Hair as sensory skin: sensitive bodies, ritual shaving, and the maintenance of bodily boundaries in Hindu Suriname

Hair is an integral part of the skin's interface and has sensory capacity. It actively contributes to processes of bodily materialization and facilitates transactional exchange with other social actors and environments, particularly regarding energies and vibrations that can be perceived as subtle matter. Many Surinamese Hindus conceptualize practices such as cutting, shaving, and tying hair as ways to reduce the body's connectivity to other entities. In this context, hair serves as a means of regulating the body's boundaries, which are understood to be based on a dynamic, energetic state. From this perspective, hair can enhance the body's openness, particularly during processes like pregnancy and mediumship, which require heightened sensitivity and increased permeability. To balance and maintain these ‘hot’ and ‘sensitive’ bodies, practices that cool the body, including specific hair modifications, are employed. Based on ethnographic research conducted in Suriname and the Netherlands, this article argues that since bodies are always in a state of exchange, they require not only the maintenance of boundaries but also acts of separation. In this context, shaving the head during rites of passage is seen as a means of separation, particularly during significant transitions such as the gradual process of birth.