Showing papers in "Contributions to Indian Sociology in 1997"

Tribal politics and discourses of environmentalism

Abstract: In India, state-led developmentalism has recently been challenged by the discourse of environmentalism. Among the various streams of environmentalism, Ecological Marxism has been the most dominant....

Gendered Bodies: The Case of the `Third Gender' in India

Abstract: This essay is concerned with issues arising out of an intersection of several academic debates which have followed more or less independent trajectories in the past, but have now begun to be seen in relation with each other. I attempt a parallel examination of the debates around the sex-gender distinction, the anthropologists' discovery of multiple gender systems, and the gendered dimensions of colonialism in the Indian context. One of the common grounds for these debates is the hijra community of India. I concentrate here on the colonial and anthropological accounts of this community in order to arrive at a meaningful understanding of gender.

Social and Cultural Strategies of Class Formation in Coastal Andhra Pradesh

Abstract: Despite India's long history of capitalist development and consequent precipitation of class structures, class has been a relatively under-studied topic in Indian sociology. The social and cultural aspects of class formation have been especially neglected. This paper attempts to fill this gap through a case study of the history and culture of a rural-urban dominant class, located in coastal Andhra Pradesh. Drawing on Bourdieu's practice theory, it focuses on actors' investment and consumption strategies which are aimed at the accumulation and monopolisation of social, cultural, symbolic and economic capital. Through such accumulation, and by converting one type of capital into another, actors are able to construct class boundaries, promote internal cohesion, and establish hegemony. The paper also addresses the caste/class question within this theoretical framework by showing how the construction of caste identity has been closely linked with class formation.

Ungendered atma, masculine virility and feminine compassion: Ambiguities in renunciant discourses on gender

Abstract: Sannyasa generally represents itself and is represented by scholars as either ungendered or unambiguously masculine Indeed, advaitic philosophy expects renouncers to transcend the body and ignore all social distinctions, while Brahmanic orthodoxy reveals its misogynous tendencies by restricting renunciation to elite men What both perspectives share is an assumption that women must give up their femininity in order to renounce I argue that the female renouncers I interviewed in Haridwar neither presented themselves as men nor as transcendent, ungendered beings Rather, they likened themselves to female householders, both in the everyday problems they face in their interactions with men and in the 'motherly' qualities that make renunciation easier for women Furthermore, hagiographic evidence seems to suggest that male renouncers may also become mothers Thus, in spite of advaitic and Brahmanic statements to the contrary, sannyasa is not only highly gendered, but is sometimes gendered feminine

Ambedkar Buddhism in Maharashtra

Abstract: My purpose in this paper is to present an ethnography of a specific untouchable conversion movement in such a way that it clarifies theoretical issues relevant to understanding this kind of phenomenon more widely. It is therefore a contribution, however small, both to research on Buddhism in Maharashtra and also to the wider issues of untouchability and politics in India. There are many cases of untouchable castes converting to Islam or Christianity, and the Mahar conversion to Buddhism may in some respects belong to that wider group. What makes it of special interest, however, is firstly that it was Buddhism that was chosen to express the social, political and soteriological aspirations of this group; and secondly that it was Dr. B.R. Ambedkar himself who directly led this movement. Throughout his political career from the 1920s up to his death in 1956 he offered the scheduled castes the most incisive alternative to Gandhian high-caste paternalism, and his social and political thinking has been inherited...

Illness, inauspiciousness and modes of healing in Rajasthan

Abstract: Ethnographic material on local conceptions and treatment of certain kinds of illness in rural Rajasthan provides insights into the nature and pragmatic meaning of concepts of auspiciousness and inauspiciousness in everyday contexts. By analysing the internal logic of rituals directed at treating the sick, I elucidate the dual meaning of auspiciousness and inauspiciousness as conditions with predictive value that refer both to potentiality and to outcome. States of purity can, in turn, influence the resolution of potentialities in a positive (auspicious) or negative (inauspicious) direction. Analysis of folk healing rituals and of the relations between patients and healers further demonstrates an analogy with the priest-patron relationship and religious gifting, revealing a continuity in underlying cultural assumptions from orthodox religious ritual through folk healing practices to everyday social actions. The paper thereby contributes to the continuing discussion about the relations between different `le...

Religious texts, priestly education and ritual action in south Indian temple Hinduism

Abstract: This article, mainly based on research among the priests of the Minaksi temple in Madurai, Tamilnadu, is a continuation of earlier work on the relation between religious texts and ritual action which was presented in a monograph about the priests and a recent article in Contributions (Fuller 1984; 1993). It contains new data about education in the religious schools attended by the priests and their sons, which show that my previous analysis of the relation between the texts and ritual performance was flawed in some significant respects. My doubts about whether the priests' performance of ritual could be improved through education were also overstated, because educated priests have the crucial ability to recite texts when carrying out rituals, whereas their uneducated colleagues can perform only the physical ritual acts. This article also looks at the priests' `techniques of the body' and shows that education nevertheless has virtually no impact on how priests carry out physical ritual. The article concludes with some further reflections on the analysis of ritual and the problem of its misperformance.

Secularisation in Hindu temples: The implication for caste

Abstract: This paper explores some important recent changes in the social organisation of a major Hindu temple in Tamil Nadu. It throws new light on the beginnings of the secularisation of its organisation and on the expansion of secular space within the temple. The inclusion of hitherto excluded groups in the social organisation of the temple indicates a significant broadening of its social base, which now comprises a wider range of castes and denominations than before. This universalisation is accompanied by a weakening of beliefs and practices relating to purity and pollution. Also, the intrusion of a bureaucratic administration into the affairs of the temple has given a new place to ideas of secular rationality in the religious activities of the temple. The process of secularisation is further strengthened by the fact that the priestly Adisaiva community is opting for secular education and employment in place of its traditional way of life.

Little magazines in Calcutta and a postsociology of India

Abstract: A crucial political question for a new sociology of India is whether it can create a new identity for itself between the local and the global, where it can simultaneously deal with objects that span different spaces and times without losing its own location in space and time. The problematic is that of the new meanings that concepts acquire when they travel across space and time. The question then becomes one of the political significance of the new meanings in their acquired habitat. This article explores these questions through the reading of a Bengali language text.

Fathers and daughters in a south Indian goddess myth: Cultural ambivalence and the dynamics of desire

Abstract: Desire in kinship creates ambivalences which the kinship system itself does not resolve, and while this has been understood—especially with reference to the mother-son relationship in South Asia—little attention has focused on the relationship between father and daughter. The Jalari (a Telugu fishing caste) myth of the seven goddesses turns on the relationship between Shiva and his daughters. Alternately impeding and assisting each other, Shiva and his daughters represent, in their relationship, one of the central paradoxes of south Indian kinship: How can fathers and daughters love but relinquish each other, given the exigencies of development, and especially marriage? The myth presents a solution by transforming daughters into goddesses, preserving the father—daughter bond, and making marriage contingent on cooperation among women, not men. It is argued that ambivalence is central to south Indian kinship, and the fons et origo of an important regional mythical system.