Bodily Practices and Medical Identities in Southern Thailand

Bodily Practices and Medical Identities in Southern Thailand PDF Author: Claudia Merli
Publisher: Uppsala Universitet
ISBN:
Category : Biopolitics
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
This study explores contemporary practices concerning women’s and children’s bodies, with a special focus on postpartum practices, the treatment of the afterbirth and its cosmological dimensions, and male and female circumcision. At the intersection between traditional midwifery and modern medicine, Muslim women cross the boundaries between different cosmologies and medical systems. At the borders to Malaysia, the Muslim minority in Thailand upholds postpartum practices which have been abandoned by the Thai Buddhists in the region, making of the body a contested site of powers and identities. Traditional midwives are pressured to limit their practices to rituals and massage. The increasing use of medical technologies in the form of Caesarean section and modern contraceptives are perceived as leading to changes in the local ethnophysiology of female bodies. The fluidity once characterising pre-and postpartum bodily states, has turned into an infertile rigidity exemplified by metaphors of a hardened body. In official discourse a sharp line is drawn between outdated tradition and medical modernity, at the same time as ethnic-religious borders between Malay Muslims and Thai Buddhists are erased with the disappearance of old practices and the emergence of new Muslim identities and rituals. Prodigious events and pregnancy losses led in the past to the formation of spirit cults managed by female mediums and represented a means of communication between Muslim and Buddhist lifeworlds. As these events vanish under medical scrutiny and intervention on the one hand, and a modernist reading of Islam on the other hand, local ethnophysiological conceptions are lost. Individual and social bodies are put under the medical dressage of biopolitics and a discourse on the Muslim minority is created to serve aims of internal colonialism.

Bodily Practices and Medical Identities in Southern Thailand

Bodily Practices and Medical Identities in Southern Thailand PDF Author: Claudia Merli
Publisher: Uppsala Universitet
ISBN:
Category : Biopolitics
Languages : en
Pages : 340

Get Book Here

Book Description
This study explores contemporary practices concerning women’s and children’s bodies, with a special focus on postpartum practices, the treatment of the afterbirth and its cosmological dimensions, and male and female circumcision. At the intersection between traditional midwifery and modern medicine, Muslim women cross the boundaries between different cosmologies and medical systems. At the borders to Malaysia, the Muslim minority in Thailand upholds postpartum practices which have been abandoned by the Thai Buddhists in the region, making of the body a contested site of powers and identities. Traditional midwives are pressured to limit their practices to rituals and massage. The increasing use of medical technologies in the form of Caesarean section and modern contraceptives are perceived as leading to changes in the local ethnophysiology of female bodies. The fluidity once characterising pre-and postpartum bodily states, has turned into an infertile rigidity exemplified by metaphors of a hardened body. In official discourse a sharp line is drawn between outdated tradition and medical modernity, at the same time as ethnic-religious borders between Malay Muslims and Thai Buddhists are erased with the disappearance of old practices and the emergence of new Muslim identities and rituals. Prodigious events and pregnancy losses led in the past to the formation of spirit cults managed by female mediums and represented a means of communication between Muslim and Buddhist lifeworlds. As these events vanish under medical scrutiny and intervention on the one hand, and a modernist reading of Islam on the other hand, local ethnophysiological conceptions are lost. Individual and social bodies are put under the medical dressage of biopolitics and a discourse on the Muslim minority is created to serve aims of internal colonialism.

Making Bodies Kosher

Making Bodies Kosher PDF Author: Ben Kasstan
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1789202299
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 286

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Book Description
Minority populations are often regarded as being ‘hard to reach’ and evading state expectations of health protection. This ethnographic and archival study analyses how devout Jews in Britain negotiate healthcare services to preserve the reproduction of culture and continuity. This book demonstrates how the transformative and transgressive possibilities of technology reveal multiple pursuits of protection between this religious minority and the state. Making Bodies Kosher advances theoretical perspectives of immunity, and sits at the intersection of medical anthropology, social history and the study of religions.

