We ran up the Girnar: The spatial rescue of masculinity in western India

Keywords: masculinity, religion, South Asia, consumption
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Saturday
Session Start / End Time: 2/26/2022 03:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/26/2022 05:00 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 67

Abstract

Drawing on an ongoing ethnography of educated youth in the western Indian state of Gujarat, this paper considers the extraordinary affordances of Mount Girnar for the display and reclamation of masculinity. Girnar is mall, temple, and trekking trail, all at once. At 3500 feet, Mount Girnar is the highest peak in Gujarat. Like many other peaks in the region, Girnar too is a pilgrimage site, dotted with Hindu and Jain temples. The peculiar convergence of social spaces—that of conspicuous consumption, religious piety, and physical prowess—into one physical space created unusual affordances for whom Radhakrishnan and Solari (2015) call “failed patriarchs.” Scholars have noted that the bulk of economic growth in South Asia has comprised of feminized work, that is, underpaid, undervalued work that extends cultures of servitude (Bardalai, 2021). For educated youth, doing masculinity has become especially fraught with workplaces denying them recognition and respect and world class consumption spaces exhorting expression and assertion. Srivastava (2020; 2021) has elaborated the significance of religious spaces in reconciling some of the contradictions of doing masculinity in contemporary India. At Girnar, the modernities of consumption, the transcendence of the sacred, and the sheer physicality of the masculine were on full display. I suggest that a spatial analysis of masculinity allows us to see how young people work out the energies and suspensions of capitalism (Xiang, 2021).