Hair: Its Power and Meaning in Asian Cultures
Editorial Reviews Times Literary Supplement, July 10, 1998 Hair: Its power and meaning in Asian cultures was inspired by an after-dinner discussion between some high powered Asian scholars and, though some of the essays are very sober, some trace of stimulating after-dinner conversation persists in Ganana th Obeyesekere's foreword, with its "root meanings" and "cultural grammars' that are 'loose', like hair itself." --This text refers to the Paperback edition. Book Description Hair--whether present or absent, restored or removed, abundant or scarce, long or short, bound or unbound, colored or natural--marks a person as clearly as speech, clothing, and smell. It defines a person's gender, sexual availability and desirability, age, social status, and even political stance. It may also act as a basis for discrimination in treatment by others. While hair's high salience as both sign and symbol extends cross-culturally through time, its denotations are far from universal. Hair is an interdisciplinary look at the meanings of hair, hairiness, and hairlessness in Asian cultures, from classical to contemporary contexts.
The contributors draw on a variety of literary, archaeological, religious, and ethnographic evidence. They examine scientific, medical, political, and popular cultural discourses. Topics covered include monastic communities and communities of fashion, hair codes and social conventions of rank, attitudes of enforcement and rebellion, and positions of privilege and destitution. Different interpretations include hair as a key aspect of female beauty, of virility, as obscene, as impure, and linked with other symbolic markers in bodily, social, political, and cosmological constructs. Hair: Its Power and Meaning in Asian Cultures
Hair: Its Power and Meaning in Asian Cultures,Gananath Obeyesekere,Alf Hiltebeitel,Barbara D. Miller,State University of New York Press,0791437418,Anthropology - Cultural,Asia,Beauty & Grooming - General,Customs & Traditions,Dress And Costume,Erotic aspects,Hair,Hairstyles,History,Social Science,Social aspects,Sociology
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