Given to the goddess : South Indian devadasis and the sexuality of religion / Lucinda Ramberg.

Author/creator Ramberg, Lucinda, 1962-
Format Book
PublicationDurham : Duke University Press, 2014.
Descriptionxiv, 282 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm
Subjects
Devadāsīs.
Yellamma (Hindu deity)
Sex--Religious aspects. --Hinduism.

Contents Introduction: gods, gifts, trouble -- Yellamma and her sisters -- Yellamma, her wives, and the question of religion -- Tantra, Shakta, Yellamma -- Sexual economy, sexual agency, and the "traffic" in women -- Kinship trouble -- Troubling kinship.
Abstract Who and what are marriage and sex for? Whose practices and which ways of talking to god can count as religion? Lucinda Ramberg considers these questions based upon two years of ethnographic research on an ongoing South Indian practice of dedication in which girls, and sometimes boys, are married to a goddess. Called devadasis, or jogatis, those dedicated become female and male women who conduct the rites of the goddess outside the walls of her main temple and transact in sex outside the bounds of conjugal matrimony. Marriage to the goddess, as well as the rites that the dedication ceremony authorizes jogatis to perform, have long been seen as illegitimate and criminalized. Kinship with the goddess is productive for the families who dedicate their children, Ramberg argues, and yet it cannot conform to modern conceptions of gender, family, or religion. This nonconformity, she suggests, speaks to the limitations of modern categories, as well as to the possibilities of relations--between and among humans and deities--that exceed such categories.
Bibliography noteIncludes bibliographical references and index.
LCCN 2014012185
ISBN9780822357100 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN0822357100 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN9780822357247 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN0822357240 (pbk. : alk. paper)

Availability

Library Location Call Number Status Item Actions
Joyner General Stacks BL1237.58 .D48 R3635 2014 ✔ Available Place Hold