This public lecture examines issues of the female self, language and performance in therapeutic cults in India. Anthropologists have stressed the relationship between symptoms of distress, ritual action and unwanted possession. Marine Carrin describes how ritual becomes a means for either representing or manipulating special mental states. With reference to language and performance in two Indian therapeutic cults, she examines the gender significance of how individuals use possession as a strategy to frame reformulation of the female self.

Marine Carrin is the Director of Research, at the Centre d’Anthropologie Sociale, Toulouse, France. She has published extensively on Adivasis in India as well as on castes and bhuta cults in Karnataka. Marine is editor of Managing Distress: Therapeutic Cults in South Asia, (1999). She has a book (in press) on Santal ritual discourse and is currently working on indigenous knowledge and related issues in India.

Enquiries: Martina Fechner or call 6125 6281

Access: Free and open to the public, no RSVP required