'Gendered Bodies": The case of the third gender in India (original) (raw)
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Review of SATISH SABERWAL and MUSHIRUL HASAN, eds, Assertive Religious Identities: India and Europe
In the Tamil country, more extensively than elsewhere in India, temples have been crucial institutions for at least fifteen hundred years and the king's relationship with temples in his realm was vital to the constitution of sovereignty itself. The traditions surrounding a temple, such as the Minakshi Temple, have a long, complex history. Such temple complexes often provide a central focus for the culture around them not only by establishing a setting for religious experiences but also by including among their activities functions that other cultures might label familial, economic, political or intellectual. Since many of these traditions are still very alive, their various facets can be made the theme of sociological and anthropological studies. From the period of Nayaka rule, through the colonial period and into the present day, the state has always had a vital bearing on the position of the Minakshi temple priests.
Raiding the dreaded pastRepresentations of headhunting and human sacrifice in north–east India
Contributions To Indian Sociology, 2005
This article looks at the diverse and rich representations of headhunting in north-east India, especially in the European translations of this tribal practice into ethnographic writings during the late imperial age. Colonial concern and anxiety to civilise the headhunter and control this savage practice in the hills is characterised by inner contradictions at every level of its articulation and operation. Headhunting is a history, a heritage, a rhetorical trope, a discursive practice, a philosophy, a returning gaze from the other, and a space for contesting masculinity. Moreover, it is a textual record of colonial knowledge about vanishing societies for the benefit of the human sciences as well as frontier administrators in the region. But the vanishing object of salvage ethnography itself appears to be a colonial construct of the anthropologising world and its legitimising representational practice. Headhunting is often neither the subject nor the object of study: it is a prolific site of discourse where the coloniser, the ethnographer, and even the local people engage in representing and translating the other as well as themselves, with diverse intentions.
Sociology, 2008
This article critically examines team and collaborative research as an 'academic mode of production'. Our main argument is that while theoretically qualitative social science research is rooted within a postfoundational epistemological paradigm, normative team-based research practices embody foundational principles.Team research relies on a division of labour that creates divisions and hierarchies of knowledge, particularly between researchers who gather embodied and contextual knowledge 'in the field' and those who produce textual knowledge 'in the office'. We argue that a theoretical commitment to a postfoundational epistemology demands that we translate this into concrete research practices that rely on concerted team-based relations rather than divisions of labour, and a reflexive research practice that strives to involve all team members in all aspects of knowledge construction processes.
This article critically examines team and collaborative research as an 'academic mode of production'. Our main argument is that while theoretically qualitative social science research is rooted within a postfoundational epistemological paradigm, normative team-based research practices embody foundational principles.Team research relies on a division of labour that creates divisions and hierarchies of knowledge, particularly between researchers who gather embodied and contextual knowledge 'in the field' and those who produce textual knowledge 'in the office'. We argue that a theoretical commitment to a postfoundational epistemology demands that we translate this into concrete research practices that rely on concerted team-based relations rather than divisions of labour, and a reflexive research practice that strives to involve all team members in all aspects of knowledge construction processes.
'My Ever Dear': Social work's lesbian foremothers - a call for scholarship.
Affilia, 2009
Same-sex intimate relationships were central to the lives of many of social work’s early women leaders. Recognizing these relationships is important to address the erasure of sexuality in the profession’s historical record and to give sexual minority social workers access to their history. This article explores conceptual issues in lesbian historical scholarship, describes the same-sex relationships of four remarkable social workers—Jane Addams, Mary Richmond, Jessie Taft, and Virginia Robinson—and calls for further research in this area.
Affilia, 2009
Same-sex intimate relationships were central to the lives of many of social work's early women leaders. Recognizing these relationships is important to address the erasure of sexuality in the profession's historical record and to give sexual minority social workers access to their history. This article explores conceptual issues in lesbian historical scholarship, describes the same-sex relationships of four remarkable social workers-Jane Addams, Mary Richmond, Jessie Taft, and Virginia Robinson-and calls for further research in this area.