Key concept: symbolism practice questions.

Turner, working from van Gennep's model, noted that those in the middle phase of an initiation are commonly stripped of names, clothing and rank, and are spoken of as dead, as unborn or as invisible. He explained these symbols as

• a test of endurance, because the hardships of the phase measure whether the initiands deserve the new position
• expressions of a condition outside the ordinary order of social positions, through which initiands must pass
• a means of concealment, because those undergoing the rite must not be recognised by outsiders while it lasts
• survivals from an earlier stage of the society, because the symbols no longer answer to anything now present

Answer: expressions of a condition outside the ordinary order of social positions, through which initiands must pass

Liminal symbols state what the initiands are not: no longer in the position they have left and not yet in the one they will take, they are represented in the imagery of death and of birth. Reading the imagery as punishment or as disguise misses that the ambiguity is the work of the phase.

Turner recorded that Ndembu women in what was then Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) in the 1950s said the white sap of the mudyi tree stood for breast milk and for the matrilineage, while its use in girls' initiation also marked the separation of a daughter from her mother and the tension between wives and their husbands' kin. This property of the symbol is called

• arbitrariness, since nothing about the tree itself determines what it is taken to mean
• multivocality, the capacity of one symbol to carry several meanings at once
• syncretism, since two religious traditions have been combined in one ritual object
• liminality, since the tree appears at the middle stage of the initiation ritual

Answer: multivocality, the capacity of one symbol to carry several meanings at once

Multivocality is why dominant ritual symbols can hold a community together and express its conflicts simultaneously: the sap unites the normative pole of matriliny with the emotional pole of nursing and separation. A symbol reduced to one meaning stops doing this work.

An analyst argues that a body of myths should be read as a set of transformations of a small number of paired contrasts, such as raw and cooked or nature and culture, and that the meaning of any single element lies in its position within those contrasts rather than in what tellers say it means. This approach to symbolism is

• interpretive anthropology, which reads symbols as a text about the people who use them
• structural functionalism, which explains symbols by their contribution to social order
• historical particularism, which explains each symbolic form by the history of its own society
• structuralism, associated with Levi-Strauss, since meaning lies in the contrasts themselves

Answer: structuralism, associated with Levi-Strauss, since meaning lies in the contrasts themselves

Structuralism locates meaning in relations between elements and in structures of the mind, which is why it can proceed without the participants' own commentary. That indifference to what tellers say is exactly what interpretive anthropologists such as Geertz objected to.

Douglas argued in 1966 that the creatures prohibited in the dietary rules of Leviticus are those that do not fit the classification the text itself sets out: water creatures without both fins and scales, land creatures that do not both chew the cud and have cloven hooves. Her general claim is that

• prohibitions of this kind track the health risks that the forbidden animals happen to carry
• the rules were arbitrary, since no order can be found in lists of this kind
• the rules single out anomalies, because what falls between categories is treated as dangerous
• such rules exist only in written religious traditions and have no parallel in societies without scripture

Answer: the rules single out anomalies, because what falls between categories is treated as dangerous

Dirt, in her formulation, is matter out of place: pollution rules mark the edges of a classification rather than a hygienic hazard. The hygiene reading is the standard error, and it fails immediately on animals that are harmless and still forbidden.

Hertz analysed reports from Borneo and elsewhere of double burial: the body is first placed in a temporary resting place, and only after an interval of months or years are the bones cleaned and installed in their final position, at which point the mourners resume ordinary life. His account of the interval is that

• it is a practical delay while relatives assemble the resources needed for a large final ceremony, which is the reason the mourners themselves give
• it corresponds to a period in which the dead person, the corpse and the mourners are all in transition
• it shows that the society concerned had no clear idea of the moment at which a person dies
• it reflects a fear of the corpse which disappears once decomposition has run its course

Answer: it corresponds to a period in which the dead person, the corpse and the mourners are all in transition

The three run in parallel: as the flesh decays the deceased is understood to be completing the passage to the ancestors, and the mourners hold an intermediate status until the final rite releases them. It is an early demonstration that the body can serve as the image of a social transition.

Kertzer, comparing state ceremonies, party rallies and civic commemorations, observed that the symbols at their centre — a flag, a wreath, a founder's portrait — are rarely given any single authorised meaning, and that participants questioned afterwards give strikingly different accounts of what was being honoured. His explanation of the political usefulness of such symbols is that

• the ambiguity lets people who disagree take part in the same rite and read their own commitments into it
• participants do not attend closely enough to notice what the symbols in fact stand for
• the meanings are in fact identical and the differences reported are merely differences of wording
• ritual has no political effect at all, which is why the divergent accounts do not matter to those organising it

Answer: the ambiguity lets people who disagree take part in the same rite and read their own commitments into it

Ambiguity is a working property, not a defect: a symbol precise enough to satisfy one faction would exclude the others, whereas a vague one lets a divided public act in concert. This is why an analysis of political ritual asks what the rite achieves rather than what the symbol means.