The volume foregrounds the primacy of ‘choice’ and ‘agency’— upheld by the nuns themselves, who associate asceticism with autonomy, freedom, joy, spiritual well-being, self-worth and peace, and grihastha (household) with loss of independence, fettered existence, degradation, burdensome familial obligations and social responsibilities. It also examines whether it may be apt to term Jain nuns as practitioners of an ‘indigenous mode of feminism’. The book challenges the existing sociological theories of renunciation and tests the feminist concepts of agency and autonomy by investigating the culturally coded roles ascribed to women in Jainism, which are variegated, and examines how a fractured discourse and reality is resolved in the subjectivities and identities of female ascetics. The very legitimacy of the institution of female asceticism, and the way in which the society (samaj) upholds and sustains it, renders female asceticism into a socially approved alternative institution — albeit one that allows Jain nuns to create spaces of relative and autonomy and even prestige for themselves.
The volume foregrounds the primacy of ‘choice’ and ‘agency’— upheld by the nuns themselves, who associate asceticism with autonomy, freedom, joy, spiritual well-being, self-worth and peace, and grihastha (household) with loss of independence, fettered existence, degradation, burdensome familial obligations and social responsibilities. It also examines whether it may be apt to term Jain nuns as practitioners of an ‘indigenous mode of feminism’. The book challenges the existing sociological theories of renunciation and tests the feminist concepts of agency and autonomy by investigating the culturally coded roles ascribed to women in Jainism, which are variegated, and examines how a fractured discourse and reality is resolved in the subjectivities and identities of female ascetics. The very legitimacy of the institution of female asceticism, and the way in which the society (samaj) upholds and sustains it, renders female asceticism into a socially approved alternative institution — albeit one that allows Jain nuns to create spaces of relative and autonomy and even prestige for themselves.
![Escaping the World: Women Renouncers among Jains](http://img.images-bn.com/static/redesign/srcs/images/grey-box.png?v11.11.4)
Escaping the World: Women Renouncers among Jains
266![Escaping the World: Women Renouncers among Jains](http://img.images-bn.com/static/redesign/srcs/images/grey-box.png?v11.11.4)
Escaping the World: Women Renouncers among Jains
266Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9781138662391 |
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Publisher: | Taylor & Francis |
Publication date: | 01/21/2016 |
Series: | South Asian History and Culture |
Pages: | 266 |
Product dimensions: | 5.44(w) x 8.50(h) x (d) |