Written by Cecilia Busby in 1997, carried out fieldwork between 1991 and
1993. Article became part of a book published in 2000 entitled ‘The
Performance of Gender
An Anthropology of Everyday Life in a South Indian Fishing Village’ in
which she draws on the social theory of Judith Butler, Pierre Bourdieu and
Michel Foucault to highlight both the performativity of gender but also the
embodied notions of gender. Busby was influenced by Marilyn Strathern
(Dividual) who read an earlier draft of her work and offered some of her
own insight.
“This article puts into relief the concept of the partible person…Gender in
South India is fixed and stable, based on bodily difference between
women and men, and importantly focused on the capacity for procreation.
In Melanesia gender is performative, shifting and contextually defined.
This contrast related to differences between the two areas in notions of
the person and of the exchange of substances or parts of persons”
(1997:p261)
It could be argued that in many western societies we also have a fluid and
permeable boundary. We look to our children to be extensions of
ourselves, family members ‘share the same blood’, we look for our facial
features and characteristics in our children and wider family. Main
difference is that children are viewed as an equal mixture of mother and
father (girls not more connected to mother, boys not more connected to
father as in south India - Marianad)
If, in the west, we’re seen as an equal mixture between mother and father
surely we should be seen as a mixture of both male and female? Why are
we so fixated on genitals being the main signifier/definer of gender? Is it
because, similarly to Marianad (south India) there’s a strong correlation
between gender and our ability to procreate?
Link Werbner (2011. The charismatic individual and the Sacred self).
Christian belief of the ability of the holy spirit to enter humans is a strong
example of Dividuality.
Melanesia:
While gender in South India is a fixed and stable attribute of the body,
gender in Melanesia appears to by primarily performative, concerned with
what people do (or how they do it) rather that what they are.
Bibliography: