Hair : Its Power and Meaning in Asian Cultures

About this book

An interdisciplinary exploration of the meanings of hair in Asia from classical times to contemporary contexts. Hair-whether present or absent restored or removed abundant or scarce long or short bound or unbound colored or natural-marks a person as clearly as speech clothing and smell. It defines a persons gender sexual availability and desirability age social status and even political stance. It may also act as a basis for discrimination in treatment by others. While hairs high salience as both sign and symbol extends cross-culturally through time its denotations are far from universal. Hair is an interdisciplinary look at the meanings of hair hairiness and hairlessness in Asian cultures from classical to contemporary contexts. The contributors draw on a variety of literary archaeological religious and ethnographic evidence. They examine scientific medical political and popular cultural discourses. Topics covered include monastic communities and communities of fashion hair codes and social conventions of rank attitudes of enforcement and rebellion and positions of privilege and destitution. Different interpretations include hair as a key aspect of female beauty of virility as obscene as impure and linked with other symbolic markers in bodily social political and cosmological constructs.