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Notes on love in a Tamil family

Front Cover
6 Reviews
University of California Press, 1992 - Social Science - 299 pages
Love, as a force in human affairs, is still not given much attention or credency by social scientists. With Notes on Love in a Tamil Family, Margaret Trawick places the notion of love prominently in social scientific discourse. Her unforgettable and profusely illustrated study is a significant contribution to anthropology and to South Asian studies.
Trawick lived for a time in the midst of one large South Indian family and sought to understand the multiple and mutually shared expressions of anpu--what in English we call love. Often enveloping the author herself, changing her as she inevitably changed her hosts, this family performed before the young anthropologist's eyes the meaning of anpu: through poetry and conversation, through the not always gentle raising of children, through the weaving of kinship tapestries, through erotic exchanges among women, among men, and across the great sexual boundary. She communicates with grace and insight what she learned from this Tamil family, and we discover that love is no less universal than selfishness and individualism.
  

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Review: Notes on Love in a Tamil Family

User Review  - Kate Gillogly - Goodreads

I've read this book several times, as I assign it to an Introduction to Cultural Anthropology class. It is an excellent study of the dynamics of family life within the context of their cosmology. It ... Read full review

Review: Notes on Love in a Tamil Family

User Review  - Vinoth - Goodreads

amazing Read full review

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Selected pages

Contents

Prologue
xvii
What Led Me to Them
1
Traditional India
4
Early Education
8
Initiation
16
The Process of Embodiment
23
The Same Old Story
25
What They Said
27
Siblings and Spouses
187
Padmini
192
Mohana
199
Patterns
204
Older Women and Younger Men
205
Vishvanathan
210
The Lives of Children
215
Jnana Oli
218

Ambiguity
37
A Theory
41
The Family
42
Methodology
50
Generations
53
Themozhiyar
62
Kings and Ascetics
65
Growing Up Tamil
75
Going Down Tamil
80
Houseflows
87
The Ideology of Love
89
Properties of Anpu
93
Desire in Kinship
117
Systems and Antisystems
118
Synthesis of Theories
148
Tensions and Harmonies
155
Conclusion
184
Sivamani
229
Arivaraci
233
Ponni
236
Final Thoughts
241
MirroringTwinning
243
ComplementationDynamic Union
245
Sequential Contrast
249
ProjectionIntrojection
251
Internal ContradictionCategory Mediation
252
Hiddenness
254
Plurality and Mixture Boundlessness and Reversal
257
Epilogue
259
Notes
261
References
281
Index
293
Copyright

Other editions - View all

Notes on love in a Tamil family
Notes on love in a Tamil family
Margaret Trawick
Snippet view - 1990

Common terms and phrases

A. K. Ramanujan adults ambiguity Anni Anni's anpu Anuradha Arivaraci Arivu Arulmori asked Attai Auvaiyar Ayya Ayya's body bond Brahman called caste Celvi child cousin cross-cousin cross-cousin marriage culture daughter deity desire dosais Dravidian kinship Dumont English eyes father feelings female girl goddess guru heroine household human husband ideal India Jnana Jnana Oli's kin terms kind kinship system Lacan language learned Levi-Strauss live Madras Madurai male marry means Modday Mohana mother mother's brother myth never older one's Padmini Paraiyar parakkam parallel cousin patriline patterns person Plate poem Ponni Porutcelvi Reddiar relations relationship sacred Saiva Sanskrit servant sexual sibling sister Siva Sivamani social soul South Asia South Indian spirit spouses story Tamil family Tamil Nadu temple texts Themozhiyar things thought tion Tirukkovaiyar told Umapathi uyir village Vishnu Vishvanathan wanted wedding wife woman women words younger

References to this book

From other books

Sibling Relationships across the Lifespan
Sibling Relationships across the Lifespan
V.G. Cicirelli
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From Google Scholar

