@article{ref1,
title="Manufacturing a Feminized Siege Mentality",
journal="Journal of contemporary ethnography",
year="2007",
author="Sehgal, Meera",
volume="36",
number="2",
pages="165-183",
abstract="This article examines the discursive and embodied processes employed at Hindu nationalist paramilitary camps for women that transform traditional, middle-class Hindu women into committed, active participants in the powerful, right-wing Hindu Nationalist Movement in India. Based on ethnographic research on the Rashtra Sevika Samiti (the Samiti), a core women's organization in the movement, I argue that the Samiti effectively manufactures a feminized siege mentality. This mentality is a learned disposition in which female members of a community perceive themselves as potential prey to male members of a community of &quot;outsiders.&quot; The discursive practices include entwined discourses of Hindu women's victimization by Muslim men and empowerment by the Samiti. The embodied practices include a paramilitary physical training program that masquerades as self-defense training but in fact manufactures a fear of sexual attacks by Muslim men in the public sphere, while deflecting from sources of violence within the private sphere.<p />",
language="",
issn="0891-2416",
doi="10.1177/0891241606298823",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0891241606298823"
}