Muslim Merit-making in Thailand's Far-South

Muslim Merit-making in Thailand's Far-South PDF Author: Christopher M. Joll
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9400724853
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 239

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Book Description
This volume provides an ethnographic description of Muslim merit-making rhetoric, rituals and rationales in Thailand’s Malay far-south. This study is situated in Cabetigo, one of Pattani’s oldest and most important Malay communities that has been subjected to a range of Thai and Islamic influences over the last hundred years. The volume describes religious rhetoric related to merit-making being conducted in both Thai and Malay, that the spiritual currency of merit is generated through the performance of locally occurring Malay adat, and globally normative amal 'ibadat. Concerning the rationale for merit-making, merit-makers are motivated by both a desire to ensure their own comfort in the grave and personal vindication at judgment, as well as to transfer merit for those already in the grave, who are known to the merit-maker. While the rhetoric elements of Muslim merit-making reveal Thai influence, its ritual elements confirm the local impact of reformist activism.

Routledge Handbook of Islam in Southeast Asia

Routledge Handbook of Islam in Southeast Asia PDF Author: Syed Muhammad Khairudin Aljunied
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000545040
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 448

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Book Description
This handbook explores the ways in which Islam, as one of the fastest growing religions, has become a global faith for both Muslims and non-Muslims in Southeast Asia with its universality, inclusivity, and shared features with other Islamic expressions and manifestations. It offers an up-to-date, wide-ranging, comprehensive, concise, and readable introduction to the field of Islam in Southeast Asia. With specific themes of pertinent contemporary relevance, the contributions by experts in the field provide fresh insights into the roles of states, societies, scholars, social movements, political parties, economic institutions, sacred sites, and other forces that structured the faith over many centuries. The handbook is structured in three parts: Muslim Global Circulations Marginal Narratives Refashioning Pieties This handbook stands out as a single and synergistic reference work that explores the ebb and flow of Islam seeking to decenter many existing assumptions about it in Southeast Asia. It will be an indispensable resource for scholars, students, and policymakers working on Islam, Muslims, and their interactions with other communities in a plural setting.

The Material Culture of Failure

The Material Culture of Failure PDF Author: David Jeevendrampillai
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000181081
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
What happens when objects behave unexpectedly or fail to do what they ‘should’? Who defines failure? Is failure always bad? Rather than viewing concepts such as failure, incoherence or incompetence as antithetical to social life, this innovative new book examines the unexpected and surprising ways in which failure can lead to positive and creative results. Combining both theoretical and ethnographic approaches to failure, The Material Culture of Failure explores how failure manifests itself and operates in a variety of contexts. The editors present ten ethnographic encounters of failure – from areas as diverse as design, textiles, religion, beauty, and physical failure – covering Europe, North America, Asia, Africa, and the Arabian Gulf. Identifying common themes such as interpersonal, national and religious articulations of power and identity, the book shows some of the underlying assumptions that are revealed when materials fail, designs crumble, or things develop unexpectedly.The first anthropological study dedicated to theorizing failure, this innovative collection offers fresh insights based on the latest scholarship. Destined to stimulate a new area of research, the book makes a vital contribution to material culture studies and related social science theory.

Critical Risk Research

Critical Risk Research PDF Author: Stuart Lane
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0470974877
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
Risk Research: Practices, Politics and Ethics offers a collection of essays, written by a wide variety of international researchers in risk research, about what it means to do risk research, and about how – and with what effects – risk research is practiced, articulated and exploited. This approach is based upon the core assumption that: to make a difference in the study of risk, we must move beyond what we usually do, challenging the core assumptions, scientific, economic and social, about how we study, frame, exploit and govern risk. Hence, through a series of essays, the book aims to challenge the current ways in which risk-problems are approached and presented, both conceptually by academics and through the framings that are encoded in the technologies and socio-political and institutional practices used to manage risk. In addressing these questions, the book does not attempt to offer a model of how risk research 'should' be done. Rather, the book provides, through illustration, a challenge to the ways in which risk research is framed as 'problem-solving.' The book's ultimate objective aims to increase critical debate between different disciplines, approaches, concepts and problems.

