International Encyclopedia of Men and Masculinities
Initiation involves incorporating individuals as members of a community or into successive life cycle stages. Accomplishing gender identity and distinct social roles lie at the core of initiation rituals. Circumcision, a paradigm for male initiation rituals, is extensively documented among Islamic and Jewis h co munities but is also prevalent among other societies including Filipino, Australian Aboriginal, Kenyan and Madagascar cultures. Unlike female gender identity which is biologically apparent and celebrated usually at the first menstruation, the symbolism of male initiation rituals suggests that masculinity must be compelled to emerge and acknowledged by a witnessing community, critically composed of men. A central concern of such initiations is literally wresting the boy away from female worlds and feminine attributes and incorporating him into male spheres. Initiations may focus on a single individual or on a group of young initiates collectively.
Circumcision highlights the idea of masculinity emerging from an androgynous body. In other initiations, biological symbolism stresses the materialisation of the reproductive male body. Caste rituals in India such as the yagyopaveet—donning the sacred thread—are publicly performed to simultaneously establish high caste status and entry into domesticated, mature sexuality.
There is no single age for performing yagyopaveet; a young man may be initiated just before marriage when he enters the life cycle stage of householder. The imprecise age of initiation underlines the fact that masculine gender identity or male sexuality cannot be biologically assumed and needs ritual affirmation.
Initiation by violence and violence-asinitiation is another critical frame for initiations into masculine identity. In movements of resistance, young men as recipients of violent beatings or torture are catapulted into adulthood. Peteet (2002) identifies beatings in the street and prison as disruptive of age hierarchies in the Palestinian Intifada. Elders defer to young men who sit at the centre or head at public gatherings and play a pivotal advisory role in community affairs. Feldman’s (1991) study of imprisonment and resistance in Northern Ireland suggests similar understandings of incarceration-as-initiation.
References and further reading
Feldman, A. (1991) Formations of Violence: The Nanatives of the Body and Political Terror in Northern Ireland, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Peteet, J. (2002) ‘Male gender and rituals of resistance in the Palestinian intifada’, in R.Adams and D.Savran (eds) The Masculinities Studies Reader, Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 318–35.
See also: rites of passage
RADHIKA CHOPRA
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