Ritual Man in Africa

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Periodical article

Title:	Ritual Man in Africa
Author:	Horton, Robin
Year:	1964
Periodical:	Africa: Journal of the International African Institute
Volume:	34
Issue:	2
Period:	April
Pages:	85-104
Language:	English
Geographic terms:	Subsaharan Africa Africa
Subjects:	rites of passage African religions literature reviews (form) Religion and Witchcraft Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups)
External links:	https://www.jstor.org/stable/1157900 http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&res_dat=xri:pao:&rft_dat=xri:pao:article:4011-1964-034-00-000009
Abstract:	This paper starts with a critique of Prof. M. Gluckman's essay 'Les Rites de Passage' (Introduction to 'Essays in the Ritual of Social Relations', ed. M. Gluckman, Manchester University Press, 1962) and Dr. V.W. Turner's 'Chihamba: the White Spirit' (Rhodes-Livingstone Papers, no. 33, 1962). In what follows the author argues that the polarization of thought suggested by these two essays is basically unhelpful to the study of African religions. The author suggests as an approach which seems to him a fruitful middle way into the subject, to see African religious systems as the outcome of a model-making process which is found alike in the thought of science and in that of pre-science. The personalized nature of their models of particular social and technological conditions on the working-out of this probably universal process. Looking at African traditional thought in this light, many other wise puzzling features begin to make sense. Notes; summary in French.