The Three Selves of Adulthood: Cultural Conceptions of Self Among Oriya Hindu Women

Abstract

This essay examines the cultural conceptions of self among Oriya Hindu women who live in the temple town of Bhubaneswar in Orissa, India. It explores the temporal dimension of these conceptions during adulthood. While Hindu understandings about the relative permeability of the human body and its potential for transformation lead to an interdependent conception of the self, each of the three phases of adulthood—young adulthood, mature adulthood and old age—produces its own particular variant. The particularity of each variant derives from the cultural meanings attached to each life-phase and the social context of these women’s lives. The critical variable appears to be the predominant goal of each life-phase. The goals of assimilation in young adulthood, dominance and centrality in mature adulthood and coherence in old age lead to an interdependent conception of the self that changes, during the course of adulthood, from ‘emergent’ to ‘encompassing’ to ‘non-interdependent’.