IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/mig/avarjl/v2y2023i1p9-30.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Other than Mother: On Childlessness as Part of the Social Identity of Nadītu Women

Author

Listed:
  • Katrien De Graef

    (Ghent University, Belgium)

Abstract

In Old Babylonian society, nadītu and other women who held religious offices were not allowed to bear children. Traditionally, this taboo on childbearing has been explained as a taboo on sex (chastity) or a taboo on blood (cultic impurity). I believe these traditional explanations to be faulty and inadequate, and suggest an alternative approach based on the concepts of alterity and constructed social identity. By not fitting the norm of their social group, viz. women, by definition birth giving beings, they are ‘othered’ as non-birth-giving-beings, which indeed is the literal meaning of nadītu: ‘the fallow (woman).’ However, their ‘otherness’ is not conceived as negative or problematic, on the contrary, it added greatly to their social status as a privileged group within society. As such, their childlessness was an important part of their social identity.

Suggested Citation

  • Katrien De Graef, 2023. "Other than Mother: On Childlessness as Part of the Social Identity of Nadītu Women," Avar, Transnational Press London, UK, vol. 2(1), pages 9-30, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:mig:avarjl:v:2:y:2023:i:1:p:9-30
    DOI: https://doi.org/10.33182/aijls.v2i1.2094
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://avarjournal.com/avar/article/view/2094/2015
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/https://doi.org/10.33182/aijls.v2i1.2094?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:mig:avarjl:v:2:y:2023:i:1:p:9-30. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: TPLondon (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.tplondon.com/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.