Rites of passage are coordinated ritual events marking significant junctures and
transitions across the social lives of individuals and groups. The rhetoric, symbolism,
and actions involved in rites of passage are meant to effect changes in the social
status of actors undergoing the rites. Ritual outcomes are meant to be beneficial for
the actors undergoing the rites, their consociates organizing the rites, and society
as a whole. Because they mark and signify maturational processes, rites of passage
can also include ceremonial events involving humans' periodic communion with and
movement through nature, the seasons, time, and the cosmos. Broadly, the symbolism
and semantics of rites involve binaries of death and rebirth, male and female, and chaos
and order.
Social scientists have long studied rituals' symbolism, organization, and structure as
meaningful and illuminating forms of human social life and process. Arnold van Gennep
first seriously theorized the rites of passage concept in 1906, developing a three-part
model of transition. He found that societies tended to organize rites that (1) separate
the principal actors from ordinary life, (2) mark actors as liminal or extraordinary, and
(3) incorporate actors by completing transition and marking new social statuses. Victor
Turner's research with the Ndembu of Zambia elaborated on the social and symbolic
dynamics of the liminal period, showing that actors form significant bonds with one
another by being subject to learning their society's values and norms through ritual
instruction and experience. Scholars note that transition is not always a simple one-
time process, but may involve a complicated series of rites over a longer time because
of disagreement over proper ritual procedure, lack of funds to hold events, disruptive
social circumstances like war and disease, and local cultural variation.
African Traditional Religion
Across Africa, rites of passage have remained the foundation for enduring forms of
what many scholars and laypeople call "African traditional religion." The historical forces
of European colonialism, industrialization, and globalization have registered dramatic
changes for African societies and local conceptions of personhood, but drawing on
cultural and social resources, Africans accommodated and contested these changes,
often in ritual form. While the principal actors undertaking rites and associated cultural
symbolism remain fairly conventional, broader contextual transformations changed
the timing and ideology surrounding many rites. Historically and today, sociopolitical
movements and authorities use rites' meaningful symbolism and public ceremony as
a popular and powerful means of representation, information, and control. As tradition
or folkloric custom, rites of passage are often negotiated and practiced within broader
religious frames of Christianity and Islam.
Birth Passage
A person's first rite of passage surrounds his or her birth. Historically, high infant
mortality engendered a dearth of prepartum rites. A celebration held for an unborn child,
like an American baby shower, is still considered odd, given the historical likelihood of
miscarriage or infant death. Birthing rites are most often postpartum, often following
an extended seclusion of mother and child from all but close relatives. These rites
usually involve a ceremonious presentation of the child and the selection of a name,
thus establishing transgenerational ties for lifelong physical and spiritual support.
Elders make a thanksgiving to ancestral forebears, local deities, or God for influencing
reproductive success; for the Beng of Côte D'Ivoire, infants' being and vitality originates
in the spiritual sphere of the afterlife.
Coming-of-Age Rites
Initiation or coming-of-age rites are ubiquitous in African rites of passage and move
a person toward social adulthood, predicated on physiological changes of puberty
and learning specialized gender roles. The symbolism and intergenerational control
of sexuality is prominent in many initiation rites. In many African societies, governing
authorities employed initiation rites as means to organize a distinct generation of
persons to serve as tribute laborers or warriors for the state. These generations, also
known as age-sets or age-grades, establish forms of collective identity, and, like Turner
later theorized, relationships formed among persons in their age-set can become
meaningful lifelong social resources.Many African societies mark boys' transition to manhood through instructional
encampments, apprenticeships, travel, and circumcision. In South Africa's Eastern
Cape, Xhosa boys become men in ulwaluko rites by going into the woods and erecting
small houses, where they are circumcised by older male ritual specialists. The rites'
timing changed to take place over the holidays to accommodate boys' school-year
calendars, and specialists organized themselves in response to government concern
over accidental deaths and profane media attention.
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Ethnic and identity politics surrounding the rites also came into play in the 2000s as a
growing number of white boys were eager to undergo the rites along with their black
Xhosa friends. African girls' transition to womanhood is ritually marked by similar
instructional encampments and ceremonial events; female circumcision is far less
common. Zulu honor young women in a ceremony called umemulo, which underwent
a historical transposition of marking passage in bodily indices to numerical age and
institutionalized educational achievements. Umemulo was formerly held following girls'
first menstruation to indicate marriageability, but is now organized around 21st birthdays
or after girls graduate from high school or postsecondary education to celebrate
perseverance and progress.
Marriages
Conventional African marriages are unions of two lineages through the ceremonial
union of a man and a woman following a series of gift exchanges. European colonialism
had profound effects on myriad marriage practices, complicating parties' abilities to
complete customary exchanges and shifting power in gender relations. Conventional
marriages were often arranged for women by older male relatives, and for many
societies, involved transactions of bridewealth cattle, the price and number of beasts
often contingent on colonial husbandry-market regulations. For the Asante in Ghana,
kinship is customarily matrilineal and afforded women more leverage in negotiating farm
labor and child custody with their husbands. With the introduction and monetization of
cash crops like cocoa in the late 19th century and the proliferation of Christian gender
norms, women lost much of this leverage and husbands' rights tended to prevail in property ownership and management. Gender ideology surrounding marriage is also
changing as same-sex marriage was first legalized in South Africa in 2006.
Death Rituals
Mortuary rites like funerals and cleansings commemorate the deceased, transform
them into ancestors, and enact and end ritualized mourning for the bereaved. These
events are often organized and paid for by kin and friends, rotating-credit and- savings
associations, churches, and, more recently, life insurance policies. Across the continent,
sickness and death from the human immunodeficiency virus and acquired immune
deficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) pandemic have catalyzed social groups to mobilize
rites' cultural symbolism and resources around public health concerns of disease
prevention, transmission, and stigma. In Swaziland, young women petitioned King
Mswati III to enact age-set educational and chastity rites of umc(h)washo for adolescent
girls from 2001 to 2005 to prevent disease and regenerate the well-being of the Swazi
nation. The ritualized control of adolescent female sexuality and virginity is considered
paramount to regenerate life and social order from death.