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The Social Life of Secrets

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... The secret knowledge of initiation is powerful and exclusionary. Secrecy serves to establish boundaries (Barth 1969) between those 'in the know' and those excluded from the secret knowledge (de Jong 2004). Initiation rites are often pregnant with sexual symbolism; yet sexual intercourse is implicated metaphorically. ...
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This article explores the cultural significance of initiation rites among the Northern Sotho in South Africa, with a particular focus on the blending of symbolic gender motifs in rock art. Scholars on Northern Sotho rock art have associated initiation with specific genders. A close analysis of Northern Sotho rock art, together with a nuanced reading of ethnographic material on initiation rites, shows that a motif may be a mnemonic device in initiation but communicate a symbolism unique to either group. In my research, I observed that rock art sites have imagery that can be argued to be symbolic for both males and females, often juxtaposed or superimposed on the same panels. I refer to this as a form of blending of gender categories, possible during rites of transition. Thus I suggest that the symbolism for gender could resonate or change depending on who was using the site. Based on this, I suggest that such rock art sites should be categorized as initiation sites without specific gendered coding. This article contends that while gender boundaries exist in Northern Sotho culture, initiation rites often create a fluidity that challenges and probably blends these categories, as reflected in the rock art.
Chapter
The chapter is a reflection on the “unsafe” and “painstaking work” of observing rape trials. The author, Pratiksha Baxi, a leading sociologist of gender, learned Indian law and medical jurisprudence on her own during her fieldwork, through conversations with lawyers, observing trials, and reading books. However, her outsider status as a non-lawyer and as a woman led various people in the courtrooms where she conducted fieldwork to “scold” her for studying rape trials. The out-of-place feeling from fieldwork followed her long afterward, like a trauma. Though her fieldwork took place two decades earlier, the “anger and grief” never went away. However, she concludes, that, “If law’s attachment to cruelty continues to mark the self, then the ability to love and be in solidarity is the necessary condition for living with the field.”
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