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Status competition, rural Indian style
In rural Hindu villages in India...widows are expected to be perpetual mourners, austere in their habits, appetites and dress; even so, they often jockey for position, said Richard A. Shweder, an anthropologist in the department of comparative human development at the University of Chicago.
“Many compete for who is most pure,” Dr. Shweder said. “They say, ‘I don’t eat fish, I don’t eat eggs, I don’t even walk into someone’s house who has eaten meat.’ It’s a natural kind of social comparison.”
The article focuses on the psychology of fame-seeking.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on August 22, 2006 at 07:26 AM in Science | Permalink
Comments
One of the things that struck me most when I read Sylvia Naser's Beautiful Mind was the intensity of the competition for status among mathematicians.
Posted by: Don Boudreaux at Aug 22, 2006 1:34:27 PM
For a heartbreaking look at the lives of Hindu widows, see Deepa Mehta's Water. The "highest status" widows in this movie were also able to exercise repressive power over those who aspired to break free of the life of widowhood -- so their status provided more than simply fame.
Posted by: Alex R at Aug 22, 2006 5:25:32 PM
Reminds me of the mourning competition between families in Taiwan reported by Chin Ning-chu in one of her books. When an elderly aunt died, who was not particularly well-known or well-liked, everyone at all closely related went over to her house and wailed and lamented as loudly as possible all day for several days. At a prearranged time, they stopped cold. If they hadn't done this, they couldn't have held their heads up in society.
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