AN    INTERNATIONAL    JOURNAL     OF
CULTURAL  AND SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY

Volume 41, no. 4 (Fall 2002)

AMBIGUOUS BLEEDING: PURITY AND SACRIFICE IN BALI

Lene Pedersen
Central Washington University

Menstrual beliefs and practices in Bali defy simple classification. Menstruation may be relegated to the dump, as when a woman had to undergo a rite on a street midden when her monthly period coincided with the ritual time for a purification ceremony. But menstruation is also viewed as conferring raja status, and women do exhibit agency in this supposedly passive process. Experiences of menstruation, furthermore, may vary according to caste status. (Bali, classifications of pollution, restriction, agency, ambiguity).

THE MENSTRUAL HUT AND THE WITCH'S LAIR IN TWO EASTERN INDONESIAN SOCIETIES

Janet Hoskins
University of Southern California

Menstrual huts are associated with ideas of pollution, misogyny, and intersexual tension in the literature, but in Huaulu, Seram, I found an ambivalently charged but not necessarily negative view of female bodies. In contrast, the Kodi of Sumba do not seclude women during menstruation but do link menstrual contamination to venereal disease, herbalism, and witchcraft. Keeping menstruation secret expresses anxieties about bodily integrity that show a greater separation of male and female worlds than the public-health approach of the menstrual hut. (Menstrual huts, sexual politics, reproduction, witchcraft, pollution).

A WOMAN'S VAPOR: YUPIK BODILY POWERS IN SOUTHWEST ALASKA

Phyllis Morrow
University of Alaska, Fairbanks

Menstrual pollution is represented as a repressive ideology that particularly restricts women. Menstrual traditions among Yupik Eskimos of southwest Alaska challenge this model. Here, menstrual practices are understood within a set of social rules applied to persons (including men) in various states, and do not signal gender-based social-structural ambiguity. Anthropologists should not assume that menstrual restrictions are everywhere understood or experienced as rigidly inhibiting, implying regulation of the person, or indexing a primary concern with gender. (Menstrual traditions, gender, Alaska Native/Native American, Central Yupik).

POWER AND PLACEMENT IN BLOOD PRACTICES

Pamela J. Stewart
University of Pittsburgh

Andrew Strathern
University of Pittsburgh

Anthropologists writing on the Highlands societies of Papua New Guinea have stressed the variable importance of ideas of menstrual pollution as markers of gender relations. This article suggests an alternative approach to these ideas, emphasizing instead aspects of power, placement, complementarity, collaboration, and the moral agency of both genders. Turning to the ethnographic work of the 1960s, we contrast the writings of Salisbury and Meggitt and discuss the usefulness of the "three bodies" concept of Lock and Scheper-Hughes in the comparative analysis of body substances and their meanings in this region. The use of a collaborative model is helpful in such an overall analysis. (Bodily substances, cosmos, gender, menstruation, power).

INGESTING MENSTRUAL BLOOD: NOTIONS OF HEALTH AND BODILY FLUIDS IN BENGAL

Kristin Hanssen
University of Oslo

Ideas about seed in food, mantras, music, and bodily emissions are important to Vaishnava Bauls. Among these, menstrual blood is central, the wellspring of emotional and mental activity. When the power of a woman's flow is moderated through dietary practices, contact with it leads to commensality. This essay examines the strategies pursued by a female Baul called Tara, her conflicting notions about social growth, and bonding relating to menstrual blood. (Person-centered ethnography, renouncers, music, health, emotion).