Anthropology
Author(s): Jane Monnig Atkinson
Source: Signs, Vol. 8, No. 2 (Winter, 1982), pp. 236-258
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
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REVIEW ESSAY
Anthropology
Jane Monnig Atkinson
Since Rayna Rapp's 1979 Signs review essay on the anthropology of
women,' the field has entered its second decade. In the past few years,
contributors to early volumes such as Woman,Culture, and Societyand
Towardan Anthr-opolog f Womenhave published new books significant to
feminist studies.2 Old formulations have been challenged and new ones
phrased. Scholars have also voiced concerns about women in the profession,
both in publications and in a major battle amnongmembers of the
American Anthropological Association over the censure of five univerI
am deeplk indebted to Bette Clark and Fr-edMyers for stim-ulatingdiscussions of the
issues pr-esented here. Michelle Rosaldo and Annette Weiner offeied helpful counsel.
Larrv Hammrnarand Vicki Kreimeneivdeserve thanks for their bibliographical assistance.
An unpublished hihliographv by Daniel Maltz wsasan additional boon. I amngrateful also to
the participants of an NEH-sponsorerl semiinaron women's studies held at Lewis and Clark
C'ollege in the summer of 1981.
1. Ravna Rapp, 'Reviews Essay AnthIopology ," Signs:Jo-Inal oJ IWVomenin Cultuire caind
Soci.etv4, no. 3 (1979): 497 513.
2. Nancv Chodorow\ , 7Te Repnoduiction of Mothering: Psychooaoynas antd tie Sociology of
Gencdei (Berkeley,: Universitv of California Press, 1979): Carol Hof'fer MacCoi-irack and
Marilvn Str-atherin,eds., Nature, Culture anid (;endetI (Camhnbridge:CamhiibrdgeUniversitN'
Priess, 1980); Shel7rx Oi tner- ancl Harrnet Whitehead, eds., Sexual Meanings: The Cultural
Constrctdion of' Ge,nder and Se\uaitv (Camhbridge: Camhridge University Pi-ess, 1981);
Michelle Z. Rosaldo, Knozvled9geatnd Passion: Ilongot Notions of Selfaaid Social Life (Camnhr-idge:
Cambridge Unixvelsity Pi-ess, 1980); Karen Sacks, Sisters aiid 1'ie'es: The Past andi(
Fuittniteof/Sexial Equiality (Westpor t, Conn.: Greenwos od Press, 1979); Peggy Sanday, Fenale
Pow'ei caincMale Doini'ti(itice: Oni the Oiigi'ns of Se,xcul Iniequialty (Camriridge: Cambridge Unii[Sigm:
Jou -nat ol tf'omnenin Cliture and Scieais' 1982, o,()I.8, noo 2]
O 1982 bv rhe University of(chicagrg. All rights reser%red.00(97-940/831/0802o-0000$ (1.00
236
Winter1982 237
sity departments for discriminatory hiring practices.3 A special issue of
the AmericanAnthropologistwas devoted to Margaret Mead, not only the
best-known woman anthropologist but also the discipline's most renowned
practitioner.4 And one of the leading figures of feminist anthropology,
Michelle Zimbalist Rosaldo, met a tragic and untimely death
at age thirty-seven on October 11, 1981, while beginning a new research
project in the Philippines.
Anthropology as a discipline thrives on a tension between theory
building and fine-grained ethnographic investigation.5 The anthropology
of women is no exception to this pattern. In its initial phases, researchers
turned to library stacks and moldy field notes to retrieve and
reinterpret any and all shreds of information concerning women. But
salvage ethnography is a problematic enterprise. Allegations of male bias
aside,6 most stockpiles of ethnographic data had not been systematically
collected with useful questions about gender in mind. Happily, though,
within the last decade feminist anthropologists have had an opportunity
not only to comb through old materials but also to conduct new field
research informed by recent theoretical developments. Ethnographies
are now appearing that address issues of sex roles and gender in new
and increasingly sophisticated ways.
The aims of this review are twofold: to identify major trends in
recent work, and to evaluate the impact of feminist theory on the writing
of ethnography. Limitations of space demand that this review of the
literature take the form of a representative sampler rather than an
exhaustive inventory of recent publications. They also necessitate an
exclusive focus on social and cultural anthropology. I shall leave it to
other reviewers to explore the important developments in evolutionary
versity Press, 1981); Nancy Tanner, On BecomingHuman (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1981); Margery Wolf and Roxane Witke, ll'omenin ChineseSociety (Stanford,
Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1975). And see the earlier essays in Michelle Zimbalist
Rosaldo and Louise Lamphere, eds., .Womnan,Culture,and Society (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford
University Press, 1974); and Rayna Rapp Reiter, ed., Toward an Anthropology of'WIomen
(NeswYork: Monthly Review Press, 1975).
3. See, e.g.. Sidney Mintz's chaptel on Ruth Benedict in Totemnsand Teachers: Perspectives
on the Histomy of Anthropology,ed. Sydel Silverman (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1981); Roger Sanjek, "The American Anthropological Association Resolution on the
Employment of Women: Genesis, Implementation, Disavowal, and Resurrection," Signs 7,
no. 4 (1982): 845-68; and Naomi Quinn and Carol A. Smith, "A New Resolution on the
Fair Employment Practices for Women Anthropologists: Fresh Troops Arrive," Siglis 7,
no. 4 (1982): 869-77.
4. Mead's ground-breaking efforts in the study of sex roles are treated in that issue by
Peggy Sanday, "Margaret Mead's View of Sex Roles in Her Own and Other Societies,"
AmericanA4nthropologist82, no. 2 (1980): 340-48.
5. See Clifford Geertz, "Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture,"
in The Interpretationof Cultures(NewvYork: Basic Books, 1973).
6. For a recent critique, see Kay Milton, "Male Bias in Anthropology," Man 14, no. 1
(1979): 40-54.
Signs
Review:Anthropology
theory and sociobiology, where recent publications by Sarah Hrdy and
Nancy Tanner, in particular, should spark tremendous controversy and
debate.7
Recent work in the anthropology of women does what cultural anthropologists
do best-namely, it heads full tilt at culture-bound assumptions
in our own thinking. Since the formative years of the discipline,
anthropologists have effectively challenged a long list of preconceived
notions about human nature and human institutions.
Mystifications of race, religion, and nationalism, among others, have
been targets. One reason, perhaps, that feminism and anthropology
have taken well to each other is that feminist anthropologists have continued
this tradition by tackling hitherto unquestioned assumptions
about sex and gender.
Recent debunking exercises have been directed not only at the general
public and at the profession but also at early formulations in
feminist anthropology itself. Feminist scholars have taken each other to
task for culture-bound assumptions that allegedly masquerade as analytical
constructs. New arguments assert that dichotomies such as
domestic/public and nature/culture, and premises such as universal sexual
asymmetry, are ideological constructs that have their history in Western
European society and misrepresent the thought and experience of
people in other times and places. The long-questioned domestic/public
dichotomy has,8 for many, outgrown its usefulness as anything more
than an ideological distinction that often disguises more than it illuminates.9
The nature/culture formulation, elegantly posed by Sherry Ortner,10
has come under comparable criticism, most recently and thoroughly
in a volume entitled Nature, Culture,and Gender.1 And feminist
assertions of universal sexual asymmetry continue to be attacked, particularly
by Marxist scholars-most notably, Eleanor Leacock and Karen
Sacks'2-while counterarguments are posed by Jane Collier, Harriet
Whitehead, Ortner, and Rosaldo.13
7. Sarah Hrdy, The ll'otnanT'FtrtNeverTEvolved(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 1981); Tanner (n. 2 above).
8. For a recent summary, see Rapp (n. 1 above), pp. 508-11.
9. Sylvia Junko Yanagisako, "Family and Household: The Analysis of Domestic
Groups," Annual Reviewl'oJfA'thropolog, 8 (1979): 161-205; Michelle Z. Rosaldo, "The Use
and Abuse of Anthropology," Signs 5, no. 3 (1980): 389-417.
