Sukupuolittunut ruumiillisuus, puhtaus ja saastaisuus Suomen Hare Krishna -liikkeessä

Authors

• Johanna Ahonen

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.30666/elore.78460

Abstract

This article examines gender and the representations of women in the Hare Krishna movement. I concentrate on embodiment, sexuality and gendered themes of purity and impurity. The primary research material consists of interviews with five committed Finnish female members and a period of participant-observation in the Hare Krishna community. The article also includes analysis of the movement’s religious texts. Drawing from poststructuralists Michel Foucault and Judith Butler, my work approaches the body as discursively constructed and connected to power. From Butler’s viewpoint I examine gender as a performative and embodied style. Thus, in context of the Finnish Krishna movement I ask how gender differences and certain kinds of religious, gendered and sexualized subjects are produced and how the appropriate female body is constructed. An interesting problem for theorizing gender vis-à-vis the Hare Krishna movement is the intense yearning to transcend the body. The strong dualism (spiritual/physical) in the Krishna movement is also worthy of consideration, since the physical body is an inevitable instrument in all the activities of a Krishna worshipper’s spiritual life.