of Mount Elgon.
Ancestor ...
of
Uganda
}), is a landlocked country in East Africa. The country is bordered to the east by Kenya, to the north by South Sudan, to the west by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to the south-west by Rwanda, and to the south by Tanzania. The sou ...
(1966),
pilgrimage
A pilgrimage is a journey, often into an unknown or foreign place, where a person goes in search of new or expanded meaning about their self, others, nature, or a higher good, through the experience. It can lead to a personal transformation, aft ...
sites in Mexico (1969, 1970), and pilgrimages in
Ireland
Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe, north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel (Grea ...
(1971, 1972), she also studied shrines in India and Sri Lanka (1979), Brazilian carnival and Afro-Brazilian cults (1979), Israeli rituals (1980), Japanese ritual and theater (1981), Yaqui ritual (1981, 1986), Israel pilgrimages (1983), African American healing churches (1985),
Civil War reenactments (1986–87), Korean shamanism (1987),
Inupiat festivals (1987–1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992, ˜ 1993), suburban American rituals, ritual of the
Saami of
Kola Peninsula
sjd, Куэлнэгк нёа̄ррк
, image_name= Kola peninsula.png
, image_caption= Kola Peninsula as a part of Murmansk Oblast
, image_size= 300px
, image_alt=
, map_image= Murmansk in Russia.svg
, map_caption = Location of Murmansk Oblas ...
in Russia (1993), commemorations of the 150th anniversary of the
Great Famine of Ireland (1995), and Christian groups in the United States (1996)".
Legacy
Edith Turner died on June 18, 2016. She has an award named after her at the University of Virginia. The Edie Turner Humanistic Anthropology Award acknowledges students at the University of Virginia whose teaching, activism, and writing recognize the richness of human experience.
Selected works
*with Victor W. Turner (co-author), ''Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture'' (1978), Columbia University Press 1995 paperback:
*Turner, Edith L. B. 1955. “The Money Economy Among the Mwinilunga Ndembu.” Rhodes-Livingston Journal 18:19–37.
*Turner, Edith L. B. 1987. ''The Spirit and the Drum: A Memoir of Africa.'' Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
*Turner, Edith L. B. 1990. “The Whale Decides: Eskimos’ and Ethnographer's Shared Consciousness on the Ice.” Etudes/Inuit/Studies ´ 14 (1–2): 39–54.
*Turner, Edith L. B., William Blodgett, Singelton Kahona, and Fideli Benwa. 1992. ''Experiencing Ritual: A New Interpretation of African Healing.'' Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
*Turner, Edith L. B. 1992. “Poetics and Experience in Anthropological Writing.” In Anthropology and Literature, edited by Paul Benson, 27–47. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
*Turner, Edith L. B. 1993. “The Reality of Spirits: A Tabooed or Permitted Field of Study.” Anthropology of Consciousness 4 (1): 9–12.
*Turner, Edith L. B. 1996. ''The Hands Feel It: Healing and Spirit Presence among a Northern Alaskan People.'' DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press.
*Turner, Edith L. B. 1997. “There Are No Peripheries to Humanity: Northern Alaska Nuclear Dumping and the Inupiat’s Search for ˜ Redress.” Anthropology and Humanism 22 (1): 95–109.
*Turner, Edith L. B. 2000. “Theology and the Anthropological Study of Spirit Events in an Inupiat’s Village.” In Anthropology and Theology: Gods, Icons and God-Talk, edited by Walter Randolph Adams and Frank A. Salamone, 137–61. Lanham, MD: University Press of America.
*Turner, Edith L. B. 2003. “Fear of Religious Emotion Versus the Need for Research that Encompasses the Fullest Experience.” In Selected Readings in the Anthropology of Religion: Theoretical and Methodological Essays, edited by Stephen D. Glazier and Charles A. Flowerday, 109–18. Westport, CT: Praeger.
*Turner, Edith L. B. 2005. ''Among the Healers: Stories of Spiritual and Ritual Healing Around the World.'' New York: Praeger.
*Turner, Edith L. B. 2006. ''The Heart of Lightness: The Life of an Anthropologist.'' New York: Berghahn.
*Turner, Edith L. B. 2011. “Our Lady of Knock: Reflections of a Believing Anthropologist.” New Hibernia Review 15 (2): 121–25.
*Turner, Edith L. B. 2012. ''Communitas: The Anthropology of Collective Joy.'' New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Turner, Edith
1921 births
2016 deaths
English anthropologists
British women anthropologists
British emigrants to the United States
People from Ely, Cambridgeshire