Special edition: Thinking Victor Turner's 'liminality' from southern Africa today

The papers in this special issue were first presented at a workshop at Stellenbosch University in October 2009. The theme of the workshop was the concept of liminality, denoting the middle phase of any ritual process, as developed by Victor Turner (1920-1983), as well as its applications. Andrew D. Spiegel challenges Turner's liminal-liminoid distinction on the basis of examples from South Africa. Sierk Ybema, Nic Beech and Nick Ellis also use South African examples to introduce the use of Turner's work in organization studies. Rebecca Sutton, Darshan Vigneswaran and Harry Wels present the process of waiting as a transitory and transformative, hence liminal, experience in which individuals (foreign migrants) and organizations (the South African State bureaucracy) meet. Oliver Human and Steven Robins deal with the FIFA 2010 World Cup and the elusive spirit of communitas. The next four articles link Turner's ideas to policy implementation: Frans Kamsteeg analyses one of the recent South African higher educational institutional mergers; Kees van der Waal explores the use of the concept of liminality for interpreting manifestations of Afrikaner cultural politics; Diana Gibson discusses the liminality of kidney failure in South African State hospitals; and Marja Spierenburg examines the politics of the liminal and the liminoid in transfrontier conservation in southern Africa. [ASC Leiden abstract]