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Traces of reflexive imagination: Matriliny, modern law, and spirit worship in South India
Abstract
Matriliny in South India is often considered as having declined in the course of modernization. Recent studies, however, highlight the social construction of matriliny by modern legal discourse. As an alternative to these perspectives, this article presents a fresh viewpoint from which to analyze the reflexive relationship between modern law and local practice. In this article, I investigate the modern judicature's evolving interpretation and (re)construction of matriliny in colonial and postcolonial South Kanara. I also examine the practices of the local people who sustain and revitalize their own sense of matriliny through ritual practice while they cope with the new legislation on matriliny. Analyzing the legal discourse as well as popular practice, I elucidate the reflexive imagination involved in the discourse/practice of both the modern judicature and the people, which creates and recreates the gendered, legalized, and ritualized reality of matriliny in South Kanara.
... 14. Ishii, M (2014), "Traces of reflexive imagination: Matriliny, modern law, and spirit worship in South India", Asian Anthropology Vol 13, No 2, pages 106-123. ...
This work draws from preliminary ethnographic research with a fisherwomen’s association in Udupi City, located on the southwestern coast of India. It shows how women have managed to keep capital-rich fish shops away from the sale of fish, preserving their traditional occupation for themselves through informal arrangements with the state. In the Indian context, in which caste remains an important organizing element within a secular framework of democracy and citizenship, I look at how women rely on their caste identities as Mogaveera fisherwomen, while simultaneously referring to their gender and experience of poverty to muster both caste-based political support and secular political resources for their livelihoods. Intersectionality as a concept for analysis is important to understand how both marginal and dominant identities of these women enable them to frame and formulate arguments that are acceptable to the state. I argue that in this particular case, gender, intertwined with caste and poverty, positions these fisherwomen in a fertile space for political alliances that tap into both caste and secular resources. These nuances enable us to see fisherwomen as a complex, heterogeneous group full of contradictions, rather than just poor fisherwomen. Thus, an analysis of gender as intertwined with experiences deriving from other social categories of caste and class allows us to see women’s livelihoods as a product of, as well as formative of, those specific experiences, opportunities and constraints they confront.
Colonial judges and jurists interpreted matrilineal customs in terms of a theory of matrilineal law, which they shaped in the process of interpretation, rather than on the basis of existing practices. This paper analyses critically the process of interpretation of customs or what is referred to as the legal discourse on matriliny, from the standpoint of its own assumptions, i.e., the ideas and theory that shaped and governed it. It is argued that a theory of matrilineal law, informed by mid nineteenth century anthropological and comparative legal perspectives, gendered the detail of matrilineal law, emphasising rigidly older male control over property and excluding women, virtually, from all functions of authority. The legal discourse on matriliny then despite or precisely because of the implicit connection between women and matriliny, was not so much about matriliny or women but about what comprised `authentic' custom.
Debates about family, property, and nation in Tamil India
In the early years of the British empire, cohabitation between Indian women and British men was commonplace and to some degree tolerated. However, as Durba Ghosh argues in a challenge to the existing historiography, anxieties about social status, appropriate sexuality, and the question of who could be counted as 'British' or 'Indian' were constant concerns of the colonial government even at this time. By following the stories of a number of mixed-race families, at all levels of the social scale, from high-ranking officials and noblewomen to rank-and-file soldiers and camp followers, and also the activities of indigenous female concubines, mistresses and wives, the author offers a fascinating account of how gender, class and race affected the cultural, social and even political mores of the period. The book makes an original and signal contribution to scholarship on colonialism, gender and sexuality.
Kerala's famed matrilineal system disintegrated in the twentieth century, and the lastlegal vestiges were abolished in 1976. This essay discovers that legacies of matrilinyendured in 2003. Matrilineal precedents still affected cases in civil law; matrilinealattitudes had left their mark on employment structures; and sentimental attachmentto matrilineal practices influenced the disposal of personal property and the organization of public trusts. The paper argues that expectations and sentiments stemmingfrom matriliny were the key ingredient that made Kerala, and the place of itswomen, so notably different from the rest of India and many other places in thetropical, ex-colonial world.
The aim of this study is to investigate spirit possession through the lenses of mimesis, permeability, and perspectivity. Recent studies have explored the significance of perspective exchange as reciprocal subjectification. At the same time, the importance of reflexive self-awareness amid perspective exchange has been noted. Linking studies on perspective exchange with those on spirit possession, this article tries to show an alternative understanding of perspective exchange as the de-subjectification and generative transformation of self and other. Focusing on the buuta ritual in South India, I examine perspective exchange as the capability for freeing oneself from one's subjectivity enough to let various perspectives come and go through the permeable self. Being permeable and reflexive, the buuta impersonator plays with multiple perspectives to transform both his and others' perspectives to enable all to become ‘real’ humans in relation to the deity.
At an interview which Della Vella [seventeenth century] had with the Zamorin, [the Samudiri or the ruler of Calicut] there were present two little princesses of the Royal house aged 12 years each; and of them he says, ‘they were all naked (as I said above the women generally go) saving that they had a very small blue cloth wrapped about their immodesties. One of them being more forward could not contain, but approaching gently towards me, almost touched the sleeve of my coat with her hand, made a sign of wonder to her sister, how could we go so wrapped up and entangled in clothes. Such is the power of custom that their going naked seemed no more strange to us, than our being clothed appeared extravagant to them.’
K. P. Padmanabha Menon
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i is a unit of weight of paddy paid as rent. One mud . i is equal to approximately 39.2 kg (one mud . i corresponds to three kalase or to 42 sēru)
- Mud
- Gēn
Mud. i gēn. i is a unit of weight of paddy paid as rent. One mud. i is equal to approximately 39.2 kg
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mud. i (approximately 23,520 kg).
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for the contradictory as well as reflexive relations between customary law and the Madras Hindu Religious Endowments Act (Madras Act II of 1927), which directly affected the management and trusteeship of būta shrines in South Kanara
- See Ishii
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the Madras Hindu Religious Endowments Act (Madras Act II of 1927), which directly affected
the management and trusteeship of būta shrines in South Kanara.
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Shinrei tono kōkan (Exchange with the Spirits)
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1898. A Treatise on Aliya Santana Law and Usage
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Kin Songs.” In Gender, Genre, and Power in South Asian Expressive Traditions
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