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Many academic readers will recognize the title of this book as a tribute to the work of the anthropologist Victor Turner (1920–1983), referring to an influential collection of essays published posthumously, The Anthropology of Performance (1987).¹ Those newly interested in performance theory would be well advised to begin with an exploration of Turner's many contributions (see Babcock and MacAloon 1987). My monograph is intended to address two trends that were central to Turner's interests: (1) the study of performative events as a method for the understanding of cultural patterns in general; and (2) a belief that the anthropological category of "culture" should best be understood as a process, perhaps as a series of performances. These two related positions led Turner to develop, with Richard Schechner, the theoretical approach that became performance studies—something of a merger between drama or theater studies and anthropology. As a legacy of this work, I found myself teaching in those two disciplines at the University of Sydney, still trying to bridge the gap between them to find a common ground.

DOI: 10.1057/9781137342386_1

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