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4. Facilitating Liminality 149
4.2. Theoretical Background
4.2.1. Liminality
The notion of ‘liminality’ has found a revived appeal in organization studies since the last decade and builds on insights from anthropologists Arnold van Gennep [1873-1957] and Victor Turner [1920-1983]. Liminality’ finds its origin in the Latin word of limen, which means ‘threshold’. For instance, in his book Les Rites de Passages, van Gennep (originally published in 1909; translated in 1960) describes the particular rite which turns boys into men. He suggests that each rite unfolds in three phases, going from ‘rites of separation’, through ‘transition rites’, to ‘rites of incorporation’. The first phase involves a symbolic detachment of subjects from previous structures. The second or the middle phase brings actors in liminality, which means that they are structurally ‘in between’, neither completely detached nor completely incorporated back into existing structures. In the final phase, that of incorporation, the liminal personae gained a renewed state and move back into existing structures.
Building on this work of Gennep, Turner (2008 [1969]) elaborated on the middle phase of liminality by further eliciting the experience and position of the liminal personae. He suggested that liminal personae are “betwixt and between the positions assigned and arrayed by law, custom, convention and ceremonial” (1982: 68). And accordingly, “temporarily undefined, beyond the normative social structure” (Turner 1982: 27).
Liminality is imbued with specific feelings, upon which Turner espe- cially elaborated in his early work (2008 [1969]). In particular, he shows that being “not strictly definable” (Söderlund and Borg 2017: 3) goes accompanied with feelings of ambiguity, freedom, and community. First, people undergoing the liminality might experience ambiguity as they pass ‘through a realm that has few or none of the attributes of the past or coming state’ (Turner 1987: 5). Ambiguity refers to a lack of compre- hension about what is happening and an inability to compensate for this with existing information (Weick 1998). Secondly, feelings of freedom might emerge or what Turner (2012: 3) called ‘a spring of pure possibility’. Because liminality offers a sort of anti-structure vis-a-vis the dominant structure, people might have the feeling that ‘anything may happen’ (Turner 1987: 13). Finally, liminality commonly triggers a communitas (Turner 2008a [1969]; Turner 2012) or what is commonly referred to as feelings of community. As liminality is part of a community ‘rite’, it can enhance feelings of belonging to the collective as well as generate sensa- tions of identity and kinship.