Contributions to Indian Sociology
McKim Marriott - 1991 - Contributions to Indian Sociology
Music and Language
S Feld, AA Fox - 1994 - Annual Review of Anthropology
Sibling Relationships in Cross-Cultural Perspective
Victor G Cicirelli - 1994 - Journal of Marriage and the Family
Seminal Truth: A Modern Science of Male Celibacy in North India
Joseph S Alter - 1997 - Medical Anthropology Quarterly
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References from web pages

Notes on Love in a Tamil Family - Margaret Trawick
People in "Notes on Love in a Tamil Family" - Field work done and pictures taken in 1980... Children and the Family · Working in the Fields ...
www.tamilnation.org/ books/ women/ trawick.htm

JSTOR: Notes on Love in a Tamil Family
Notes on Love in a Tamil Family. MARGARET TRAWICK. Berkeley, CA, and London: Univer- sity of California Press, 1990. xix + 299 pp., photographs, figures, ...
links.jstor.org/ sici?sici=0094-0496(199208)19%3A3%3C611%3ANOLIAT%3E2.0.CO%3B2-J

anthrosource | American Ethnologist - 19(3):611 - Citation
Notes on Love in a Tamil Family . Margaret Trawick . Review by rs Khare · rightslink Logo Reprints & Permissions, |, Full-Text on JSTOR ...
www.anthrosource.net/ doi/ abs/ 10.1525/ ae.1992.19.3.02a00310

Within / Without: Notes on Love (Borrowed!!)
One of my favourite books when it came to ethnographic research was and is Margaret Trawick's Notes on Love in a Tamil Family. ...
nehasri.blogspot.com/ 2005/ 01/ notes-on-love-borrowed.html

SPRING QUARTER 1996 ANTHROPOLOGY 436 COMPARATIVE FAMILY ...
There are three required books: Roland's In Search of Self in India and Japan; Trawick's Notes on Love in a Tamil Family, and Coontz's The Way We Never Were ...
faculty.washington.edu/ stevehar/ 436.html

Amitav Ghosh among most compelling ethnographies « Entertaining ...
Notes on Love in a Tamil Family (author?) … Fluid Selves: Being a Person the Tamil Way (author?) in the list. I do not know if anthropologists consider any ...
mogadalai.wordpress.com/ 2008/ 03/ 08/ amitav-ghosh-among-most-compelling-ethnographies/

Peoples and Cultures of South Asia
(1990) Notes on Love in a Tamil Family. Berkeley: University of California Press. Roy, Beth. 1994. Some trouble with cows : making sense of social conflict. ...
web.pdx.edu/ ~b5mg/ asiasyll.html

Catergory Archive for ‘Book review’ at Joseph Scalice
Notes on Love in a Tamil Family. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992. This post will unmask me as an unrepentant, curmudgeonly modernist. ...
josephscalice.com/ index.php/ category/ book-review/

INTRODUCTION TO SOCIAL & CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY Semester at Sea ...
Social Organization (pp 83-101); short selection from Notes on Love in a Tamil Family TBA. (on reserve). Chennai to Yangon (1 class) ...
www.semesteratsea.com/ voyages/ fall2005/ ANTH0780-LM.pdf

ANTH 310: Family, Kin, and Community San Francisco State ...
Notes on Love in a Tamil Family. • Sarah Franklin and Susan mckinnon, editors (2001) Relative Values: Reconfiguring Kinship Studies ...
bss.sfsu.edu/ anthro/ Syllabus/ Spring07/ ANTH310.pdf

About the author (1992)

Margaret Trawick is Professor of Social Anthropology at MassMargaret Trawick is Professor of Social Anthropology at Massey University in New Zealand. She is author of "Notes on Lovey University in New Zealand. She is author of "Notes on Love in a Tamil Family "(UC Press). e in a Tamil Family "(UC Press).

Bibliographic information

QR code for Notes on love in a Tamil family
TitleNotes on love in a Tamil family
A Philip E. Lilienthal book
AuthorMargaret Trawick
Editionillustrated, reprint
PublisherUniversity of California Press, 1992
ISBN0520912802, 9780520912809
Length299 pages
Subjects ›  › 

History / Asia / India & South Asia
Social Science / Anthropology / Cultural
Social Science / Anthropology / General
  
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