Dissertation Research: Ritual Identity and Role Conflict in South India

本项目涉及到埃默里大学一名学生的毕业论文研究。这项研究涉及印度南部一座城市一个宗教从业者社区的意识形态和行为实践之间的紧张关系。该教派的修行者将他们的男性生殖器官献给他们的宗教，变装并进行宗教仪式，以赋予雇用他们进行宗教仪式的赞助人生育能力。仪式的效果在精神上与修行者放弃自己的性有关。初步研究表明，部分宗教从业者充当商业性工作者，采用调查和密集访谈以及人种学观察相结合的方法，学生将检验性放弃和社区个别成员的创收做法之间的紧张关系，因为这会影响他们的社会地位。这个项目很重要，因为它增加了对世界这一重要地区的了解，并促进了我们对在这个非西方环境中与社区社会地位、个人收入和仪式纯洁性相关的基本过程的理解。

This project involves the dissertation research of a student from Emory University. The study involves the tension between ideology and behavioral practices in a community of religious practitioners in a city of south India. Practitioners of this sect sacrifice their male reproductive organs to their religion, cross-dressing and conducting religious rites to confer fertility upon their patrons who hire them to conduct religious rituals. The efficacy of the rituals is spiritually connected to the practitioner's renunciation of their own sexuality Preliminary research has shown that a portion of the religious practitioners act as commercial sex workers Using a combination of surveys and intensive interviews as well as ethnographic observation, the student will examine the tension between the sexual renunciation and the income-producing practices of individual members of the community as these affect their social status. This project is important because it increases knowledge about this important region of the world, as well as advances our understanding of basic processes relating community social status, personal income and ritual purity in this non-Western setting.