10. Sherry B. Ortner, "Is Female to Male as Nature Is to Culture?" in Rosaldo and
Lamphere (n. 2 above).
11. MacCormack and Strathern (n. 2 above).
12. Eleanor Leacock, "Women's Status in Egalitarian Society: Implications for Social
Evolution," Currenlt Anthropology19, no. 2 (1978): 247-75; Sacks (n. 2 above).
13. Rosaldo (n. 9 above); Sherry B. Ortner and Harriet Whitehead, "Introduction:
Accounting for Sexual Meanings," in Ortner and Whitehead, eds. (n. 2 above); Jane F.
Collier and Michelle Z. Rosaldo, "Politics and Cender in Simple Societies," in Ortner and
Whitehead, eds. (n. 2 above).
238 Atkinson
Winter1982 239
In the course of evaluating analytical constructs, feminist scholars
have looked again at accounts of foraging peoples and archaic states to
see what understandings may have been obscured by previous theoretical
formulations. At the same time, colonialism and Western sex roles
and gender ideology, suspected sources of systematic misreadings of
other cultures, have been subjected to scrutiny.
Marxist and non-Marxist feminists continue to focus on foraging
peoples in their debate over sexual asymmetry. While most now agree
that gathering and hunting societies are generally among the world's
most egalitarian, sexually and otherwise, disagreements continue about
whether sex roles and gender ideology in these societies too reveal systematic
sexual asymmetry. A sexually egalitarian past is central in Marxist
feminists' vision of a sexually egalitarian future.14 Presuming that all
forms of social inequality originate from relations of production, Marxists
argue that perceived sexual asymmetry among gathering-hunting
peoples can be explained in one of two ways: either the world market
system has engulfed the remaining foragers, thereby transforming
symmetrical systems into asymmetrical ones;15 or Western observers,
conditioned by their own class system to see hierarchy everywhere, simply
perceive asymmetry where in fact there is none.
Sacks has explored this latter point in two important works. In a
1976 paper entitled "State Bias and Women's Status," Sacks argues that
anthropologists have been blind to sexual equality in nonclass systems.16
Accustomed to thinking that separate means unequal, they have presumed
a sexual division of labor necessarily implies asymmetrical relations
between women and men. In her new book, Sistersand Wives,
Sacks expands her argument into a general critique of what she terms
"social darwinist" thinking-a perspective that misreads social relations,
especially hierarchical ones, as reflections of innate human tendencies
rather than recognizing them as social and historical products.17 She
explores the assumption that women's place in society is dictated by their
reproductive functions. Feminists as well as nonfeminists come under
attack for failing to recognize that "baby-making" and "culture-making"
are not essentially incompatible-that only certain forms of social relations,
specifically those spawned by the rise of industrial capitalism,
have made them so. To presume that women's roles as mothers and
14. Karen Sacks (n. 2 above) discusses this point at some length in chap. 3 of her book.
Non-Marxist feminists are sometimes less candid about why it has been important for them
to document sexual asymmetry in all societies. Susan Carol Rogers, "Women's Place: A
Critical Review of Anthropological Theory," ComparativeStudiesin SocietyandHistory20, no.
1 (1978): 123-62, is illuminating on this point.
15. Leacock (n. 12 above).
16. Karen Sacks, "State Bias and Women's Status," AmericanAnthropologist78, no. 3
(1976): 565-69.
17. Sacks (n. 2 above).
Signs
Review:Anthropology
producers are universally problematic, Sacks argues, is an unwarranted
projection of Western bourgeois assumptions on the rest of humanity.
Sacks's penchant for "us versus them" thinking, for categorically
pitting Marxist analysts against a dazzling array of strange bedfellows
(among them, Herbert Spencer, J. J. Bachofen, Marvin Harris, Margaret
Mead, E. O. Wilson, and Sherry Ortner), may annoy readers sensitive to
the complexities of social theory and intellectual history. Still, Sacks's
argument is an important one that redirects attention from the supposedly
essential nature of the sexes to a systematic inquiry into the
historical and social relations between women and men.
The second half of Sisters and Wives develops a Marxist-feminist
model for analyzing women's place in nonclass societies and incipient
class societies. For nonclass societies, she poses two models to account for
relations between the sexes: a "communal mode of production," in
which the community as a whole cooperates as owners and producers,
and a "kin corporate mode of production," in which kin groups collectively
control the means of production. In the latter, women's relations
to the means of production differ according to their status as sisters and
wives. It is in the communal mode of production that Sacks locates the
possibility of egalitarian relations between the sexes. For Sacks, gender
ideology, like the rest of culture, follows from political economy. A system
in which women and men share equal access to productive means
necessarily will generate sexual egalitarianism. It is here that Sacks's
argument is vulnerable.
Sacks's critique of anthropological thinking about women is powerful.
Yet it really takes us only halfway to an understanding of the social
construction of gender. Sacks has peeled away our social Darwinist
blinders, but she has not, to my satisfaction at least, revealed to us what a
sexually egalitarian society might in fact be. After all, visions of equality,
like those of hierarchy, are themselves Western historical constructs.18
Sacks argues that the world views of people in nonclass systems are not
our own, but she does not explore how they might be constituted. Can
we simply define them negatively as being what our world view is not? A
more positive characterization of the cultural construction of gender in
nonstate societies is needed.
Feminist scholars more inclined than Sacks toward cultural analysis
have long suspected that gender ideology stems from more than economic
relations of production. Gayle Rubin, in a highly influential essay,
urged anthropologists to look at kinship and marriage as a powerful
18. Leacock (n. 12 above) seems aware of this, but she does not deem it necessary to
investigate the cultural representations of what she terms "egalitarian society." As Strathern
notes in her reply to Leacock's paper, Leacock ignores the cultural perspectives of the
societies in question, while at the same time purporting to characterize their views of the
sexes (for Strathern's comments, see Leacock [n. 12], p. 267).
240 Atkinson
Winter1982 241
shaper of gender constructs.19 Collier and Rosaldo, in an ambitious
paper entitled "Politics and Gender in Simple Societies," propose a
model to account for gender systems in societies that roughly correspond
to Sacks's communal mode of production.20 In contrast to Sacks's
emphasis on relations of production, Collier and Rosaldo examine the
sets of social relations generated by marriage in simple societies. Sacks
devised a schema based on political economy to circumvent traditional
classifications of society by subsistence technology or by level of
sociopolitical organization, classifications which she deemed not helpful
for illuminating relations between the sexes. Likewise, Collier and
Rosaldo develop their own typology, one based on marriage exchange.
They argue that brideservice and bridewealth are associated with distinctive
systems of gender and politics. Their essay focuses exclusively on
brideservice societies, a category that applies to gathering and hunting
societies as well as some horticultural peoples.
Collier and Rosaldo construct a composite picture of brideservice
societies explicitly in the manner of a Weberian ideal type. In contrast to
Sacks and Leacock, and in consonance with Rubin, Louise Lamphere,
and Janet Siskind,21Collier and Rosaldo posit that sexual asymmetry is a
product not solely of privatized ownership but of politics, marriage, and
kinship as well. They examine specifically the sets of relationships generated
by the gifts of labor and food owed a woman's parents by her
husband. The relationships these obligations create, with both in-laws
and peers, are accompanied by ideological characterizations quite distinct
from those associated with bridewealth exchanges.
Unlike Sacks, for whom a communal mode of production should
lead automatically to egalitarian relations between the sexes, Collier and
Rosaldo deny that cultural conceptions of gender are simply by-products
of political economy. Instead, they regard gender constructs more complexly
as ritual statements that express the values and serve the political
interests of those who use them. Thus, in brideservice societies, men's
prowess as hunters, killers, or religious specialists and women's sexual
attractiveness receive symbolic emphasis precisely because they are the
means through which people advance political claims. Sexual asymmetry
here derives from the fact that the life courses, social relationships, and
political interests of men and women are not mirror images of one
another. Collier and Rosaldo's argument is complex and provocative.
