BETWEEN SHAME AND SANCTIFICATION - PATRIARCHY AND ITS TRANSFORMATION IN SICILIAN PENTECOSTALISM

This article examines the ways in which Sicilian Pentecostals enact a gender system in response to a perceived crisis in the prevailing gender order, an order I interpret, following Kenelm Burridge, as a system of “redemption,” conferring a culturally specific form of “integrity.” Pentecostalism, then, is a gender‐system‐in‐the‐making, a new calculus of human worth, that combines new structures with aspects of the failing hegemonic system. The result is a more complex, ambiguous patriarchy, one that may be less viable than the hegemonic system, enabling believing women to transcend some of the gender constraints of the prevailing system. 1990 American Anthropological Association