Mukanda: The Rite of Circumcision

Name: Mukanda: The Rite of Circumcision
Author: Victor Turner, 1920-1983

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Abstract / Summary: Working draft of a manuscript titled "Mukanda". Abstract: "The Ndembu circumcision rites, called Mukanda like those of the Chokwe, Luvale and Luchazi, provide an interesting variation on the general pattern. I present an account, based on personal observation and informants' description, of the Ndembu rites, partly to add to the general store of ethnographic information about such rites, and, more importantly, to provide for the kind of analysis I am undertaking in this book. With the latter in mind, I present Mukanda as a set of successive episodes, based primarily on my own observations of a particular performance, with interpolated comments and exegesis of symbolism by Ndembu informants. As in the other chapters of this book the symbolic act and the symbolic object constitute my basic units of study."
Field of Interest: Anthropology
Content Type: Essay
Duration: 0 sec
Anthropologist / Ethnographer: Victor Turner, 1920-1983
Format: Text
Page Count: 10
Page Range: 1-10
Subject: Anthropology, Social Sciences, Cultural anthropology, Circumcisions, Religious rites and ceremonies, Antropologia Cultural, Antropología Cultural, Mukenda, North-Western Province (Zambia), Mukanda, North-Western Province (Zambia), Lunda
Keywords and Translated Subjects: Antropologia Cultural, Antropología Cultural, Mukenda, North-Western Province (Zambia)