Their model is avowedly interpretive, not explanatory. Their emphasis
19. Gayle Rubin, "Traffic in Women: Notes toward a Political Economy of Sex," in
Rapp Reiter, ed. (n. 2 above). For critiques of Rubin, see Mina Davis Caulfield, "Universal
Sex Oppression? A Critique from Marxist Anthropology," Catalyst 1, nos. 10-11 (1977):
60-77; Joan A. Moreland-Davis, "Women and Anthropology: A Critique of Levi-Strauss
and Exchange Theory," Atlantis 3, pt. 2 (1978): 116-29.
20. Collier and Rosaldo (n. 13 above).
21. Louise Lamphere, "Review Essay: Anthropology," Signs 2, no. 3 (1977): 612-27;
Rubin (n. 19 above); Janet Siskind, "Kinship and Mode of Production," American Anthropologist80,
no. 4 (1978): 860-72.
Signs
Review:Anthropology
on symbolic expressions of gender found in ceremony and political discourse
will undoubtedly raise questions about exactly how one determines
what constitutes a culture's gender system and how women's
(and men's) subjective experience intersects that system.
In addition to theoretical work, anthropologists have also recently
published new ethnographic studies of foragers, including several outstanding
works on the !Kung of the Kalahari. Nancy Howell's superb
monograph on !Kung demography and Richard Lee's fine ecological
account of the !Kung are landmarks in gatherer-hunter research.22 Both
authors are sensitive to issues involving sex roles (although neither systematically
treats cultural conceptions of gender). Marjorie Shostak's
autobiography of a !Kung woman is another important addition to the
literature.23 Francis Dahlberg's WomantheGathereris an eclectic volume
that documents the great variation existing among foragers with respect
to sexual divisions of labor.24
While foraging societies continue to attract considerable attention,
the rise of early states has also been a focus of recent writing. Both
Marxist and non-Marxist feminists tend to agree that, with the development
of state organization, there came a relative decline in women's
economic and political autonomy. A traditional view sawvwomen's importance
in the domestic sphere eclipsed by the inexorable development
of the state. Recent feminist scholarship has taken another approach to
the subject. Following Rapp's proposals,25 economic, political, and
ideological developments in the early states have been reexamined with
questions about sex roles and gender in mind. Traditional theories focused
on macrolevel changes in technology, economy, and environment
as evolutionary forces; yet significant changes in social relations of production
have clearly involved realignments of kinship, household, and
family organization.26 Feminist scholarship can illuminate central processes
occurring in these critical loci, processes responsible for the shape
that sex and gender have taken in various state formations. As in the case
of human evolution,27 the new feminist scholarship should have a pro-
22. Nancy Howell, Demnographyofthe Dobe!Kung (New York: Academic Press, 1979);
Richard B. Lee, The !Kulg Sao: \I,lMen, me, atid 1Iok in a Foraging Society(Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1979).
23. Marjorie Shostak, Vi.sa:TlheLife and IW'od.so(fa !Kugll'orman (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1981).
24. Frances Dahlberg, ed., IW'omantthe Gatherer(New Haven, Conn.: Yale University
Press, 1981).
25. Ravna Rapp, "Gender and Class: An Archaeology of Knowledge concerning the
Origin of the State,"DialecticalAnthropologv,2, no. 4 (1977): 309-16; Rayna Rapp, "Women,
Religion and Archaic Civilizations: An Introduction," FeministStudies4, no. 3 (1978): 1-6.
26. Ibid.
27. Hrdv (n. 7 above); Tainner (n. 2 above); Nancy M. Tanner and Adrienne L.
Zihlmlan,"Women in Evolution. PartI: Innovation andtSelection in Human Origins," Signs
1, no. 3, pt. 1 (1976): 585-608; Adrienne Zihlnan, "Women and Evolution, II. Subsistence
and Social Organization among Early Hominidcs,"Signs 4, no. 1 (1978): 4-20; Adrienne
Zihlman, "Women as Shapers of the Human Adaptation," in Dahlberg, ed. (n. 24 above).
242 Atkinson
Winter1982 243
found effect upon conventional thinking in the field by opening up
previously ignored areas of study.
Once again, Sacks's work represents new developments.28 Sacks
proposes that where strong ruling classes eclipse the control of kin
groups over productive means, they erode women's claims as "sisters"
(i.e., women's relation to production based on kin group membership)
and lead thereby to women's exclusive dependence as wives. Sacks is
aware that her thesis regarding women in the development of African
states lacks specific historical evidence. But arguing from ethnographic
analogy, she postulates that the rise of ruling classes in Buganda and
Dahomey undercut women's place in kin corporate modes of produc-
tion.
The issue of matriarchy inevitably arises when archaic states, especially
those of the Near East and the Mediterranean, are discussed.
While there continues to be little anthropological support for matriarchal
theories,29 recent work demonstrates convincingly the "visibility"of
women in archaeological sites like Catal Hiyiik.30 There are very real
problems in the interpretation of archaeological data. Material remains
are not sure guides to social relations or cultural meanings. Still, what
recent work succeeds in doing is to remind us that, given the thinness of
evidence, axiomatic presumptions of absolute partriarchy may be as unfounded
as their opposites.31
Matriarchy, as every beginning anthropology student learns, is not
the same as inatriliny.32 Matrilineal descent is the subject of several important
new studies. Elizabeth Colson, a participant in the SSRC (Social
Science Research Council) conference that resulted in the important
volume Matrilineal Kinship,33 has written an updated account that explores
how, contrary to earlier theoretical assessments, matrilineal kinship
among the Gwembe and Plateau Tonga has proved to be quite
28. Sacks (n. 2 above), see esp. chaps. 7, 8, and 9. For a fine sum-nary of other work on
the archaic states, see Rapp (n. 1 above), p. 499. See also the following new essays: June
Nash, "Aztec Women: The Transition from Status to Class in Empire and Colony," in
lVomen and Colonialization: AnthropologicalPerspectives, ed. Mona Etienne and Eleanor
Leacock (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1980); Irene Silverblatt, "'The Universe Has
Turned Inside Out ....There Is No Justice for Us Here.' Andean Women under Spanish
Rule," in the same volume.
29. But see C. Fluehr-Lobban, "A Marxist Reappraisal of the Matriarchate," Current
Anthropology20, no. 2 (1979): 341-59; Romi Grinborg, "Matriarchy-Why Not?" Folk
21-22 (1979/1980): 219-28.
30. Anne Barstow, "The Uses of Archaeology for Women's History: James Mellaart's
Work on the Neolithic Goddess at Catal Huiyuk,"FeministStudies 4, no. 3 (1978): 7-18.
31. For example, Ruby Rohrlich, "State Formation in Sumer and the Subjugation of
Women," FeministStudies 6, no. 1 (1980): 76-102.
32. But see Fluehr-Lobban (n. 29 above).
33. David Schneider and Kathleen Gough, MatrilinealKinship(Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1961).
Signs
Review:Anthropology
durable and relatively impervious to change.34 Annette Weiner's work
on the matrilineal Trobrianders continues to shed new light on that
system.35 And Karla Poewe, in a spate of articles and a monograph,
proposes that matriliny in Luapula, Zambia, must be seen as a political
economy at odds with the competing Protestant-backed form of
capitalism in Zambia today.36 Poewe's work bristles with challenges to
conventional views of kinship and social organization.
The effects of colonialism on both state and nonstate societies has
been examined with reference to issues of sex and gender. The most
significant new work in this area is a collection edited by Leacock and
Mona Etienne that demonstrates the importance of ethnohistorical study
in any examination of sex roles in society.37 This volume makes great
strides in documenting, with sensitivity to sex and class, the interaction
of colonialists and indigenes.
