Anthropology of Gender ANTH 200, Spring 2006 March 8

1
Anthropology of Gender ANTH 200, Spring
2006March 8
2
Sex and Gender

• Sex
• Refers to biological differences between men and
  women
• Gender
• refers to the socially constructed differences
  between male and female behavior
• Sex/Gender systems
• E.g. Binary vs. fluid, multiple

3
Gender

• Range of terminology
• Anthropology of Women
• Early on literally focus on study of Women to
  fill gaps in knowledge
• Feminist anthropology
• way of indicating commonality with aims of
  Women's Studies
• Anthropology of Gender
• focus on structures of inequality which affect
  women's and men's roles in society---NOT just
  about women
• History of Anth of Gender
• complex history of roads traveled and then
  abandoned"
• Di Leonardo, Micaela. 1991. Introduction to
  Gender at the Crossroads of Knowledge Feminist
  Anthropology in the Post-modern Era. Ed. Micaela
  di Leonardo. Berkeley University of California
  Press. Pp.1-48.

4
3 Waves of Feminist Theory First Wave and Sex
Roles

• "First Wave characteristics
• vote, education, but not challenging
• Sexual divisions of labor
• WAY knowledge was produced, or how society
  structured
• Intellectual Precursers to "Gender
• Victorian evolutionary ideas
• Matriarch, why men rule theories
• Abandoned in N. American and British schools
• Early American women Anthropologists
• Personality and Culture School Sex roles
• Mead Benedict

5
Between the Waves, 1930s-1960s

• Structural Functionalists
• No interests in sex roles or personality and
  culture
• human society as organism
• Parts key---kinship, religion, social
  organization, political org,
• Stability
• Institutions
• Naturalized sexual difference
• No attention to how power operated, how status
  is
• structured
• maintained
• transformed
• or how men and women are socialized

6
Second WaveAnthropology of women, the 1970s

• Beginnings of study of Gender
• Range of work
• Elizabeth Fernea, Guests of the Sheik An
  Ethnography of an Iraqi Village (1969)
• Margery Wolf, The House of Lim A Study of
  Chinese Farm Family (1968)
• Marilyn Strathern, Women In Between Female
  Roles in a Male World (1972)
• Briggs Never in Anger Portrait of an Eskimo
  Family (1970)
• Scholarship as rooted in an era, 1960s-1970s
• Reaffirmation of Marxist theory
• Thomas Kuhn's emphasis on situated knowledge
• Thomas Kuhn. 1962. Structures of Scientific
  Revolutions.
• Radical revision of Freud's theories
• New liberal pluralism emerging

7
Second Wave Premises and Methods

• PREMISES of "Anthropology of Women
• Organize women
• Expose sexism in public and private life
• Alter male-bias in study of human society
• Question all knowledge about the lives of all
  female humans
• Connect Politics and Knowledge---"Personal is
  political
• Parallels with French Revolution
• Feminist Anthropology and methods in 1970s
• tied to women's empowerment, political
  transformation
• Gather evidence of inequality, study of Other
  places
• Search for human universals and cross-cultural
  differences
• Examples
• Peggy Reeves Sanday on Rape free and Rape
  prone societies
• 1981. Female Power and Male Dominance On the
  Origins of Sexual Inequality. New York
  Cambridge University Press.

8
Second Wave New Theoretical Issues

• New Theoretical Issues Raised
• Sally Slocum. 1975. Women the Gatherer Male
  Bias in Anthropology. In Toward an Anthropology
  of Women. Ed. Rayna R. Reiter. New York
  Monthly Review Press.
• Rosaldo, Michelle and Louise Lamphere. 1974.
  Women, Culture, Society. Stanford Stanford
  University Press.
• Have men evolved to be dominant x-culturally?
• Gatherer and Hunting research
• How can we theorize about Male Domination and
  oppression?
• Avoid conflict
• Elizabeth Fernea. 1969. Guests of the Sheik
• Universal Frameworks
• influence of Engels
• Sacks, Karen. 1974. Engels Revisited Women,
  the Organization of Production, and Private
  Property. In Women, Culture, and Society.
  Michelle Zimbalist Rosaldo and Louise Lamphere,
  eds. Pp.207-222.

9
Second Wave Theoretical Issues

• How to theorize about Male Domination and
  oppression? (continued)
• Universal Frameworks
• Nature and Culture How are these parts of
  binary related?
• Sherry Ortner. 1974. Is Female to Male as
  Nature is to Culture? In Women, Culture, and
  Society. Michelle Zimbalist Rosaldo and Louise
  Lamphere, eds. Pp.67-88.
• Domestic and Public How do these vary across
  time?
• Michelle Rosaldo. 1974. Women, Culture, Society
• Universal Psychological explanation---Rereading
  Freud
• Nancy Chodorow. 1978. The Reproduction of
  Mothering Psychoanalysis and the sociology of
  Gender. Berkeley University of California
  Press.

10
Second Wave Methods Against Grand Theory

• Two groups seek new style
• against Marxist evolutionism and "grand theory
• Weber's Social-scientific Versteshen and
  womens lives
• Margery Wolf (1974)---on Taiwanese women
• Lois Paul (1974)---on Guatemalan peasant women
• Liza Dalby (1983)---on Geishas in Japan
• Embracing some Marxist theory
• Women's lives as focus---Especially in groups
  circumscribed by class, ethnicity,
  hist-pol-economic context

11
Critiques of Second Wave

• Evolutionist-Marxist approaches
• Too rigid, assumes universal unilineal
  development
• Ortner's Nature/Culture
• Binary categories not universal, at least not
  with same meaning
• Marilyn Strathern. 1980. Nature, Culture,
  Gender.
• Domestic/Public
• NOT universal, not so separate, and not static
• Rhetoric of "domestic"----to achieve public
  Aims
• Di Leonardos work on greeting cards
• Different, shifting "domestic/public" divide
• Domestic workers--confounding this "divide
• Not single explanatory force
• Chodorow's rereading of Freud
• Universality, how apply x-culturally ?
• Ahistorical, static

12
Third Wave Feminism and Approaches

• Approaches of 3rd Wave Feminism
• "What it means to be a woman in this or that
  situation must rest to some extent on the
  cultural logic by which gender is constructed"
  (Strathern 1981683)
• Example Annette Weiner and Marilyn Strathern
  debate
• Turn toward
• Meaning
• Interpretation
• No universal models
• Local----Cultural institutions have different
  MEANINGS

13
Third Wave Primary Concerns

• New Foci
• Differences between women class, race, colonial
  histories
• Interactions between powerful and powerless
• Agency combined with politics
• Social constructionism critiques of woman,
  status, etc.
• Embedded social relations gender just one of
  many factors
• Patterned Inequality--how womens status part of
  global econ
• Hierarchies of difference-- power not binary
• Interest in relations between men and women not
  just about women
• Example
• Nicole Constable, Cross Border Marriages Gender
  and Mobility in Transnational Asia (2005)

14
Fourth Wave?

• Performance of Gender
• Situated and fluid, not matter of binaries
• Queer theory
• Butler, Gender Trouble Feminism and the
  Subversion of Identity (1999)
• Men and masculinity as increasingly studied
  Gender encompasses both men and women
• Mathew Guttmanns work in Mexico (1998)