ISSN:
0094-0496
Language:
English
Titel der Quelle:
American ethnologist : a journal of the American Ethnological Society
Publ. der Quelle:
Malden, Mass. [u.a.] : Blackwell Publishing
Angaben zur Quelle:
Vol. 42, No. 1 (2015), p. 131-143
DDC:
390
Abstract:
In India, religious practices deemed incompatible with liberal governance are often legally curtailed in the name of “morality,” “health,” or “public order.” These “secular” laws are historically backed by significant efforts to reform “former” practitioners in a manner compatible with legitimate religious practice and belief. Among practitioners of the legally prohibited Devadasi custom in South India, these reform programs consist of legal education and empowerment programs that seek to inculcate a “respectable femininity” in female ritual specialists that the state regards as “ritual prostitutes.” I track the manner in which these projects of “surveillance” and “normalization” are received in Devadasi communities beyond a presumption of marginalization and constraint. I argue that the legal prohibition of the Devadasi custom constitutes the starting point for a form of legal procedure that ensures the preservation of the custom, even as it draws on the idioms of secular state law. In India, religious practices deemed incompatible with liberal governance are often legally curtailed in the name of “morality,” “health,” or “public order.” These “secular” laws are historically backed by significant efforts to reform “former” practitioners in a manner compatible with legitimate religious practice and belief. Among practitioners of the legally prohibited Devadasi custom in South India, these reform programs consist of legal education and empowerment programs that seek to inculcate a “respectable femininity” in female ritual specialists that the state regards as “ritual prostitutes.” I track the manner in which these projects of “surveillance” and “normalization” are received in Devadasi communities beyond a presumption of marginalization and constraint. I argue that the legal prohibition of the Devadasi custom constitutes the starting point for a form of legal procedure that ensures the preservation of the custom, even as it draws on the idioms of secular state law.
Note:
Copyright: © 2015 by the American Anthropological Association
,
Copyright: © COPYRIGHT 2015 American Anthropological Assn.
URL:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/amet.12121/abstract
URL:
http://search.proquest.com/docview/1663918113
Permalink