In addition to examining other cultures, past and present, feminist
scholars have also devoted their efforts to unraveling issues of gender in
Western society. Nancy Chodorow's book, TheReproductionof Mothering,
is a milestone in research on the psychodynamics of family in Western
industrial society,38 and Sylvia Yanagisako has provided a comprehensive
and provoking theoretical review of the literature on family and
household.39 Collier, Rosaldo, and Yanagisako pit Victorian evolutionists
against twentieth-century functionalists in a critique of anthropological
assumptions about the family.40 Rapp explores American
34. Elizabeth Colson, "The Resilience of Matrilineality: Gwembe and Plateau Tonga
Adaptations," in TheVersatilityof Kinship,ed. Linda Co(rdelland Stephen Becker-tan (New
York: Academic Pi-ess, 1980).
35. Annette Weiner, "Trobriand Descent: Felmale/Male Domains," Ethos 5, no. 1
(1977): 54-70; "Fhe Reproductive Model in Trobriand Society," Mankind 11, no. 3 (1978):
175-86; "Tiobriand Kinship from Another View: The Reproductive Power of WVomen
and Men,"IMala 14, no. 2 (1979): 328-48; "Reproduction: A Replacement for Reciprocity,"
APmericalEthnlologi.t7, no. 1 (1980): 71-85; "Stabilityin Banana Leaves: Colonialism, Econo)mics,
and Tr-obriand W\oien," in Etienne and Leacock, elds. (n. 28 above).
36. Karla Poeswe, "Religion, Matrililn and Change: Jehovah's Witnesses and
Seventh-Dal Adventists in l.uapula, Zambia,"AmericanEthnolo'gist5, no. 2 (1978): 303-21;
"Matrilinv in the Thlroes of Change: Kinship, Descent andlMarriage in Luapula, Zambia,"
.4ficia 48, no. 3 (1978): 205-18, and no. 4 (1978): 353-67; "Matriliny and Capitalism: The
Develo(pment of Incipient Classes in Lulapula, Zambia," Dialectical Anthronpology3, no. 4
(1978): 331-47; "Wolmen, Holtticulture and Society in Suil-Saharan Africa: Solme Colmments,"
A4meican Ant/ropologist 81, no. 1 (1979): 115-17; P1oeweand Peter R. oxvell, "Marriage,
Descent and Kinship: ()Onthe Differential Primacy of Institutions in otngana an(l
l,ua)pula,".4/'ica 50, no. 1 (1980): 73-92; "Matrilineal Ideology: The Economic Activities of
Womenl in Luapula, Zamblia,"in Cord(ell andt Beckerman, eds. (n. 34 above); Alatrilineal
ldeology: Iale-Femahle Dynlamics in l uapula, Zalmbia (lIon(don: AcademicP Press, 1981).
37. Etienne and Leacock, eds. (n. 28 above).
38. Chocdorow (n. 2 above).
39. Yanagisako (n. 9 a)bove).
40). Jane Collier, M\ichelleZ. Rosaldo, and Sylvia Yanagisako, "IsThere a Family? New
Anthr-opological Viewss,"in RethinkingtheFamily:SomeFeministQuestions,ed. Ba-r-ieThotrne
with Marilyn Yalomi (New York: Iongman, 1982).
244 Atkinson
Winter1982 245
family ideology in light of class differences,41 while Susan Harding finds
that class alone cannot account for the contrasting "family strategies" of
feminists and their opponents.42
Several outstanding trends are evident through much of the recent
literature. One is an emphatic assertion by feminist anthropologists
doing social and cultural research that sex roles and gender concepts
must be seen as products of history and society, not as reflections of
inherent human sexual natures. This theme, of course, has a long history
in the anthropology of women, from Margaret Mead's Sex and
Temperamentonward.43 One intriguing new statement of the problem has
been made by Sandra Wallman.44 Hers is a witty and penetrating critique
of the ways in which social scientists confuse biological classifications
of sex type and sex roles. Whereas roles in general are considered
social constructions, the female role, she asserts, is used as though it were
inextricably bound to women's physical nature. There are clearly relations
between some roles and some physical attributes, sexual and
otherwise, but sex class does not constitute a social role. Hence arguments
about the "position of women" and "women's role" are meaningless.45Wallman
raises a critical question: When is sex a socially meaningful
criterion and when is it not? She argues that the sex of a social actor
cannot be presumed to be significant, definitive, or even relevant across
social situations.
A second feature of recent work is its strong commitment to historical
analysis, which Marxist analysts have been calling for for some time.
Deborah Gewertz's article, "A Historical Reconsideration of Female
Dominance among the Chambri of Papua New Guinea,"46 illustrates
how historical analysis can elucidate distinctive forms of sex roles. The
article reconciles Mead's portrait of gender relations among the Tchambuli
and the very different situation Gewertz observed in the 1970s as
representing systemic adaptations to shifting economic and political
conditions.47 Debates over familism on the Israeli kibbutz similarly dem-
41. Rayna Rapp, "Family and Class in Contemporary America: Notes towards an
Understanding of Ideology," Science alndSociety42, no. 3 (1978): 278-300, reprinted in
Thorne and Yalom, eds.
42. Susan Harding, "Family Reform Movements: Recent Feminism and Its Opposition,"
FeministStudies 7, no. 1 (1981): 57-75.
43. Margaret Mead, Sex and Temnpe-ramenttin ThreePPrimitive Societies (Nexw York: New
Amer-ican Library, 1935).
44. Sandra Wallman, "Epistemologies of Sex," in FemaleHierarchies,ed. Lionel Tiger
and Heather Fowler (Chicago: Beresford Book Service, 1978).
45. This is a general conclusion in recent work developed most fully by Martin King
VWhvte,The Status of WIomenrin Preinldstrial Societies(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University
Press, 1978); Naomi Quinn, "Anthropological Studies on Women's Status,"Annual Review
of Antlhropolog6 (1977): 181-222.
46. Deborah G(ewertz, "A Historical Reconsideration of Female Dominance among
the Chambri of Papua New Guinea," AmericanlEthnologist8, no. 1 (1981): 94-106.
47. Mead (n. 43 above).
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Reviewz:Anthropology
onstrate how historical perspectives conflict with essentialist argu-
ments.48
If Marxist feminists have led the way in historical analysis, the
non-Marxist camp has displayed a strong commitment to comparative
study.49 It is noteworthy at a time when much work, especially work
done by symbolic anthropologists, has a reputation for being particularistic
and immune to cross-cultural comparison, that feminist anthropologists
have been unswerving in their efforts to establish comparative
frameworks for exploring sex and gender. An outstanding
example of this endeavor is Ortner and Whitehead's edited volume Sexual
Meanings,50 which contains several important comparative analyses.
Collier and Rosaldo's attempt to construct a model of brideservice systems
has already been discussed. Whitehead's impressive examination of
the North American Indian berdache (institutionalized transvestism)
critiques and redirects comparative strategies in the study of homosexuality,
in particular, and sexuality, in general.51 Ortner applies her interest
in structural and cultural dimensions of sex and gender in hierarchical
systems to an examination of Polynesian societies and sketches some
intriguing comparisons to hierarchical systems of Europe and Asia.52
In their introduction, Ortner and Whitehead propose a model for
exploring sex and gender which underscores not only social and historical
considerations53 but the cultural dimension as well, a dimension that
Marxist feminists and other scholars have neglected. Citing a debt to
Weber (and his American interpreters), they propose an approach that
examines both the formal structure of social relations and the culturally
shaped perceptions of actors within the system. Noting the inevitable
connection that anthropologists drawvbetween sex and gender on one
hand, and kinship and marriage on the other, Ortner and Whitehead
claim that the twvosets are mnediatedin every society by what they call
structures of prestige-namely, the systems of status distinctions in a
society. Each society has multiple prestige structures (gender is one of
them), and these prestige structures tend to be integrated. The intersec-
48. MNelford Spiro, Geder( a(d (Culture.:Kibbutz Il'oumenRevisited (Durham, N.C.: Duke
University Press, 1979); Nancy Datan, review of Ge(lder and C/ulture by Melford Spiro,
.A4ricain Ethlolog'is. t 8, no. 1 (1981): 202-3; Seymlour Parker and Hilda Parkelr, "Women
and the Emelging Family on the Israeli Kibbutz," .4merican Etho/logist 8, no. 4 (1981):
758-73.
