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anthropolog y
Given to the Goddess
South Indian Devadasis
and the Sexuality of Religion
lucinda ramberg
Cultivating the Nile
The Everyday Politics of Water in Egypt
jessica barnes
“Lucinda Ramberg’s powerful combination of ethnographic observation
and theoretical reflection connects the study of a particular social group
in South India (devadasis or jogatis) with general issues in anthropology
and feminist and queer studies. Given to the Goddess will prove relevant
to those, such as myself, who know very little about India but who are
concerned with related issues in different contexts.”—ÉRIC FASSIN,
Université Paris-8
Who and what are marriage and
sex for Whose practices and which
Given to the Goddess ways of talking to god can count as
Lucinda Ramberg
religion Lucinda Ramberg considers
these questions based on 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
SOUTH INDIAN DEVADASIS and the SEXUALITY of RELIGION
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.
Lucinda Ramberg is Assistant Professor in the Department of
Anthropology and the Program in Feminist, Gender & Sexuality Studies
at Cornell University.
“Cultivating the Nile is an impressive account of something we know little
about despite its growing urgency: the causes of water scarcity in any
particular region and the ways that the people affected deal with it.
A significant contribution to the growing literature on water sustainability
around the world, Cultivating the Nile is likely to be discussed for years
to come.”—STEVEN C. CATON, Harvard University
The waters of the Nile are fundamental
to life in Egypt. In this compelling
ethnography, Jessica Barnes explores
the everyday politics of water: a politics
anchored in the mundane yet vital
acts of blocking, releasing, channeling,
and diverting water. She examines
the quotidian practices of farmers,
government engineers, and international
donors as they interact with
The e veryday PoliT ics
Cultivating the Nile
of waT er in egyPT
the waters of the Nile flowing into and
through Egypt. Situating these local
jessica barnes
practices in relation to broader processes
that affect Nile waters, Barnes
moves back and forth from farmer to government ministry, from irrigation
canal to international water conference. By showing how the waters
of the Nile are constantly made and remade as a resource by people in
and outside Egypt, she demonstrates the range of political dynamics,
social relations, and technological interventions that must be incorporated
into understandings of water and its management.
Jessica Barnes is Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography
and the Environment and Sustainability Program at the University of South
Carolina.
NEW ECOLOGIES FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
A Series Edited by Arturo Escobar and Dianne Rocheleau
22
ANTHROPOLOGY OF RELIGION/SOUTH ASIA
September 304 pages, 25 illustrations
paper, 978–0–8223–5724–7, $24.95/£15.99
cloth, 978–0–8223–5710–0, $89.95/£59.00
ANTHROPOLOGY/ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES
September 256 pages, 24 illustrations
paper, 978–0–8223–5756–8, $24.95/£15.99
cloth, 978–0–8223–5741–4, $89.95/£59.00