ON “DRAMAS, FIELDS AND…” INTERPRETIVE COMMUNITIES
(Abstract)

Reconsidering Victor Turner’s concept of communitas, my study aims to analyze its history, applicability and limits, focusing on the specific case of the Cluj Jewish group. Based on the interpretation of empirical material, collected through intensive fieldwork, my approach contributes to an anthropological understanding of “interpretive communities”. The experiences of anxieties, traumatic memories, nostalgia and the ways they determine specific group coagulation strategies are topics of main interest, permanently analyzed in my study. Viewed both at the individual and communitarian levels, constituted as thresholds or liminal stages, they have an important role in the process of identity construction and representation of the Cluj Jewish group. Empirical data gathered through applying qualitative research methods (mostly life-histories, semi-structured and in-depth interviews), put in a neo-interpretive framework, structure my approach.

Keywords: Jewish community, limen, communitas, interpretive community, memory.