49. This conmmitmentis evident fr-omthe pioneering effoirts of Mead (n. 43 above), to
new work such as that by Sandax (n. 2 above).
50. ()rtner and Whitehead, eds. (n. 2 above).
51. Harriet Whitehead, "The Bows and the Burden Strap: A New Look at Institutionalized
Homosexualitv in Native Noi-th America," in (rtner and Whitehead, eds.
(n. 2 above).
52. Sherry B. Ortner, "Gender and Sexuality in Hierarchical Societies: The Case of
Polynesia and Some Comparative Implications," in Ortner and Whitehead, eds. (n. 2 above).
53. ()rtner and Whitehea(, eds. (n. 13 above).
246 Atkinson
Winter1982 247
tion of men's prestige games and the relations between the sexes shapes
cultural constructs of sexuality and gender.
Ortner and Whitehead's argument for the existence of systematic
relations between gender and prestige-oriented activity (which Collier
and Rosaldo treat as political and economic dimensions) is highly compelling.
Feminist criticism will no doubt focus on the weighting of this
model toward male-dominated politics rather than women's
experience-an emphasis that the authors defend with the claim that
women's lives, like men's, are skewed toward male concerns.
A fourth development in recent work represents a turning point in
this review and, I hope, in feminist anthropology: that is, the growing
concern among anthropologists with the interplay of situation, context,
and meaning. Here my focus shifts from theoretical work to the ethnographic
genre. As new field research is undertaken with theoretical
questions in mind, ethnographic studies begin to reveal the complexities
of cultural experience pertaining to gender. A number of researchers
have expressed skepticism about the "are they or aren't they egalitarian/
asymmetricaloppressive" questions of earlier literature.
D. K. Feil poses the issues nicely in a paper on the Enga, a Highland
New Guinea group known for quite striking sexual segregation and
antagonism.54 Feil claims that the stereotypic image of the contaminating
and despised Enga woman, derived from expressions of male cult activity,
does not hold across all of Enga life. He demonstrates his point with
an account of women's influential backstage role in the culturally central
tee exchange system.
Diane Bell's paper on Warlpiri marriage is a similar demonstration
of women's importance in a supposedly male-dominated political
arena.55 Bell explores how women in this Australian aboriginal society
play key roles in the politics of male initiation and marriage arrangements.
As in the case of the Enga, stereotypes of Warlpiri women derived
from male ceremonies do not subsume all aspects of women's and
men's experience.
Some analysts, when responding to such demonstrations of women's
influence, tend to discount cultural ideology and focus on observable
behavior alone. In doing so, they seem to suggest that it is either ideology
or behavior-but not both-that determines women's place in a social
system. By focusing on women's activities and deeming them significant,
some conclude that all the misogyny observed is in the biased eyes of
Western ethnographers or, alternately, that it exists but simply does not
matter. Then too, symbolic analysts, by stressing the picture of the sexes
54. D. K. Feil, "Women and Men in the Enga Tee," AmericanEthnologist 5, no. 2
(1978): 263-79. See also Marilyn Strathern, "Self-Interest and the Social Good: Some
Implications of Hagen Gender Imagery," in Ortner and Whitehead, eds. (n. 2 above).
55. Diane Bell, "Desert Politics: Choices in the 'Marriage Market,'" in Etienne and
Leacock, eds. (n. 28 above).
Signs
Review:Anthropology
posed in ritual, have not always connected that picture to the everyday
experience of women and men. This has been a particular problem
when anthropologists analyze accounts in the literature rather than in
their own field research.
To escape from this impasse, we need far more sophisticated approaches
to the study of cultural meaning and experience. It is too facile
to deny the significance of sexual stereotypes or to presume that women's
influence in one context cancels out their degradation in another.
Just as we know that women's status is not a unitary phenomenon across
cultures, we need to be reminded that the intracultural picture is equally
complex.56 Indeed, a culture may feature various and mutually contradicting
statements about gender. Are these expressions random, irrelevant,
or mutually negating? I think not. If not, further study is
needed to explore domains of meaning, their associated contexts, and
their situated use by social actors.
Efforts in this direction are appearing in new ethnographic studies
of gender. Olivia Harris's treatment of chachawarmi,a key concept of the
Laymi Indians of the Bolivian Andes, reveals how an ideal of marital
complementarity excludes other dimensions of male-female interaction,
including men's violence toward women.57 Here ideology stresses one
dimension of experience while ignoring others. Jane Goodale's study
of Kaulong gender relations includes an account of how ideas of female
pollution figure in everyday life.58Clearly, the existence of an ideological
assertion in a culture is no predictor of the way in which social actors
experience that assertion. Gilbert Herdt's extraordinary account of a
homosexual initiatory cult in the eastern highlands of New Guinea
similarly eschews a strictly normative approach in an effort to explore
the psychological experiences of his informants.59 Stanley Brandes demonstrates
a fine sensitivity to social context as he examines male ideology
and relations between the sexes alongside other hierarchical relations in
an Andalusian town.60 Theoretical impetus for a more contextualized
analysis of sexual meanings has a number of sources, including symbolic
56. This point is developed by Daisy Dwyer, Inages and Self-Images:Male and Femalein
Morocco(New York: Columbia University Press, 1978).
57. Olivia Harris, "Complementarity and Conflict," in SexandAge asPrinciplesof Social
DiffeJrentiation,ed. J. S. LaFontaine, Association of Social Anthropologists Monograph 17
(New York: Academic Press, 1978). See also Olivia Harris, "The Power of Signs: Gender,
Culture and the Wild in the Bolivian Andes," in MacCormack and Strathern, eds. (n. 2
above).
58. Jane C. Goodale, "Gender, Sexuality and Marriage: A Kaulong Model of Nature
and Culture," in MacCormack and Strathern, eds. (n. 2 above).
59. Gilbert Herdt, Guardicansof theFlutes: Idiomsof Masculinity(New York: McGrawHill
Book Co., 1981).
60. Stanley Brandes, Metaphorsof Masculinitv: Sex and Status in Andalusian Folklore
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1980). See also Stanley Brandes, "Like
Wounded Stags: Male Sexual Ideology in an Andalusian Town," in Ortner and
Whitehead, eds. (n. 2 above).
248 Atkinson
Winter1982 249
interactionism, phenomenology, and psychoanalysis. Sociolinguistics, a
field noted for scrupulous investigation of situated meanings, may prove
helpful to cultural anthropologists in this regard. Ruth Borker's recent
review of sociolinguistic approaches to women and language provides an
overview of work in that field.61
Up to this point I have traced some general trends in recent anthropological
literature. Now I would like to consider how feminist
theory in anthropology is influencing ethnographic writing. As I noted
at the start of this essay, anthropology thrives on a tension between the
construction of theory and the practice of ethnography. By challenging
traditional anthropology, feminists claim that attention to sex roles and
cultural concepts of gender will profoundly and essentially alter our
analyses. Feminist anthropology, then, will reach maturity only when it
begins to shape significantly the ethnographies we write. In the following
paragraphs I will both review various types of ethnographic writing
about gender and speculate about the place of feminist analysis in the
writing of ethnography.
The number of life histories that have appeared in recent work on
women is quite striking.62 The life history, of course, is an established
form in anthropological writing. It promises an elucidation of subjective
experience with reference to historical, cultural, social, and psychological
frameworks.63 For feminist anthropologists, its appeal is clear. Given
the relative invisibility of women in standard analyses, researchers have
looked to personal accounts as a means of locating women in social
systems. Personal and longitudinal, life histories have been favored especially
by psychological anthropologists and historical analysts. As an
anthropological form, the virtues of the life history give rise to its vices.
A life history, if presented well, is a richly textured tapestry of detail; but
overwhelming amounts of descriptive data often eclipse, and sometimes
totally replace, any attempt of analysis. The problem is exacerbated by
the fact that readers of anthropological life histories are generally not
familiar with the culture from which the accounts come.
