Katrina Thralls-Spontaneous communitas

Turner, Victor. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. New York: Aldine De Gruyter, 1995.

“Thus, it is necessary to distinguish between: (1) existential or spontaneous communitas—approximately what the hippies today would call ‘a happening’… (2) normative commmunitas, where, under the influence of time, the need to mobilize and organize resources , and the necessity for social control among the members of the group in pursuance of these goals, the existential communitas is organized into a perduing social system; and (3) idealogical communitas, which is a label one can apply to a variety of utopian models of societies based on existential communitas” (132)

While it seems unfair, I cannot help but judge that the first time of communitas, existential or spontaneous communitas, seems to be the most significant, the most real, and the most representative of what I think of as communitas. Perhaps it is because I have been a part of “a happening,” and that makes me biased towards that form of communitas.

I went to a youth conference for teenagers of my religion when it was in high school, and it was organized by the youth of the church it was held at. But once you arrived, it didn’t feel organized at all. There was a buzz in the air and conversation flowed naturally from one person to the next to the next. Everyone seemed to be in perfect sync. There were a few organized activities, but mostly, there was just flow. This continued not just for the night, but for three whole days, and when we left, everyone could feel that everyone else was somehow moved by the experience.