Women and the contested state : religion, violence, and agency in South and Southeast Asia / edited by Monique Skidmore and Patricia Lawrence.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Skidmore, Monique.

Lawrence, Patricia.

Program in Conflict, Religion, and Peacebuilding.

Series:

Kroc Institute series on religion, conflict, and peace building.

Kroc Institute series on religion, conflict, and peacebuilding

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Women--Violence against--Political aspects--South Asia--Congresses.

Women.

Women and war--Sri Lanka--Congresses.

Women and war.

Women and religion--Burma--Congresses.

Women and religion.

Physical Description:

xi, 260 p. : ill., maps.

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Notre Dame : University of Notre Dame Press, c2007.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Throughout South and Southeast Asia, groups battle over definitions of identity-in direction and character-for their state, a struggle complicated by the legacy of colonialism. The contributors to this volume explore the intricate, dynamic relationships that pertain between women's agency and the state-making institutions and armed forces of Kashmir, India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Burma (Myanmar). They also address the complex roles of Islam, Hinduism, and Theravada Buddhism in these postcolonial dynamics. In particular, the contributors examine religion as a way of understanding how women's agency is constituted, created, and constrained during times of conflict with the state and other armed actors, such as guerilla groups and paramilitaries. These essays at the intersection of gender, religion, and peace studies will be of interest to a wide range of scholars and students who study conflict and hope for peace in South and Southeast Asia. Contributors: Monique Skidmore, Peter van der Veer, Veena Das, Betty Joseph, Yasmin Saikia, Patricia Lawrence, Alexandra Argenti-Pillen, Mangalika de Silva, Ingrid Jordt, and Bénédicte Brac de la Perrière.

Contents:

Contesting traditions : religion and violence in South Asia / Peter van der Veer

The citizen as sexed : women, violence, and reproduction / Veena Das

The nuclear fetish : violence, affect, and the postcolonial state / Betty Joseph

Overcoming the silent archive in Bangladesh : women bearing witness to violence in the 1971 Liberation War / Yasmin Saikia

The watch of Tamil women : women's acts in a transitional warscape / Patricia Lawrence

Mothers and wives of the disappeared in southern Sri Lanka : fragmented geographies of moral discomfort / Alex Argenti-Pillen

The other body and the body politic : contingency and dissonance in narratives of violence / Mangalika de Silva

Buddha's mother and the billboard queens : moral oower in contemporary Burma / Monique Skidmore

With patience we can endure / Ingrid Jordt

To marry a man or a spirit? : women, spirit possession cult, and domination in Burma / Benedicte Brac de la Perrire.

Notes:

Based on presentations at a conference in 2003 of the Program in Conflict, Religion, and Peacebuilding at the Joan. B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780268092696

0268092699

OCLC:

676292108