Victor Witter Turner (28 May 1920 – 18 December 1983) was a British cultural anthropologist best known for his work on symbols, rituals, and rites of passage.
As a professor at the University of Chicago in the late 1950s, Turner began to apply his study of rituals and rites of passage to world religions and the lives of religious heroes.
[4][5] Turner explored Arnold van Gennep's threefold structure of rites of passage and expanding theories on the liminal phase.
Social hierarchies tend to dissolve, and in their place emerges a sense of equality, unity, and solidarity within the group, which Turner described as "communitas."
[7] Author Chuck Palahniuk was quoted in The Believer as saying, "So often what I’m doing is dramatizing the writings of Victor Turner, who wrote a lot about liminal and liminoid events.
Eligible works are "published books in various genres including ethnographic monographs, narratives, essays, biographies, memoirs, poetry, and drama.
"[11] Kirin Narayan's Storytellers, Saints and Scoundrels: Folk Narrative in Hindu Religious Teaching (1989) was the first Victor Turner Prize winner in 1990.