genderproper bodily balance, which can, however, be corrected by fasting; in
many religious contexts fasting makes the soul dominant over the body,
whereas with gluttony the opposite is true. As part of their regimen,
ascetics control their intake of food in order to achieve their spiritual
goal.
From a cross-cultural perspective, the concept of food manifests cos-
mic and social dimensions. In addition to being equated with reality in
some instances, food transaction within a society includes a wide variety
of recipients that includes gods, ancestors, demons, family, guests, and
beggars. These food transactions constitute a social code that defines and
reinforces hierarchical social structures.
Further reading: Harper (1964); Khare (1992a,b); Lynch (1990); Srinavas (1952);
Toomey (1992)
GENDER
Among feminist writers and others, it is common to distinguish sex from
gender because the former represents a biologically inherited attribute,
whereas gender refers to cultural expectations of what it means to be one
sex or another, with particular cultural perceptions that differ from one
culture to another. Among cultural elements, religion plays a central role
in constructing gendered social roles by promoting a patriarchical perspec-
tive as the social norm. Thus gender is a social, historical, and artificial
construct. Even though feminist scholars agree that gender is socially con-
structed and possesses general importance for the study of religion, they
express wide, multidimensional, and complex views about the issues of sex
and gender and about the role of women in diverse religious traditions.
Feminist scholars approach the concept of gender within the cultural
context of patriarchy and sexism. Patriarchy is often defined as a his-
torical, social, cultural, and political institutionalization of male power
that results in the domination, subordination, and marginalization of
women. The all-embracing specter of patriarchy is supported by sexism,
which can be defined as the ideology of male supremacy. The feminist
struggle against sexism and patriarchical domination is radically pushed
to a point where it even calls into question prior feminist agreement about
the definitions of sex and gender.
The feminist Christine Delphy argues, for instance, that sex, male,
and female are equally social constructs. This implies that sex is a social
and historical notion and not a biological one. In fact, humans have a