Self-determination and Women's Rights in Muslim Societies

Self-determination and Women's Rights in Muslim Societies PDF Author: Chitra Raghavan
Publisher: UPNE
ISBN: 1611682800
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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Book Description
Contradicting the views commonly held by westerners, many Muslim countries in fact engage in a wide spectrum of reform, with the status of women as a central dimension. This anthology counters the myth that Islam and feminism are always or necessarily in opposition. A multidisciplinary group of scholars examine ideology, practice, and reform efforts in the areas of marriage, divorce, abortion, violence against women, inheritance, and female circumcision across the Islamic world, illuminating how religious and cultural prescriptions interact with legal norms, affecting change in sometimes surprising ways.

Magic and Divination in Malay Illustrated Manuscripts

Magic and Divination in Malay Illustrated Manuscripts PDF Author: Farouk Yahya
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004301720
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 377

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Book Description
This book offers an integrated study of the texts and images of illustrated Malay manuscripts on magic and divination from private and public collections in Malaysia, the UK and Indonesia. Containing some of the rare examples of Malay painting, these manuscripts provide direct evidence for the intercultural connections between the Malay region, other parts of Southeast Asia and the rest of the world. In this richly illustrated volume many images and texts are gathered for the first time, making this book essential reading for all those interested in the practice of magic and divination, and the history of Malay, Southeast Asian and Islamic manuscript art.

Power, Sect and State in Syria

Power, Sect and State in Syria PDF Author: A. Maria A. Kastrinou
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0857727524
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
The Syrian state's rhetoric of Arab nationalism left little room for the official recognition of minority identities in pre-war Syria. Yet in practice, the state continually engaged with the Druze and other minorities to reinforce its legitimacy, often through cultural policy. Uncovering this neglected aspect of pre-war Syrian politics, Kastrinou explores the cultural politics of marriage in Syria, primarily among the Druze, to reveal how practical rituals of marriage inform sectarian and national identity formation.Challenging the assumed inherence of sectarianism and Druze endogamy, the book provides an historical and ethnographic account of political power and its relation to social control in Syria. It demonstrates the centrality of the body to Druze cosmology and how ritual performances of birth, marriage and death maintain and negotiate sectarian cohesion. Connecting these struggles to national and international politics, Kastrinou examines how both the Syrian government and the European Union have sponsored marriage-themed dance performances in Syria, each leveraging its cultural importance to legitimise their own policy goals. The book establishes marriage as a pervasive idiom for the construction of collective identity in Syria, which is appropriated by individuals, sects, states and intergovernmental organizations alike. Its conclusions are relevant to scholars of Middle East studies, sectarianism, anthropology and politics.

Technologies of Sexuality, Identity and Sexual Health

Technologies of Sexuality, Identity and Sexual Health PDF Author: Lenore Manderson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136328777
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
Technologies of Sexuality, Identity and Sexual Health highlights the complex ways in which sexuality is expressed and enacted through local ideologies, global identities and material cultures, and their influence on people’s sexual health and well-being. Its impetus is the renewed interest in technology and the ‘social life of things,’ including pharmaceuticals, expanded sexual and related surgery, the growing exploitation of markets for sexual and contraceptive products, and the impact of these on sexual and health practices and outcomes. Organised loosely into three parts, the opening chapters concentrate on female contraception, its availability, and the varied cultural significance attached to the ability to control its use, exploring the politics of reproductive health and birth control, and the ties between technology and power. The middle section turns its attention to men, and the impact of traditional and contemporary concerns about masculinity, and the social and sexual roles of men. The final chapters look at the commonalities across cultural borders and sexual gendered identities – how products and procedures travel, not only through the formal channels of globalisation, but also informally, carried by individuals across cultural and social boundaries through sexual, social and commercial interactions. The volume brings together anthropologists, sociologists and cultural studies scholars, both senior and emerging, from around the globe. Offering an important and topical contribution to the developing global literature on sexuality, sexual identity, culture and health, it is of interest to researchers and advanced students in these areas.