T. Pintchman’s scientific contributions

This book explores the relationship between ritual practices and the lives and activities of Hindu women beyond the ritual sphere. It presumes that Hindu women are deeply engaged and invested in the performance of religious practice. Rituals that take place in Sanskritic, Brahminical Hindu environments continue to be instituted and directed largely by Brahmin males, but women largely control many types of ritual practice that occur outside of such contexts, including many household, calendrical, and local devotional practices. Even in environments where Sanskritic traditions maintain a strong presence, women often sustain active ritual agendas and function as engaged actors in many types of ritual work. Indeed, in some parts of India, women are taking leadership roles in Sanskritic ritual performance. It is maintained that Hindu women's religious practices are not isolated from social, cultural, domestic, or larger religious roles or frames of meaning but tend to engage realms that transcend individual ritual contexts. This book is divided into two parts: "Engaging Domesticity" and "Beyond Domesticity". The first part consists of five chapters that engage domestic and interpersonal values in relation to women's ritual practices that tend to expand the boundaries of normative domesticity. The five chapters in part II, "Beyond Domesticity", similarly reveal the many ways that women's religious performances permeate diverse realms and breach borders. These chapters collectively take up a somewhat different challenge, however, exploring women's ritual practices outside the confines of strictly domestic contexts and contesting the impulse to link women's ritual performance primarily with domestic realms and concerns.