Perhaps the most ambitious of recent work that makes use of au-
61. Ruth Borker, "Anthropology: Social and Cultural Perspectives," in Womenand
Language in Literatureand Society,ed. Sally McConnell-Ginet, Ruth Borker, and Nelly Furman
(New York: Praeger Publishers, 1980).
62. Representative of the trend are the following: Domitila Barrios de Chungara with
Moema Viezzer, Let Me Speak! Testimonyof Domitila, A Womanof theBolivian Mines (New
York: Monthly Review Press, 1978); Youngsook K. Harvey, Six Korean Women:The Socialization
of Shamans (St. Paul, Minn.: West Publishing, 1979); Jane Holden Kelley, Yaqui
Women:ContemporaryLife Histories (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1978); Oscar
Lewis, Ruth Lewis, and Susan Rigdon, Four Women:Living theRevolution.An OralHistoryof
ContemporaryCuba (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1977); Sarah LeVine, Mothers
and Wives:Gusii Womenof East Africa (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979); Marjorie
Shostak (n. 23 above).
63. For a theoretical review of the life history approach, see Lawrence Watson,
"Understanding a Life History as a Subjective Document: Hermeneutical and
Phenomenological Perspectives," Ethos 4, no. 1 (1976): 95-131.
Signs
Review:Anthropology
tobiographical materials is Sarah LeVine's Mothers and Wives: Gusii
Womenof East Africa.64 LeVine used a clinical approach to explore the
psychological experience of seven Gusii women. She interprets her informants'
presentations of self not only in terms of their relations to
family and neighbors but also in terms of their dealings with LeVine
herself. Her case studies expose the pressures on young mothers generated
by a patrilineal, virilocal system undergoing drastic demographic,
economic, and cultural change. LeVine's study reveals the strengths and
weaknesses of a life history approach. The book contains extraordinarily
rich and insightful reporting, but lacks judicious editorial pruning, a
glossary, an index, and, most critically, a systematic analysis of each case
history. A general introduction and conclusion cannot begin to contain,
let alone illuminate, the exceedingly suggestive individual accounts they
bracket.
LeVine's study presents a picture of Gusii women as passive victims
rather than active agents. Michelle Teitelbaum rightly takes her to task
for neglecting the stages of the life cycle in which women hold higher
status and more power.65 But there are problems with the current
feminist criticism that women should be portrayed as agents rather than
as victims. The logic of the complaint runs something like this: The
normative system, articulated most fully by men, puts women in subordinate
positions. Read frorn the vantage point of men in authority,
women are pawns. Seen from a feminist perspective, however, it is obvious
that women are also actors, with their own agendas. Feminist writers,
therefore, should stress women's qualities as agents rather than dwell on
their role as victims. What intrigues me about the Gusii case is that in at
least one phase of their life cycle Gusii women explicitly use the image of
victim to portray themselves (whereas in some societies, feminist anthropologists
find their informants inarticulate about their alleged oppression).
To understand wvhy,we need a fuller analysis of Gusii personhood.
How much do these self-portraits follow common cultural themes,
and how much do they reflect the ethos of Gusii women as opposed to
Gusii men, of young as opposed to old, of rural folk as opposed to town
folk? We have no idea what these assertions mean in the wider context of
Gusii society. An exclusive focus on young mothers robs us of a context
for evaluating the experience of these seven women.
Rather than stipulate that in feminist ethnography women should
always appear in control of their lives, I would argue that we need to
analyze the gender constructs through which people express themselves
and to play those cultural formulations off against the structural and
situational dimensions of women's and men's lives in a given society.
Passive, active, victim, agent-our owxnstereotypes can further confuse
64. LeVine.
65. Michelle Teitelbaum, review of MIothlersand Wiivesby Sarah LeVine, Amrerican
4Anthropololg-st83, no. 1 (1981): 156-57.
250 Atkinson
Winter1982 251
our readings of informants' presentations of selves. If young Gusii
mothers portray themselves as victims, we must explore that assertion in
the context of Gusii culture and social relations.
A less ambitious, yet more successful example of the life history
genre is Shostak's Nisa: TheLifeand Wordsof a !Kung Woman,possibly the
most manageable life history published to date.66 Shostak has the advantage
of working with a population that has been well studied over the
course of many years by a variety of researchers. Rather than having to
account single-handedly for an entire culture in order to illuminate the
experience of one of its members, she can draw on the extensive literature
about the !Kung. With that edge, Shostak presents with loving care
an extraordinary first-person narrative by Nisa, a wonderfully articulate
and engaging individual.
Rather than sandwiching a fat narrative between a thin introduction
and conclusion, usual life history fare, Shostak divides Nisa's narrative
into fifteen chapters, each centered on a theme (e.g., "Discovering Sex,"
"Motherhood and Loss," "Taking Lovers"). Each chapter is prefaced by
a summary of !Kung research pertinent to the topic. While these summaries,
some five or six pages in length, are necessarily superficial, they
are crucial because they allow the reader to reflect on Nisa's experience
within the wider context of !Kung history and society (and to identify
further source material in the notes). The mode of presentation also
allows Shostak to identify apparent discrepancies between Nisa's account
and other sources of information on the !Kung. For example, Nisa's
recollections of childhood abuse do not tally with studies of !Kung child
rearing. Similarly, Nisa's sense of personal tragedy seemed uncharacteristic
of !Kung in general. As for Nisa's apparent obsession with
sex, Shostak tries to place it in the context of both her own relationship
to her informants and !Kung women's talk in general. Shostak claims
that sex figures as a prominent theme in !Kung women's talk, but here,
as in other matters, she does not attempt to analyze why. (Collier and
Rosaldo's argument about gender constructs in brideservice societies
may prove illuminating on this point.)67
The strength of Shostak's book is its simplicity. Shostak does not
press beyond the task of placing Nisa's narrative in the context of !Kung
society and culture. But given the excellent materials available on the
Kung, that suffices. Nisa could well become a classic for general teaching
within and beyond the discipline of anthropology, thereby replacing the
entertaining but outdated HarmlessPeople.68
Along with personal histories, life-cycle models in general could be
66. Shostak (n. 23 above).
67. Collier and Rosaldo (n. 13 above).
68. Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, TlheHarmlessPeople (New York: A. A. Knopf, 1959).
Signs
Review:Anthropology
used more effectively by feminist anthropologists.69 Examination of the
entire life cycle helps to rectify erroneous stereotypes based on characterizations
of a single phase. Teitelbaum has made this point in reference
to LeVine's study.70 Goodale and, more recently, Bell note how
Australian researchers have tended to focus exclusively on young girls'
marriages to old men and thereby have failed to trace the course of
women's marital lives.71 Work on Taiwanese women reminds us that
miserable brides become domineering mothers-in-law in time.72 So too,
Sarakatsani women enter their prime as their husbands falteringly retire.73
A developmental approach raises intriguing questions about personal
experience and societal norms. For example, Enid Schildkrout's
paper on Hausa childhood reveals that children freely cross the boundaries
and gain knowledge of domains that will be closed to them in the
sexually segregated adult world.74
A related ethnographic form based on domestic cycles is nowhere
better illustrated than by Margery Wolf's beautiful monograph, The
House of Lim.75Like Nisa, The House of Lirnbenefits from the availability
of extensive published work on the area, much of it by Wolf herself.76
Wolf's carefully crafted book illuminates the general through the particular.
By focusing on the history of a single and, in many ways, unique
family, she is able to lend clarity to patterns of marriage and family
among Taiwanese peasants. Wolf's insightful treatment of women's experience
proves essential for understanding a patriarchal family structure.
