Breadwinners and Homemakers: Migration and Changing Conjugal Expectations in Rural Bangladesh

The literature on marriage norms and aspirations across societies largely sees the institution as static – a tool for the assertion of masculinities and subordination of women. The changing meanings of marriage and conjugality in the contemporary context of globalisation have received scant attention. Based on research in rural Bangladesh, this article questions the usefulness of notions of autonomy and dependence in understanding conjugal relations and expectations in a context of widespread migration for extended periods, especially to overseas destinations, where mutuality is crucial for social reproduction, though in clearly genderdemarcated domains

The “untouchable” who touched millions: Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, Navayana Buddhism, and complexity in social work scholarship on religion

Dr. B. R. Ambedkar was a twentieth century socio-political and religious reformer whose activities impacted millions of lives, especially among India’s Dalit community. This article illustrates his lifework and its lessons for social work scholarship on religion. Using the examples of Ambedkar and Navayana Buddhism, I discuss three sources of complexity for social work scholarship on religion: 1) religion may function as both oppressive and emancipatory; 2) religion is malleable, not monolithic; and 3) religion is situated in and interactive with contexts. I conclude with suggestions for how social work scholarship on religion may account for complexity

A voz dos bandos: colectivos de justiça e ritos da palavra portuguesa em Timor Leste colonial

Este artigo examina as relações entre o discurso da justiça e a prática do ritual nos bandos do governo colonial português em Timor Leste, entre a segunda metade do século XIX e as primeiras décadas do século XX. Os bandos consistiam em ordens e instruções de comando emanadas pelo governador português em Díli, e comunicadas de forma cerimonial por oficiais às populações dos diversos reinos timorenses dispersos pelo país. Bandos eram um instrumento por excelência de governação colonial dos assuntos indígenas, servindo para arbitrar conflitos, punir transgressões e, em geral, instituir realidades no mundo timorense. Contudo, esta instituição assumiu igualmente uma singular expressão nos usos timorenses, servindo bandos para comunicar também as ordens de autoridades tradicionais, os liurais. O artigo acompanha as variações coloniais e indígenas que os bandos adquiriram em Timor Leste, conceptualizando-os enquanto colectivos de justiça. Ao considerar assim os bandos como colectivos – formações heterogéneas em que elementos linguísticos e não linguísticos se combinam na produção de efeitos de poder sobre as populações – o artigo propõe uma via conceptual alternativa às perspectivas linguísticas e literárias de análise do discurso colonial

On sacred ground:the political performance of religious responsibility

Parts of this paper were presented at the 2013 Annual Conference of the British Association for South Asian Studies (BASAS); at a ‘Post-War Sri Lanka’ workshop at the London School of Economics; and at a workshop on Muslims in Sri Lanka held at the University of Edinburgh.April 2012: In Dambulla, a bustling market town built around a crossroads on the northern cusp of Sri Lanka's central province, a mosque was attacked by a procession of protestors led by the chief priest of the nearby Buddhist temple. Ostensibly the protest was against the presence of the mosque on the grounds that it had been built in an exclusively Buddhist ‘sacred area’. Beginning with an empirical account of the attack on the Dambulla mosque, this paper argues that the preservation of what is deemed to be ‘sacred’ in Sri Lanka provides an effective idiom through which certain religious figures can intelligibly articulate political claims whilst maintaining critical distance from the dirty world of ‘Politics’. Corollary to this, and drawing on two years of ethnographic fieldwork in Dambulla, the paper explores the various different meanings of politics locally: highlighting the interplay of everyday politicking and high-profile political performance.Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)

A long view of liberal peace and its crisis

The ‘crisis’ of liberal peace has generated considerable debate in International Relations. However, analysis is inhibited by a shared set of spatial, cultural and temporal assumptions that rest on and reproduce a problematic separation between self-evident ‘liberal’ and ‘non-liberal’ worlds, and locates the crisis in presentist terms of the latter’s resistance to the former’s expansion. By contrast, this article argues that efforts to advance liberal rule have always been interwoven with processes of alternative order-making, and in this way are actively integral, not external, to the generation of the subjectivities, contestations, violence and rival social orders that are then apprehended as self-evident obstacles and threats to liberal peace and as characteristic of its periphery. Making visible these intimate relations of co-constitution elided by representations of liberal peace and its crisis requires a long view and an analytical frame that encompasses both liberalism and its others in the world. The argument is developed using a Foucauldian governmentality framework and illustrated with reference to Sri Lanka

The Talking Cure as Action: Freud's Theory of Ritual Revisited

Freud made creative use of late Victorian theories of ritual as empty modes of behavior, using the idea of seemingly meaningless ritual to offer a compelling comparison with obsessive behavior. However, analytic hours, with their repetitive frame and repetition of unconscious conflicts, have stronger links with rituals than Freud admitted. Recent theories highlight the extensive power of rituals to organize and instantiate models of effective action, especially in terms of the multifunctionality of language. These new theories of ritual offer in turn new tools for understanding the therapeutic action of analytic hours. © 2011 Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis

Men's passage to fatherhood: an analysis of the contemporary relevance of transition theory

This paper presents a theoretical analysis of men's experiences of pregnancy, birth and early fatherhood. It does so using a framework of ritual transition theory and argues that despite its earlier structural-functionalist roots, transition theory remains a valuable framework, illuminating contemporary transitions across the life course. The paper discusses the historical development of transition or ritual theory and, drawing upon data generated during longitudinal ethnographic interviews with men undergoing the transition to fatherhood, analyses its relevance in understanding contemporary experiences of fatherhood