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Rite of Passage

A ceremony marking a person's movement from one social status to another. Arnold van Gennep's tripartite structure — separation, margin (or transition), and incorporation — describes a common form found across an extraordinarily wide range of otherwise unrelated cultures, from initiation rites to weddings to graduations, suggesting the structure tracks something close to a universal requirement of managing social transformation.

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Vocabulary from all courses. Terms are cross-referenced to show where each concept appears.