Midlife as Change Facilitator

Liminal transitions in a semiotic key: The mutual in-feeding between present and past

“…Introduced by the anthropologist Van Gennep (1960) and then by Turner (1979, 1987), the concept of liminality has gained special attention in different fields, including health disciplines (e.g., Apprey, 1983; Luborsky, 1994; Myburgh et al, 2012), studies on identity (e.g., Boeijea, Duijnsteeb, Grypdonckb, & Pool, 2002; Jackson, 2005), sociological analyses of macroeconomics phenomena and dynamics of social change (Bettis, 1996), and organizational studies (Bettis & Mills, 2006). What is shared among these contributions is the use of the concept of liminality for the sake of understanding transitions that appear as fluid processes where normal order is suspended.…”