Évènements

Sondra HAUSNER, Professor of Anthropology of Religion, University of Oxford

Why are some social distinctions inverted and others static during occasions of ritual activity? This paper asks which elements of the social order are malleable, and whether such flexibility in ritual contexts depends on the fixed nature of particular relations of hierarchy in other spheres. For example, at the Kumbh Mela festival of north India, the social distinctions between ascetics and householders are exposed in a classic example of ritual inversion: ascetics take centre stage while householders attend as worshipping pilgrims. By contrast, everyday hierarchies between women and men appear reified rather than reversed: women ascetics remain on the farthest margins, behind the scenes or erased from view. Does the hierarchical relation between the genders ground the capacity for ritual to test the relation between ascetics and householders? Ritual is famous in its capacity to invert relations, but not all elements of the social world are equally fluid.

Sondra HAUSNER nous propose les textes suivants pour préparer l’atelier :

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/gcqgs16jczq4vyb/AAAtfEkAzUWgVXWzKquUoEg8a?dl=0

Bouillier, Veronique. 1982. Si les Femmes Faisaient la Fête.... A propos des fêtes féminines dans les hautes castes indo-népalaises. L'Homme 22 (3): 91-118.
Burghart, Richard. 1983. Renunciation in the Religious Traditions of South Asia. Man (n.s.) 18: 635-653.
Clementin-Ojha, Catherine. 1988. Outside the Norms: Women Ascetics in Hindu Society. Economic and Political Weekly 23 (18): WS34-WS36.
DeNapoli, Antoinette. 2009. "By the Sweetness of the Tongue": Duty, Destiny, and Devotion in the Oral Life Narratives of Female Sadhus in Rajasthan. Asian Ethnology. 58 (1): 81-109.
Dumont, Louis. 1980 [1966]. World Renunciation in Indian Religions (Appendix B). In Homo Hierarchicus: The Caste System and its Implications, pp. 267 - 286. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Hausner, Sondra L. and Meena Khandelwal. 2006. Introduction: Women on their Own. In Women's Renunciation in South Asia: Nuns, Yoginis, Saints, and Singers, Meena Khandelwal, Sondra L. Hausner, and Ann Grodzins Gold, eds, pp, 1 - 36. London: Palgrave Macmillan.