Multiplicity in contemporary Naga society: a study on professional women in multiple lifeworlds

Multiplicity or the multiple self can be understood as an abstract idea or an empirical phenomenon. As such, it can be conceptualized as a psychological concept, a philosophical idea, or a social phenomenon. Broadly speaking, it is understood within a spectrum, from pathological to normal, sometimes even celebratory. While it is considered a modern phenomenon and a normal part of contemporary societies, it is also associated with instability and uncertainty. As a consequence, integration or prioritising certain selves is often offered as a way of coping with multiplicity. This thesis argues that there is another way to understand and engage with the multiple self – through the notion of vocation or calling.
The study takes its research participants as exemplars for understanding multiplicity in contemporary Nagaland. Their life-stories show the manifestation of multiplicity, on the one hand, and offer ways to cope with it, on the other.
It shows that for professional women in Nagaland today, multiplicity manifests as co-existing cultural systems, layers of limitations, voices in conflict, and possible selves that are either unfulfilled or can manifest in the future. It argues that the idea of vocation can hold these in creative tension by: endorsing a construal of self that is both modern and traditional at the same time; interpreting limitations caused by both particular experiences and social structures as inevitable and necessary towards fulfilling one’s calling; giving expression to conflicting voices while avoiding making one salient and suppressing the others; and forming a self-schema defined by the Christian narrative of fulfilling God’s calling – one that constitutes meaning-making and decision-making processes – in retrospect, in the present, and in the future.