Tighter and trimmer than most life histories, Wolf's book is a
69. There is not space here to review the recent work on initiation, a topic germane to
any consideration of the life cycle. A fewssignificant works deserve mention: He-dt (n. 59
above); Bruce Lincoln, Emerngingfioin the Chrysalis:Studies iin Rituals of I1'omeul'sInitiation
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981); Karen Ericksen Paige and Jeffrey
Paige, The Politics of ReproductiveRitual (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981):
Alice Schlegel and Herbert Barry, "The Evolutionary Significance of Adolescent Initiation
Ceremonies," AmericanEthnologist7, no. 4 (1980): 696-715; Deborah Winslow, "The Rituals
of First Menstruation in Sri Lanka," Man 15, no. 4 (1980): 603-25. I take exception to
the highly androcentric approach taken by Paige and Paige that leads them to focus
exclusively on male-male relations and thereby to overlook entirely the significance of'
male-fem ale r-elations.This blindness leads, e.g., to a serious misrleaclingof the MbutiEli'ma
ceremony (pp. 102-3).
70. Teitelbaumn(n. 65 above).
71. Jane C. GCoodale,"Marriage Contracts among the Tiwi," Ethoology1, no. 4 (1962):
452-66; Bell (n. 55 above).
72. See, e.g., Margery \Wolf, "Chinese Women: ()ld Skills in a New (Context," in
Rosaldo and Lamphere, eds. (n. 2 above).
73. J. K. Campbell, Holnour,Familyand Patrontage(Oxford: Oxfolrd UnicversityPi-ess,
1964).
74. Enid Schildkrout, "Roles of Chilcdrenin Urban Kano," in LaFontaine, ed. (n. 57
above).
75. Margery Wolf, The House of Lir (NewsYork: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1968).
76. Margery Wolf, 11'omenand theFamily ini Rural Taiwan (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford
University Press, 1972); W\olf and Witke (n. 2 above).
252 Atkinson
Winter1982 253
classic demonstration of how case studies can be both true to personal
experience and sociologically explicit.77
The life history and related approaches provide an alternative to the
standard ethnography, which, as Ortner and Whitehead note, often admits
women only in the kinship and marriage chapter.78 But relying on
personal histories to describe women's subjective experience and on
traditional monographs to provide the social analysis is clearly an unsatisfactory
way of integrating feminist studies and anthropology. It is
not surprising, therefore, to find recent work written explicitly from the
perspective of women. The complaint seems to be that traditional accounts
have bypassed women in their portrayal of the normative maledominated
system; all we have are stereotypes of what women represent
in men's dealings with other men. The remedy, for some, is to focus on
women as actors. Caroline Bledsoe's book, Womenand Marriagein Kpelle
Society,is one example of this approach.79 Bledsoe begins with the premise
that women are economic and political strategists pursuing their own
personal interests. The social structure, then, is the set of options and
constraints that individual women actors face.
Several very salient points emerge in Bledsoe's account. First, it
became apparent to her that women do not always act in the best interests
of women as a group. Instead, she found old women dominating
young ones, Sande initiators manipulating the families of young novices,
midwives monopolizing knowledge so as to ensure continued dependence
on them by other women. In other words, Kpelle women do not
form a unified interest group. Bledsoe's finding is in line with other
recent research. Margaret Strobel, in her book, Muslim Womenin Mombasa,
1890-1975, explores how issues like ethnicity and class divide the
women of Mombasa as much as or more than their sex unites them.80
Patricia Caplan and Janet Bujra provide a cogent theoretical treatment
of this issue, as well as specific ethnographic illustrations, in their collection
WomenUnited, WomenDivided.81Clearly, any study that investigates
women as a category must attend to the variety of social factors that
77. Similarly, Sulamith Heins Pottel, in her book FamilyLife in a NorthernThai Village:
A Study in the StructuralSign'ficaine of' o0men(Berkeley: University of California Press,
1978), focuses on a single family to illustrate the workings of Thai social structure; but her
book lacks the ethnuographic richness, the analytical depth, and the literary excellence of
Wolf's book.
78. Ortner and Whitehead, eds. (n. 13 above), p. 10.
79. Caroline Bledsoe, 'Womenand Marriagein KpelleSociety(Stanford, Calif.: Stanford
University Press, 1980). Another example is Louise Lamphere, F. M. Silva, and J. P. Sousa,
"Kin Networks and Family Strategies: Working Class Portuguese Families in New England,"
in Cordell and Beckerman, eds. (n. 34 above).
80. Margaret Strobel, MsliNm Womenin Mombasa, 1890-1975 (New Haven, Conn.:
Yale University Press, 1979).
81. Patricia Caplan and Janet M. Bujra, eds.,WI omenUnited, WomenDivided:Comparative
Studieso' Ten ContemporaryCulturles(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1979).
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Review:Anthropology
interact with and commonly override sex as a socially significant attribute.
For this reason, among others, a study of women must include
men-as Bledsoe discovered. The point seems an obvious one, although
it is surprising, given criticisms of androcentric analyses, how often
feminists who should know better fail to relate their claims about women
to the wider context of female-male relations. "Women do this" assertions
are as hollow as "men do that" assertions. Feminist anthropology
needs to make clear how neither claim makes sense on its own.
Two other recent monographs focusing on women raise the issue of
how feminist politics surfaces explicitly in ethnographic analysis. One
finds minimal expression of feminist politics in monographs on "traditional"
societies; anthropologists are generally protectors, not critics, of
such systems. In work on societies like China and Cuba, however, where
socialist feminism is an open issue in the cultures under study, feminist
issues are addressed directly.82 Some anthropologists studying women in
urban Third World areas-areas where feminist politics are less overthave
introduced feminism in their studies, with varying degrees of suc-
cess.
In her book WomenofAccra, Deborah Pellow uses feminist standards
for evaluating the lives of women.83 From Pellow we learn that her
Ghanaian informants are not individualistic, free of familism and kinship,
or open to speculation about options in their lives. Women of Accra
are clearly not what middle-class American female academics are,
namely, concerned about autonomy, personal choice, and freedom from
family responsibility. Pellow's study seems designed to disprove assumptions
that urban African women enjoy great independence and mobility.
Still, it leaves me with a desire to know more about what these women are
and less about what they are not.
Ilsa Schuster's TheNewzWomenofLusakais more successful, although
Schuster judges life in Lusaka more harshly than Pellow does life in
Accra.84Schuster is unrelenting in her assertion that something is rotten
in the state of Zambia, at least as far as the sexual relations between
women and men in the urban capital are concerned. Schuster, however,
demonstrates that her complaints are built upon those of her informants,
that she is giving voice to the frustrations of the people she
studied. Her analysis illuminates informants' perspectives rather than
displacing them. What Schuster offers is a dialogue with her informants
that is richer for the participation of both sides.
82. See, e.g., Elisabeth Croll, Feininsm and Socialismin China (London: Routledge &
Kegan Paul, 1978); Cioll, "Rural China: Segregation to Solidai-ity," in Caplan andl Bujra,
eds. (n. 81 above); also Lewis, Lseis, and Rigdon (n. 62 above).
8:3. Deborah Pellow, I1'o1menil AIc-cra:Optionsnf)r-,urtoliomyl(Algonae, Mich.: Refeerence
Publications, 1977).
84. lisa M. C(lazer Schuster. T'l,heNe'l Iomein (f Lusaka (Palo Alto, (alit.: Mayfield
Publishing Co., 1979).
254 Atkinson
Winter1982 255
The ethnographies reviewed thus far take women as their primary
focus. There is clearly merit in this approach; one hears women's voices
and sees the social system from women's perspective. But at some point it
is necessary to go beyond this format to demonstrate that approaches
which ignore women are not simply incomplete with regard to information
but also inadequate because they overlook dimensions fundamental
to understanding the phenomena under study. The ultimate goal of
feminist anthropology should be not simply to supplement our knowledge
but indeed to realign our disciplinary approaches.
Of work to date, Weiner's restudy of the Trobriand Islands demonstrates
most dramatically what a "bifocal" view can bring to social
analysis.85In her book, Womenof Value,Men ofRenown, and in a series of
subsequent publications, Weiner elucidates the workings of Trobriand
social organization by demonstrating the significance of women's exchange.86
From the start, Weiner has rejected assumptions of sexual
asymmetry in simpler societies. In contrast to analysts like Rosaldo, she
denies the structural centrality of male economic and political control.
