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In Search of Female Spiritual Agency

Summary/Abstract: In the paper, I explore the issue of female spiritual agency through ethnographic fieldwork conducted among Polish converts from Catholicism to a female dominated, Hindu rooted new religious movement, the Brahma Kumaris. My data show that reasons of conversion include dissatisfaction of gender relations. However, instead of becoming feminists, the women at the center of my research commit to strict ascetic discipline. The changes that this commitment entails totally reorganize their relations within their families and their social lives. Drawing on contemporary developments in anthropological approaches to agency, I focus on theorizing those elements of agency and identity that go beyond liberal feminist concepts of women’s emancipation. The Brahma Kumaris is a marginal group, but the general pattern of analysis of renegotiation of family life and relations beyond the private sphere may apply to other women’s groups.

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