title: Clinical encounters and citizenship projects in South India.
abstract: Dedicated to a South Indian goddess, devadasis are priests in a healing cult, whose nonconjugal sexuality has been designated 'prostitution' and subjected to eradication by the state. Drawing on ethnographic research, I consider two ways in which they cross the threshold of the clinic, as 'vectors of disease' and as sex worker peer educators, in order to think about the bio-politics of citizenship in postcolonial India. If biopolitical citizenship describes the way the state takes hold of their bodies, dedication describes how their bodies are claimed by the Devi Yellamma. I juxtapose these different ways of embodying power as a means to mark the limits of secular social scientific terms of recognition.
authors.affiliation: a Department of Anthropology , Cornell University , Ithaca , New York , USA.
authors.forename: Lucinda
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Ramberg
mesh_terms: D060432:Anthropology, Medical; D005260:Female; D018596:Hinduism / Q000523:psychology*; D006801:Humans; D007194:India / Q000208:ethnology; D008297:Male; D011477:Sex Work; D060386:Sex Workers / Q000523:psychology*; D026443:Spiritual Therapies / Q000523:psychology*
keywords: India; biopolitics; body; devadasi; sex worker