Victor Turner's approach to anthropology can be viewed through distinct stages. His journey from the education he received at Manchester school to his experiments in Performance Studies highlights two significant poles in his anthropological career. These phases are evident in both his theoretical work and his practical ethnographic and academic efforts. The progression through these stages had a profound impact on the relationship between the anthropologist and the subjects of their study. Initially, ethnography was grounded in the belief that researchers could provide genuine and reliable accounts of their subjects' lives. Traditional anthropological studies of preliterate societies cast the ethnographer as the recorder and interpreter of ancient traditions. Concepts such as structure, function, and conflict were used, creating a separation between the researcher and the studied community. This approach often presented a social world as an isolated microcosm, omitting the broader context and depicting these people as colonial subjects—sometimes subordinate, other times playing a role in the exotic descriptions created by researchers. Ethnography has since shifted, driven by both the deliberate efforts of researchers to change their reporting and by historical necessity. Victor Turner's work with the Ndembu exemplifies this shift, marking a move from colonial to postcolonial writing. His later studies on theater, travel, and celebration anticipated the emergence of postmodern culture, characterized by the dissolution of old cultural narratives and their transformation into diverse performances. Turner is thus a transitional figure whose work bridges past and future, impacting both anthropological theory and practice. He envisioned a new direction for anthropology, shifting from structure to process and from function to reflexivity.