Legitimation Chapter 5

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In Chapter 5 of his book, A Critical Introduction to the Study of Religion, author Craig Martin introduced the topic of legitimation. In the chapter, Martin defines legitimation by stating that “legitimations offer some sort of justification for conformity to a practice, and they often involve appeals to what gods say.” (94). Legitimation has played a role in everyone’s lives at one point or another. Whether it be that one’s been urged to complete a task “because God says so” (Martin, 94) or “because the Bible says so” (Martin, 94), legitimation is not an unfamiliar concept to the majority since it’s prevalent in many people’s lives. Similarly, legitimation has played a role in Corinne G. Dempsey’s book, The Goddess Lives in Upstate New York. The …show more content…
In Chapter 6 of The Goddess Lives in Upstate New York, titled A Fine Balance: The Give and Take of Religious Discipline, a, nonbrahman Sri Lankan Tamil known as Aiya voices an anomalous caution for the people of Rush Temple to wear their hair back. Aiya’s reasoning for this is that according to the Tamil tradition, women are only allowed to let their hair loose on the day she becomes a widow and that he doesn’t want loose hair falling into the Nyayyavedyams (offerings to the deities), the flower baskets or on the deity. Aiya states that if one’s hair were to fall in there, it would be considered ucistam, or polluted, and would not be able to be used afterwards. For this reason, Aiya expresses to the temple attendees to “not think that we are being unduly harsh on you. It’s for practical reasons.” (Dempsey, 138). Aside from the fact that the first rule is directly targeted at women, these rules would overall affect women more than men since, generally speaking, women are much more likely to have longer hair than men. This would greatly affect some first-time female visitors in that they would feel dismayed with this rule as they would prefer to

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