Behavioral science · construct
Liminality
Victor Turner, 1969 (from van Gennep, 1909)
Every rite of passage has a middle — the stretch after the old status has been shed and before the new one is conferred, when a person is neither what they were nor what they will be. Turner, building on van Gennep, named this threshold liminality and noticed how much happens there: hierarchy suspended, strangers bound into sudden equality, the ordinary rules held in abeyance until the far side.
Working definition
The middle phase of van Gennep's separation-liminality-reincorporation sequence; marked by ambiguity, communitas, and suspended structure.
Where Vela uses this
Liminality gives Vela a vocabulary for thresholds — conversion, initiation, the in-between of becoming that recurs across the religion and learning axes. It pairs naturally with collective effervescence (the heat that often fills the threshold) and with the formation thread that runs through the emotion lens. Vela reads it as a shape that appears in many traditions, not as the property of any one.
Origin & lineage
van Gennep (*The Rites of Passage*, 1909) → Turner's elaboration of the liminal phase and *communitas* (1969) → wide application in ritual studies, performance theory, and organizational change ('liminal' careers and transitions).
Where it shows up in Vela
Magazine
Emotions
Related concepts
- Collective effervescence
Sits next to — Communitas in the liminal phase is effervescence at ritual scale.
Scholars
Honest framing
The concept travels so well that it is sometimes applied to any in-between at all, which thins it. Vela tries to keep it anchored to genuine status-transition rather than using it as a synonym for uncertainty.