A01=Deborah L. Neff
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Author_Deborah L. Neff
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Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=HBJF
Category=JB
Category=JHM
Category=JHMC
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COP=India
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eq_nobargain
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eq_society-politics
historical record
kinship relations
labour migration
landed communities
Language_English
Nayar matrilineality
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Price_€50 to €100
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ritual patronage
ritual practice
ritual specialists
social trends
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Product details
- ISBN 9788119139842
- Dimensions: 160 x 240mm
- Publication Date: 30 Sep 2023
- Publisher: Manohar Publishers and Distributors
- Publication City/Country: IN
- Product Form: Hardback
- Language: English
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Kerala’s Puḷḷuvas and Pāmpum Tuḷḷal is a story about the lives of Kerala’s Puḷḷuva ritual specialists and their days-long ritual performance, pāmpum tuḷḷal, or the “jumping dance” of the serpent deities (nāgam or pāmpu). The ritual is commissioned by members of Kerala’s landed communities to bring health and prosperity to their extended families. Belonging to an ancient South Indian tradition, the ritual is orchestrated by Puḷḷuva ritual specialists, who hold the sole hereditary right to perform it. This book is the first in Kerala to approach this ritual tradition from the viewpoints and agency of its Dalit (formerly known as ‘untouchable’) ritual specialists—men and women, and to examine Puḷḷuva ritual practice in the context of rapid and extensive social change. The study sheds important light upon Puḷḷuva rituals, lives, and livelihoods, within the broader contexts of changing class, caste, and kinship relations; land tenure and ritual patronage; labour migration; and the decline of Nāyar matrilineality and old landed families. These wide-ranging social trends, indexed and acted out in ritual, are the backdrop for understanding Puḷḷuva ritual practice from the 1980s, and in terms of history, point to multiple structures and hierarchies of practice and meaning.
Deborah L. Neff, Ph.D., is a cultural anthropologist and an associate at the University of Arizona. Her articles have appeared in numerous journals such as Social Science and Medicine, Theory into Practice, Ethnology, South Asian Folklore An Encyclopedia (2003), and Encyclopedia of Heroism Studies (2023).
