essay
The sexual politics of karmic retribution
anthropology of Taiwanese society • Stanford, Calif. • Published In 1981 • Pages: 381-396, 468-469
By: Seaman, Gary.
AbstractBrief abstract written by HRAF anthropologists who have done the subject indexing for the document
Seaman examined beliefs in the polluting power of women and their bodies in relation to an evident paradox of funeral rites, at which sons must symbolically drink of their birth blood as proof of their filial piety toward their mothers. The text of the ritual Blood Bowl Sutra that is performed at women's funerals is presented and analyzed, as is the ceremony and its basis in both notions of female uncleanliness and women's actual social ambiguity.
- SubjectsDocument-level OCM identifiers given by the anthropology subject indexers at HRAF
- Literary texts
- Gender status
- Burial practices and funerals
- Purification and atonement
- Congregations
- cultureCulture name from the Outline of World Cultures (OWC)
- Taiwan Hokkien
- HRAF PubDateThe date HRAF published the document
- 1995
- RegionThe area the document pertains to
- Asia
- Sub RegionThe more specific area the document pertains to, which is located within the Region
- East Asia
- Document TypeMay include journal articles, essays, collections of essays, monographs, or chapters/parts of monographs
- essay
- Evaluation
- Creator TypeThe type of person writing the document, e.g. Ethnographer, Missionary, Archaeologist, Folklorist, Linguist, Indigenous Person, and so on.
- Ethnologist
- Document Rating A ranking done by HRAF anthropologists based on the strength of the source material on a scale of 1 to 5, as follows: 1 - poor; 2 - fair; 3 - good, useful data, but not uniformly excellent; 4 - excellent secondary data; 5 - excellent primary data.
- 5: Excellent Primary Data
- AnalystThe HRAF anthropologist who subject indexed the document and prepared other materials for the eHRAF culture/tradition collection
- M. A. Marcus; Marlene Martin
- Field DateThe date the researcher conducted the fieldwork or archival research that produced the document
- 1970-1976
- Coverage DateThe date or dates that the information in the document pertains to
- not specified
- Coverage PlaceLocation of the research culture or tradition (often a smaller unit such as a band, community, or archaeological site)
- P'u-li Basin, central Taiwan (p. 382)
- NotesAdditional notes
- Gary Seaman
- Includes bibliography
- LCSHLibrary of Congress Subject Headings
- Taiwanese