



Written by an internationally-known social scientist, the book demonstrates how the study of small-scale events may reveal as much about what it means to be a human being in society as do grand macrosocial and macrocultural surveys.Drawing on two and a half years of fieldwork, Victor Turner offers two thorough ethnographic studies of Ndembu revelatory ritual and divinatory techniques, with running commentaries on symbolism by a variety of Ndembu informants. The core of this book is a complete description of two important Ndembu rituals of affliction (Chihamba and Kayong'u), and an analysis of the system of ideas underlying more than a dozen modes of divination.
