| Publication |
2009.
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| Summary/Abstract |
During the 1980s and 1990s, I developed a familiarity with a very specific sub-culture in Tamil Nadu-the Catholic fishing communities of Kanyakumari, who live in a string of sandy villages stretching from the Cape itself, up to the border with Kerala. I was at this point particularly interested in popular religion and its construction of the female body. Following on from that interest, and set off against the backdrop of a familiarity with the social life of these villages, I began a series of wide-ranging sets of interviews with women I already knew on the ways they framed their experiences of puberty and maternity. The interviews threw up, as I had suspected, an intersecting range of discursive frames. And the book I will eventually bring out on this topic will be as much about the relationship between different kinds of intellectuals and rural people as it will be about female experiences per se. The interviews were deliberately conducted with those active in non-government organisations (NGOs) run by Catholic organisations in the district, as well as with school teachers, priests, midwives and healers of different kinds, with doctors, as well as with ordinary women from different age sets.
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