The Sorcery of Gender: Sex, Death and Difference in East Java, Indonesia
Year: 2010
Type: article
Abstract: Drawing on ethnographic material from East Java, Indonesia, this article examines the intersections of sorcery and gender and suggests that sorcery is a form of exchange, which, as well as inducing misfortune, pain and death, evinces gender. Key here are the invocation and inversion of marriage transactions and wedding rituals, and an underlying conception of the person as inherently androgynous. The article also calls for sorcery and other manifestations of violence to be moved away from the margins and towards the centre of anthropological descriptions of Javanese sociality.
Source: South East Asia Research
Author: Konstantinos Retsikas
Institutions: University of London, SOAS University of London
Language: English
Subfield: Cultural Studies
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Gender equality
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1990752252