She attempts to show how women may often and in less ostentatious
ways provide important links in the system. Instead of comparing women's
and men's presence in public forums and deeming women deficient,
anthropologists, in Weiner's view, should investigate the articulation of
female and male spheres of influence.
Weiner's work on Trobriand women is structurally illuminating. An
issue still to be resolved (in the field generally, not only in Weiner's work)
is the relation between ideology and social structure. Weiner deliberately
sets out to circumvent not only the androcentrism of Western anthropologists
but also the apparent androcentrism of her male informants.
If we follow her lead and take both women's and men's activities
into account, we are still left with the problem of how our analysis
relates to gender ideology and the cultural experience of our informants.
If men deny the significance of women's contributions, it
seems essential to discover why. Is it due to colonial influence, to expectations
of what Western anthropologists want to hear, or is there something
more subtle going on, a more complex dynamic in the Trobriand
politics of gender?
The work of Christine Hugh-Jones, while it too does not focus on
the political dimensions of male-female relations, merits serious attention
by researchers interested in the integration of men's and women's
activities in social analysis. Hugh-Jones's approach is beautifully demon-
85. Carolyn Lougee (Department of History, Stanford University) used the term
"bifocal" at the seminar on women's studies, held at Lewis and Clark College in June 1981,
which was sponsored by the National Endowsment for the Humanities.
86. Annette Weiner, WomenoJ Value, Men of Renown (Austin: University of Texas
Press, 1976). Other references to Weiner's wsorkare cited in n. 35 above.
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Review:Anthropology
strated in an article entitled "Patterns of Production and Consumption
in Pira-Parana Society,"87 in which she eschews the conventional treatment
of a sexual division of labor. Instead, she examines production and
consumption as processes and thereby links the activities of the sexes.
She evenly examines both secular and ritual processes, an effective strategy
for circumventing the domestic-public polarity. As she explains in
her monograph FromtheMilk River,88manioc production, basic to most
Amazonian diets, is largely ignored in most accounts of Amazonian
ideology-probably because manioc production, a women's task, lacks
ritual embellishment.89 Her analysis demonstrates how seemingly humdrum
women's work, such as processing manioc and preparing a meal, is
crucial for analyzing a male-dominated ritual cycle. Hugh-Jones's
conclusion-"ritual is simply a large-scale version of the daily round"has
important implications for those who hold that single-gender accounts
of social systems are analytically impoverished.90 Her analysis
effectively demonstrates that, despite male control of a ritual complex,
anthropologists cannot afford to ignore the activities of both women and
men when interpreting that complex.
Weiner's study discovers the significance of a hitherto unrecognized
women's place in ceremonial exchange. Hugh-Jones goes beyond a barrier
between mundane and ceremonial experience to reveal the structural
relations between women's and men's domains. Other examples of
bifocal ethnography can be cited.91 The point here is for feminist anthropologists
to establish that gendered analysis is not merely a supplement
but a sine qua non of social inquiry.
While one can stress the need for a gendered approach to society
and culture, there is an additional factor that governs anthropological
attention to these issues. Ethnographers informally acknowledge that
their analyses are shaped in important ways by the peoples they study.
Quite clearly, there are some societies that virtually beg for a thoroughgoing
analysis of sex roles and gender ideology. Feminist and nonfeminist
scholars alike will be drawn to such investigation. New Guinea
provides numerous examples of this sort. So, too, do the Mediterranean
and the Near East. Take, for example, J. K. Campbell, who as far as I
87. Christine Hugh-Jones, "Patter-nsof Production and Consumption in Pira-Parana
Society," in LaFontaine, ed. (n. 57 above).
88. Christine Hugh-Jones, FromtheMilkRiver: Spatial and TemporalProcessesin NorthwestAmazonia
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979).
89. Or, as Hugh-Jones herself notes, "Doubtless, if men in feather head-dresses did
the digging, grating, sieving, etc., manioc would have received the attention it deserves."
Ibid., pp. 278-79.
90. Hugh-Jones (n. 87 above), p. 63.
91. Txwofine examples are June Nash, We Eat the Mines and the Mines Eat Us: Dependency
and Exploitation in Bolivian Tin Mines (New York: Columbia University Press,
1979); and Dwyer (n. 56 above).
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Winter1982 257
know had no feminist commitment to integrate gender concerns in his
study of the Sarakatsani, Greek pastoralists.92 One can fault his monograph
according to some canons of feminist scholarship. He dwells on
ideal rather than actual behavior. He fails to give a sense of how the
system looks from a female perspective, what kinds of options and maneuverability
it offers to women. Nevertheless, Honour, Family and Patronage
stands as a model for feminists who argue that politics and economics
cannot be understood without reference to kinship, family, sexuality,
and gender.
Cases such as that of the Sarakatsani, where relations between men
are boldly phrased in terms of men's relations to women, demand consideration
of gender. Far more problematic are societies in which gender
is a less polemical issue. For example, my own fieldwork among the
Wana of Sulawesi, Indonesia, revealed that gender is not a central organizing
principle of that culture.93 How one studies the significance of
sex differences in a system that minimizes them is far more difficult than
cases where clitoridectomy, foot binding, and homosexual fellatio fairly
scream out for ethnographic investigation. I hope that others who have
worked in areas where sex differences are downplayed will note that fact
and attempt analytical explanations. By following the interests of our
informants in the course of research, we have garnered some first-rate
analyses of gender in societies marked by sexual segregation, opposition,
and antagonism, but a much poorer sense of how less extreme systems
are constituted.94 As in the case of social hierarchy in general, one is
prompted to question sex differences in their extreme forms while failing
to recognize that more egalitarian societies are equally problematic.95
92. J. K. Campbell (n. 73 above).
93. My initial research plan was to study gender and ritual specialization, but I abandoned
that plan in my dissertation ("Paths of the Spirit Familiars: A Study of Wana
Shamanism" [Ph.D. diss., Stanford University, 1979]) and in subsequent writings, precisely
due to my informants' downplaying of the matter. Recently I have addressed the theoretical
dimensions of this problem in a paper entitled "Gender and Engendered Meanings in
Wana Shamanism" (unpublished manuscript). Anna Tsing Lowenhaupt found a similar
lack of emphasis on gender in her research among the Meratus of nearby Kalimantan
(personal communication).
94. A pioneering work in this area is Michelle Z. Rosaldo's Knowledgeand Passion:
IlongotNotionsof Self and SocialLife (n. 2 above). Rosaldo's first fieldwork among the Ilongot
was conducted from 1967 to 1969, before the impact of feminism on anthropology. In
1974, she returned to the field with new questions about women and men in mind. Knowledgeand
Passion is a result of Rosaldo's reanalysis of the Ilongot in light of feminist critiques
of traditional ethnography.
95. The work of Richard Lee (n. 22 above) and Michelle Rosaldo (n. 2 above) directly
addresses the question of how egalitarian social relations are maintained in societies with a
subsistence-based economy. More attention needs to be paid to the different shapes gender
ideology takes across cultures. A useful beginning is provided by Daisy Dwyer, "Ideologies
of Sexual Inequality and Strategies for Change in Male-Female Relations," American
Ethnologist5, no. 2 (1978): 227-40.
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258 Atkinson Review:Anthropology
This review has traced some recent trends in the anthropology of
women and has asked how feminist concerns are taking shape in the new
ethnography. Much of the theoretical work to date has been library
based; yet secondary sources are generally silent on crucial questions
about the integration of structure, meaning, and experience with reference
to both sexes. New feminist ethnographic work must replace the
current split between analyses of women's personal lives, on one hand,
and male-dominated social structure and ideology, on the other, with a
unified picture of how the nature and experience of both sexes are
socially and culturally patterned.
Departmentof Sociology
Lewisand ClarkCollege