Woman, Culture, and SocietySixteen women anthropologists analyze the place of women in human societies, treating as problematic certain questions and observations that in the past have been ignored or taken for granted, and consulting the anthropological record for data and theoretical perspectives that will help us to understand and change the quality of women's lives. The first three essays address the question of human sexual asymmetry. Recognizing that men's and women's spheres are typically distinguished and that anthropologists have often slighted the powers and values associated with the woman's world, these essays examine the evidence for asymmetrical valuations of the sexes across a range of cultures and ask how these valuations can be explained. Explanations are sought not in biological "givens" of human nature, but in universal patterns of human, social, psychological, and cultural experience patterns that, presumably, can be changed. The remaining papers explore women's roles in a wide variety of social systems. By showing that women, like men, are social actors seeking power, security, prestige, and a sense of worth and value, these papers demonstrate the inadequacies of conventionally male-oriented accounts of social structure. They illuminate the strategies by which women in different cultures achieve a surprising degree of political power and social recognition; and investigate, from case-oriented and comparative perspectives, the social-structural, legal, psychological, economic, ritual, mythological, and metaphorical factors that account for variation in women's lives. |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
A Theoretical Overview | 17 |
Family Structure and Feminine Personality | 43 |
Is Female to Male as Nature Is to Culture? | 67 |
Women in Politics | 89 |
Sex Roles and Survival Strategies in an Urban Black | 113 |
Matrifocality in Indonesia and Africa and Among | 129 |
Old Skills in a New Context | 157 |
Ruler of the Kpa Mende Confederacy | 173 |
Ijaw Womens Associations | 223 |
Sex and Power in the Balkans | 243 |
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Common terms and phrases
activities adult African agnatic American Anthropology associations Atjehnese authority Azande Bachofen behavior biological Black boys bridewealth ceremony child context contrast contribute cultural daughters defined dependence domestic group dominance economic fact father female status feminine functions girls household human husband identification ideology Igbo Ijaw Ilongot important individual involved Javanese Kayapó kin group kinship system kinsmen Korokorosei labor lineage lives Lovedu Madam Yoko male and female marriage married matriarchy matrifocal Mbum Mbum Kpau Mbuti men's Mende Michelle Rosaldo Minangkabau mother mother-child myth nuclear family organization paper participation Patani patrilineal patrilocal patterns peasant political polygyny position production relations relations of production relationship relatively reproduction residence ritual role Rosaldo rules Sarakatsani Selk'nam sense sexual asymmetry Sierra Leone social solidarity sphere structure subordination subsistence suggests symbolic tion universal village wife wives woman women women's strategies York young