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One “traditional” ideal male body in India is strong, flexible,
and soft; the kind of body that results from disciplining one’s
exercise, as well as one’s diet and sexuality. The latter is important
because semen is regarded as the source of physical and mental
strength. But a new ideal male body -- lean, muscular, and hard
-- now dominates the public imaginary. Advertising suggests that
such a body is to be achieved through consumption rather than
discipline, and that it does not serve health, but rather sexual
pleasure.
Abstract This chapter describes and compares systems of “divine kingship” throughout South and Southeast Asia, from ancient times until the present. It begins with a critique of the anthropologist Louis Dumont, who argued in an influential essay that “religion” and “politics” were separated at an early period in Indian history. This chapter argue however that, on the contrary, and until the modern period, what we now call “religion” and “politics” were not sharply distinguished in the Hindu and Buddhist kingdoms of South and Southeast Asia. (And nor, for that matter, are they sharply distinguished in the 21st century.) The kings of these polities were always made to be divine or semi-divine by means of public enactments, and these enactments are some of the most effective ways of real-izing a world.
Abstract This chapter focuses on the central figure of the book, King Karna. As king, Karna embodies the first and most important of Kautilya’s “seven limbs” of the Indian state. He is a multi-faceted being: sometimes a king, sometimes an ascetic jogi, and sometimes a brahman oracle. He is a king when he settles disputes, makes rain, and defends his realm. He is a jogi because he is poor, covered with ash, and disinterested in worldly matters. He is a brahman because the body of the oracle that he regularly “possesses” is that of a brahman; moreover, he advocates certain reforms in diet and marriage that can be regarded as “brahmanical.” But these three bodies are not mutually exclusive, and who Karna is depends upon what he does. Inspired by the work of Hacking, Mol, and others, this chapter engages with the “ontological turn” by arguing that Karna’s being is in large part a consequence of his practice, and not simply a matter of representation.
Unlike many forms of Western psychotherapy, Family Constellation focuses on families rather than individuals. The same is true of ritual healing in the Central Himalayas of north India. In this paper, we apply anthropological as well as psychological concepts and methods to compare these systems. We ask whether Family Constellation practices can be fruitfully regarded as forms of “ritual healing.” We also describe and analyze further similarities between the two types of healing, including the resolution of social conflict as the main therapeutic principle, the importance of the past and collective memory, the role of deceased family members, and the centrality of space and movement.
Anthropologists specialize in human difference and thus cannot escape the dialectics of sameness and difference. Yet studying Others has been the object of attack in recent years, most notably by Edward Said, who sees the mere postulation of difference as dangerous, as a dehumanizing activity that valorizes Self and vilifies Other. In fact the situation is not so simple: the Other may be a model to be emulated or a mirror of the shadow side of the Self. Selfhood and Otherness, virtue and vice, are subject to ceaseless negotiation and reinterpretation. In this hall of mirrors, the Self and the Other cannot be neatly distinguished.
In The Movement for Global Mental Health: Critical Views from South and Southeast Asia, prominent anthropologists, public health physicians, and psychiatrists respond sympathetically but critically to the Movement for Global Mental Health (MGMH). They question some of its fundamental assumptions: the idea that "mental disorders" can clearly be identified; that they are primarily of biological origin; that the world is currently facing an "epidemic" of them; that the most appropriate treatments for them normally involve psycho-pharmaceutical drugs; and that local or indigenous therapies are of little interest or importance for treating them. The contributors argue that, on the contrary, defining "mental disorders" is difficult and culturally variable; that social and biographical factors are often important causes of them; that the "epidemic" of mental disorders may be an effect of new ways of measuring them; and that the countries of South and Southeast Asia have abundant, though non-psychiatric, resources for dealing with them. In short, they advocate a thoroughgoing mental health pluralism.
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