Analyse des rites accompagnant la menstruation dans les differents groupes ethniques de Sri Lanka, et comparaison avec les rituels du meme type en Asie du Sud.

Rituals of First Menstruation in Sri Lanka

Ethnographic research amongst Sinhala Buddhists in community and clinical settings in the Madampe Division, northwest Sri Lanka, suggests that local understandings and practices of suicidal behaviour reflect the kinship structure. In particular, acts of self-harm and self-inflicted death arise in response to the breaking of core kinship rights, duties and obligations, or as a challenge to inflexibility or contradictions within the system. In either case, the morality of kinship is closely associated with the causes of suicidal behaviour, as the ‘inevitability’ or ‘evitability’ of kin relationships is negotiated and lived in practice. This article analyses how local political economies give rise to particular kinship and moral conditions, with special attention paid to those between household (gē) members and brothers-in-law (massinā).

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Suicide and the morality of kinship in Sri Lanka

Cet article examine les changements dans la transmission du savoir rituel des specialistes rituels de la caste Beravā au sud du Sri Lanka. S'inspirant des travaux de Barth et Hannerz sur la distribution sociale du savoir dans les societes complexes, l'article explore comment un savoir et des talents qui etaient autrefois hereditaires et principalement lies au systeme de castes sont assignes differemment au cours d'une periode de rapides changements sociaux. L'article prete une attention particuliere aux cadres culturels et sociaux qui soutenaient le systeme d'apprentissage et de representations rituelles des Beravā auparavant. Les transformations de la transmission du savoir rituel sont examinees en faisant recours a la notion de «communautes practiciennes» developpee par Lave. La perte de ces communautes est liee aux changements de statut des acteurs et aux deplacements du contexte de la signification des representations rituelles dans la societe cinghalaise contemporaine

Possession, dispossession and the social distribution of knowledge among Sri Lankan ritual specialists

The spread of new reproductive and genetic technologies to the developing world stimulates reflection on the ethical issues they generate. The ‘built-in-ness’ of assumptions about personhood and relationality within these technologies means that local professionals must, perforce, engage with attempts to make sense of new technology with reference to local meanings and traditions or take positions which reject them. This paper explores such attempts to indigenise bioethics in contemporary Sri Lanka with reference to ethical/ cultural conflicts surrounding two practices: donor insemination and consanguinity counselling. The former is discussed in relation to the now defunct practice of polyandry and the latter in relation to matrilateral cross-cousin marriage. The final discussion takes up the consequences of this detailed parsing of local relationality for the larger project of rendering bioethics in some sense comparative.

Acting ethically, responding culturally: Framing the new reproductive and genetic technologies in Sri Lanka

David Rudner a recemment mene une inquisition sur la relation entre le modele de parente dravidienne de Dumont et les donnees sur les termes de parente que Dumont rapporta lui-meme du terrain (Rudner 1990). Rudner a fait la remarque que Dumont a rapporte un certain nombre de termes purement affins, compromettant ainsi le modele de parente dravidienne qu'il avait publie auparavant, dont l'une des principales caracteristiques est precisemment l'absence de tels termes. L'A. critique la demonstration de Rudner. Il rappelle que pour Dumont un terme de parente est une notion a portee analytique, et que, dans l'analyse des terminologies de parente, ce sont les differences radicales entre les termes qui sont significatives et non les termes marques par des affixes. Il ressort du reexamen de la terminologie recensee par Dumont que quelques soient les deviations par rapport au modele formel d'alliance prescriptive symmetrique que les terminologies actuelles peuvent montrer, elles ne sont pas en mesure de contester ce modele car elles demeurent insuffisantes pour suggerer un modele alternatif radicalement different au niveau de la structure. Il est neanmoins interessant de comparer la situation Tamil recensee par Dumont avec la situation actuelle dans certaines parties centrales de l'Inde, ou la terminologie et le systeme d'alliance ont davantage devie du modele dravidien formel, a tel point qu'ils se trouvent dans une position intermediaire entre la parente des regions sud et nord de l'Inde ou domine des systemes de parente non dravidienne

On Dumont's 'affinal terms': Comment on Rudner:

Most of my data on this variant terminology come from a village I shall call ’Wellagoda’ which is situated on the north-west coast of Sri Lanka about fifty miles north of Colombo. The village has a population of around 700 people who occupy 140 households, 100 of which rely on fishing as their major source of income. Most of the villagers claim to be of the Karaava caste, the remainder claiming Goyigama status. Everyone is Roman Catholic, and like many of the Catholic fishermen along this coast, most villagers are bilingual in Sinhala and Tamil, although all claim vigorously that by race they are Sinhalese. In this paper, I shall concentrate on the Sinhala terms. The variant terminology crops up in a narrow coastal belt running for 60 or 70 miles north from Colombo. Inland, it dies out fairly quickly and even on the coast by no means everyone uses the variant terminology. Other reports which I shall mention later appear to indicate that a similar terminology is to be found in the urban centres of Negombo and Colombo. Besides Wellagoda, I shallc all on rather slimmer data from two other

R.L. Stirrat

Papers

Dravidian and non-Dravidian kinship terminologies in Sri Lanka