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Paper short abstract

This ethnographic study offers an immersive account of reproductive health practices among tribal women in the Javadhu Hills, Tamil Nadu, a remote forested region inhabited primarily by Malayali tribes.

Paper long abstract

Over 18 months of fieldwork (2023–2025), employing participant observation, in-depth interviews with 45 women across age cohorts, life histories, and focus group discussions with traditional healers (maruthuvai), the research foregrounds lived experiences of menstruation, associated rituals, and home deliveries. These bodily processes, often pathologized in biomedical discourses, emerge as richly embodied sites where women negotiate cultural meanings, agency, and resilience amid socio-ecological constraints. Ethnographic vignettes reveal how seclusion fosters introspective embodiment, transforming "shame" into sacred pause, yet exacerbates vulnerabilities like anemia from dietary restrictions.

Theoretically, this study draws on feminist ethnography (Behar, 1996), Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology of perception, and Csordas' cultural phenomenology to analyze how tribal women "embody meaning"—inscribing rituals onto flesh, forging subjectivity against developmentalist erasure. Findings challenge deficit models of tribal health, revealing rituals as adaptive strategies fostering social cohesion and ecological attunement, even as climate change disrupts herbal access. Policy implications urge culturally congruent interventions: training maruthuvai as bridge practitioners, integrating seclusion-friendly mobile clinics, and decolonizing reproductive metrics to value indigenous embodiment. By centering subaltern voices, this work advocates for health sovereignty, urging a paradigm shift from biomedical hegemony to dialogic pluralism in India's tribal heartlands.