The Structure of Sinhalese Healing Rituals

Yalman, Nur

doi:10.2307/2050626

Cited by 28 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…Low caste men can have concubines, but they were not allowed to marry high caste women by the norm. Quite opposed to what Yalman (1964) observed, now polyandry is not practised in these peasantries, though some caste norms related to marriages still persist. Marriagerelated caste norms perhaps hinder women's progress in peasantries in the modern day.…”

Section: Identity Mobilization and Educationcontrasting

confidence: 64%

From Deficiency to Affluence: Dynamics of Kandyan Peasantries and the Rise Of Rural Caste Elite In Sri Lanka

Udayanga

2018

Jnl. Soc. Sci. Hum. Rev

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During the past few decades, enormous changes in Kandyan peasantries have caused its restructuration, though some significant older structures still remain intact swaying people's behaviour. For example, attitudes toward the caste have been changed tremendously, but again it plays a significant role in contemporary rural Sri Lanka. Therefore, this paper focuses on how people in Kandyan peasantries have been involved in the market-oriented development process, and in particular, why the lowcaste people in Kandyan highland peasantries benefitted from education, once they have secured their economic gains while the high caste people have not. The research conducted using ethnomethodology reveals that the rural sector in Sri Lanka has undergone a convincing transition, while some traditional institutions were preserved. Within this transition, as the authoritative identity of the high caste people disturbed their education, in turn, prevented their upward mobility that of the low caste communities. Moreover, the market economy stimulated the upward mobility of low caste people in the contemporary Kandyan peasantries. As the market economy prevails in the country, some specific tasks performed by the low castes became market-oriented that and hastened the rise of rural elite from the low castes in Kandyan peasantries. The life of low caste elite then became stable and inspired them to drive toward a prestigious social status, during which education provided necessary means.

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Section: Identity Mobilization and Educationcontrasting

confidence: 64%

From Deficiency to Affluence: Dynamics of Kandyan Peasantries and the Rise Of Rural Caste Elite In Sri Lanka

Udayanga

2018

Jnl. Soc. Sci. Hum. Rev

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“…In any event, structuralism in the British context underwent a number of important transformations. Avoiding the question of mind, and of universal structures, British anthropologists primarily applied structural analysis to particular societies and particular cosmologies (e.g., Leach 1966Leach , 1969Needham 1973a;Yalman 1969; the point also applies to Dumont (1970) in France). They also focused in more detail on the process of mediation of oppositions, and produced a number of quite original ruminations upon anomaly and antistructure, especially Mary Douglas's Purity and Danger (see also Turner 1967Leach 1964;Tambiah 1969).…”

Section: Structuralismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Theory in Anthropology since the Sixties

1984

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Every year, around the time of the meetings of the American Anthropological Association, the New York Times asks a Big Name anthropologist to contribute an op-ed piece on the state of the field. These pieces tend to take a rather gloomy view. A few years ago, for example, Marvin Harris suggested that anthropology was being taken over by mystics, religious fanatics, and California cultists; that the meetings were dominated by panels on shamanism, witchcraft, and "abnormal phenomena"; and that "scientific papers based on empirical studies" had been willfully excluded from the program (Harris 1978). More recently, in a more sober tone, Eric Wolf suggested that the field of anthropology is coming apart. The sub-fields (and sub-sub-fields) are increasingly pursuing their specialized interests, losing contact with each other and with the whole. There is no longer a shared discourse, a shared set of terms to which all practitioners address themselves, a shared language we all, however idiosyncratically, speak (Wolf 1980). The state of affairs does seem much as Wolf describes it. The field appears to be a thing of shreds and patches, of individuals and small coteries pursuing disjunctive investigations and talking mainly to themselves. We do not even hear stirring arguments any more. Although anthropology was never actually unified in the sense of adopting a single shared paradigm, there was at least a period when there were a few large categories of theoretical affiliation, a set of identifiable camps or schools, and a few simple epithets one could hurl at This essay contains much of my own intellectual history. There will be no more appropriate context in which to thank my teachers, Frederica de Laguna, Clifford Geertz, and David Schneider for having turned me, for better or for worse, into an anthropologist. In addition, I wish to thank the following friends and colleagues for helpful contributions to the development of this essay:

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“…There are a number of available descriptions of major exorcisms (see Pertold 1973 ;Wirz 1954;Sarachandra 1966;Egan n.d.;Yalman 1964;Obeyesekere 1969;Kapferer n.d.a, 1975). Each varies in terms of the main demons propitiated, their myths and songs, and the organization and content of dance and dramatic sequences.…”

Section: Negation and Reconstruction In The Context Of Healing Ritualsmentioning

confidence: 99%

mind, self, and other in demonic illness: the negation and reconstruction of Self

Kapferer

1979

American Ethnologist

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Normalcy and the morbid have their ontological style" (Maurice Natanson 1974: 251) Various perspectives have been applied to the study of illness and healing rituals by anthropologists in a variety of different cultural contexts. These have been influenced by conventional anthropological paradigms, such as structural-functionalism, or by rapidly conventionalizing ones, such as LBvi-Straussian structuralism. Anthropologists have also felt free to borrow from psychology and Freudian and neo-Freudian psychoanalytic theory. One perspective that has received comparatively little attention from anthropologists is that developed by G. H. Mead, recognized as perhaps the single most important influence on the sociological tradition known as "symbolic interactionism," and the closely allied approach of social phenomenology (see Natanson 1973Natanson , 1974. These approaches have, of course, received wide currency in the study of illness, and particularly mental illness, in western contexts, but aside from a few isolated examples (Young 1976; Manning and Fabrega 1973, in relation to illness; and Geertz 1966, more generally) they have not received close attention from anthropologists. This paper is oriented, therefore, to the demonstration of the relevance of these approaches, and especially the perspective developed by Mead in Mind, Self and Society (19341, specifically to the anthropological study of illness and rituals of healing.' I am mainly concerned with the process of the definition of illness and with maior rites of healing insofar as these reveal processes relating to the construction and negation of the individual social se1f.I Mead is concerned with the process of the emergence of a Self. I will elaborate later the main aspects of Mead's argument in my application of it to material collected in Sri Lanka. The thrust of my argument, however, organized in accordance largely with the Meadian framework, i s that the definition of illness in the demonic mode constitutes a process that can lead to the negation of the "normal" Self as this is socially constructed and culturally typified.' The performance of a healing ritual both re-represents this process, in effect symbolically presents it and develops it in accordance with cultural typifications of what constitutes an "abnormal" nonsocial self, and establishes a process whereby the normal social Self is reconstructed.I stress that in the analysis that I present, no statement is made to the effect that individuals who are defined as demonically ill or who undergo the maior rites that I describe Major exorcism rituals in Sri Lanka attempt to transform the identity of a patient from one of illness to one of health. The cultural "logic" of this is described and understood in terms of an analytical approach developed from the work of C. H. Mead and the closely associated work of certain social phenomenologists. The approach adopted in this paper, although argued mainly in relation to Sinhalese healing rituals, is considered as be ing capable of extension to other forms...

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The Structure of Sinhalese Healing Rituals

Cited by 28 publications

References 11 publications

From Deficiency to Affluence: Dynamics of Kandyan Peasantries and the Rise Of Rural Caste Elite In Sri Lanka

From Deficiency to Affluence: Dynamics of Kandyan Peasantries and the Rise Of Rural Caste Elite In Sri Lanka

Theory in Anthropology since the Sixties

mind, self, and other in demonic illness: the negation and reconstruction of Self

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