Women in Ritual and Symbolic Roles
This volume of essays grew out of a symposium organized by Judith Hoch-Smith and Anita Spring for the 1974 American Anthropological Association meetings in Mexico City. The two-part symposium was enti tled "Women in Ritual and Symbolic Systems: I. Midwiv
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Women in Ritual
and Symbolic Roles Edited by JUDITH HOCH-SMITH Florida International University, Miami
and ANITA SPRING University of Florida, GainesviUe
PLENUM PRESS . NEW YORK AND LONDON
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Main entry under title: Women in ritual and symbolic roles. Includes bibliographies and index. 1. Women and religion-Addresses, essays, lectures. 2. Women {in religion, folk-lore, etc.}-Addresses, essays, lectures. 3. Sex role- Addresses, essays, lectures. I. HochSmith, Judith. II. Spring, Anita. BL458.W65 301.41'2 77-17448
ISBN-13: 978-1-4684-2402-7 001: 10.1007/978-1-4684-2400-3
e-ISBN-13: 978-1-4684-2400-3
© 1978 Plenum Press, New York A Division of Plenum Publishing Corporation 227 West 17th Street, New York, N.Y. 10011
All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher
Preface This volume of essays grew out of a symposium organized by Judith Hoch-Smith and Anita Spring for the 1974 American Anthropological Association meetings in Mexico City. The two-part symposium was entitled "Women in Ritual and Symbolic Systems: I. Midwives, Madonnas, and Mediums; ll. Prostitutes, Witches, and Androgynes." The symposium participants were asked to explore theological, ritual, and symbolic aspects-both positive and negative-of the feminine cultural domain, using ethnographic materials with which they were familiar. The resulting papers have been revised, edited, and gathered together in Women in Ritual and Symbolic Roles. The theoretical importance of these papers for the study of women's participation in culture and society rests on the assumption that religious ideas are paramount forces in social life, that relationships between the sexes, the nature of female sexuality, and the social and cultural roles of women are in large part defined by religious ideas. That this proposition remains valid long after religion itself has ceased to be a living truth in the lives of many people can be seen from the tenaciousness of Judeo-Christian ideas about women in the contemporary Western world. Both the expansion of life options for women and the creation of more positive cultural images of the female are intimately related to changes in the mytho-symbolic portraits that people carry around in their heads. These portraits are almost exclusively constructed from mythological and religious conceptions inherent in all facets of culture. We feel that the focus of this collection on female religious representation and participation is unique to anthropological literature, which has for the most part considered only images and roles of men in religious expression. Women in Ritual and Symbolic Roles provides a crosscultural perspective on women and religion, and some feeling for how these roles and images shape and determine the participation of women in social life . v
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PREFACE
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