Cultural Change Continuity In by Akiner

Author:Akiner [Akiner]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781138990524
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2016-08-08T00:00:00+00:00

Women's Non-conformity and Irresponsibility

In spite of the importance of women's domestic roles, there is virtually no explicit recognition of the fact that women of a household have certain minimal expectations and rights which men must meet if they are to remain honourable and the household viable. The issues of women's conjugal rights is almost entirely hidden both by the ideology of honour and shame, on the one hand, and by the system of beliefs and practices associated with spirit possession on the other.

The idiom of honour and shame is a male-dominated discourse and affords men many opportunities to expound a point of view which defines their interests as honourable and in accord with those of the wider community. Indeed, there is far greater scope of men to define their interests as honourable — even when these diverge from the social norms which define key groups and identities — than there is for women to do so. Honourable women are those who passively accept roles defined in terms of their dependence on men. It is virtually impossible for a woman to justify, in terms which others would accept as honourable, any perception that she might have legitimate personal experiences or interests which diverge from those of the household with which she is associated.

Only people who are recognised as socially competent, independent individuals can be labelled either honourable or dishonourable; those who are not full participants in the Durrani community are dismissed in quite other terms. In the case of men, social failure is most often construed, like men's ‘honour’, as active and part of the public domain, while among women, social failure is usually consonant with women's ‘honour’ as passive and domestic. The inability of men and women to fulfill their social and moral responsibilities is explained, typically, in the case of men, in terms of ‘insanity’ (lewantop) and, in the case of women, in terms of possession by jinn spirits. ‘Insanity’ in men refers to a lack of ‘reason’, the main quality necessary for performing the male responsibility of providing for a household and defending its resources; jinn-possession in women is particularly associated with illness and difficulties in performing female reproductive responsibilities.

Though victims of jinn-possession are considered non-culpable, it is nonetheless the case that if a woman's ill-health persists, or if, over time she fails to produce surviving children, her roles as wife and mistress of a household may well be usurped by a cowife or some other woman of the household and her status and domestic power diminished significantly. Women greatly fear and dread such a fate, which strikes randomly and serves to isolate individuals who, like ‘insane’ men, are rendered socially invisible. The fundamental difference between the afflictions of ‘insanity’ and ‘jinn-possession’ is the attribution of responsbility for the former and not the latter. Women are defined as passive in the face of their misfortunes; men are not (see R. Tapper and N. Tapper, n.d., for a more detailed account of these issues).

In many respects, jinn-possession among the

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