Communitas:
The Anthropology of Collective Joy #1 “Outside Reading”
“Communitas can only be conveyed properly through
stories. Because it is the sense felt by a plurality of people without
boundaries, there are numberless questions as to its form, provenance, and
implications.” (Page 1)
The
excerpt provided from the novel, Communitas: The Anthropology of Collective
Joy, describes how “flow” is necessary in order to form “communitas”. Flow
is the merging action and awareness that allows us
to encounter one another’s entirety of being.
Communitas is defined as an unstructured community in which people regard each other
as equals, particularly when liminality is experienced in a group setting; the
term can also plainly refer to the spirit of community.
Reiterating the quote from the novel, the spirit of communitas
is only transmittable through stories.
My own hypothesis to why this may be is that intimate setting that storytelling
provides helps maintain the group’s spirit and connectivity. The stories could
involve personal memories, historical events, as well as other note-worthy
situations.
However, the spirit of communitas comes to those who welcome it.
The type of person most likely to experience and participate in communitas is
prepared to abandon modern social structures. This is essential in order to see
each individual group members as an equal entity.
“Communitas occurs
through the readiness of the people—perhaps from necessity—to rid themselves of
their concern for status and dependence on structures, and see their fellows as
they are.” (Page 1-2)
In conclusion, understanding and practicing
“flow” is an important first step to creating an unstructured spiritual
community, also known as “communitas”. However, the stories that the people
bring to the group are what truly define and create the spirit of communitas.
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