ABSTRACT
Rather than summarizing what has been said before, this conclusion reconnects some of the findings to the question of ritual and its impact on female identity. The author resumes the concept of ‘doing gender’ and, taking the example from southern Orissa, relate it to the perceptual situation created by framed events such as rituals. Before doing this, she considers the limitations and the situated character of my research results since cultural practices are neither static nor timeless. The division of space, as emphasized in the nationalist discourse, only partly describes women’s present-day religious practices in southern Orissa. Although most of their rituals are performed in private, some public activity outside the home is also required. The self-conscious identification with particular religious paradigms is delineated and constrained by Hindu doctrine that emphasizes the institution of marriage and motherhood as normative to fulfill the cosmological disposition as a woman.
