In this article, the author argues that feminist anthropology as a field of study should pose questions about how differential power is constituted as gender differences. Addressing these questions calls for an approach to the study of gender and power that articulates the relationship between structure and agency. Such an approach is one that analyzes the practice of gender over time from intersubjective, political perspectives. Last, the author argues that feminist anthropology is a justice claim, which demands an ethic of engagement. Working on this project, feminist anthropologists contribute to debates over the concept of culture and the epistemological problem of representation within anthropology in a way that allows anthropology to speak more fluently to current debates within cultural studies over the politics of culture.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Abu-Lughod, Lila.
1990. The romance of resistance: Tracing transformations of power through Bedouin women. In Beyond the second sex: New directions in the anthropology of gender, edited by Peggy Reeves Sanday and Ruth Gallagher Goodenough. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
2.
Abu-Lughod, Lila.
1991. Writing against culture. In Recapturing anthropology, working in the present, edited by Richard G. Fox. Santa Fe, NM: School of America Research Press.
3.
Altorki, Soraya
, and Camilla Fawzi El-Solh, eds. 1988. Arab women in the field: Studying your own society.Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press.
4.
Amadiume, Ifi.
1987. Male daughters, female husbands: Gender and sex in an African society.London: Zed Books.
5.
Ardener, Shirley.1985. The social anthropology of women and feminist anthropology.Anthropology Today1:24-6.
6.
Asad, Talal
, ed. 1973. Anthropology and the colonial encounter.London: Ithaca.
7.
Barnes, Sandra.
1990. Women, property, and power. In Beyond the second sex: New directions in the anthropology of gender, edited by Peggy Reeves Sanday and Ruth Gallagher Goodenough. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
8.
Behar, Ruth.
1993. Translated woman: Crossing the border with Esperanza's story.Boston: Beacon.
9.
Bell, Diane
, Pat Caplan, and Wazir Jahan Karim, eds. 1993. Gendered fields: Women, men and ethnography.London: Routledge.
10.
Benhabib, Seyla.
1990. Epistemologies of postmodernism: A rejoinder to Jean-François Lyotard. In Feminism/postmodernism, edited by Linda J. Nicholson. New York: Routledge.
11.
Berreman, Gerald.
1972. Race, caste, and other invidious distinctions in social stratification. In Anthropology for the Eighties, edited by Johnnetta B. Cole. New York: Free Press.
12.
Bledsoe, Caroline.
1990. School fees and the marriage process for Mende girls in Sierra Leone. In Beyond the second sex: New directions in the anthropology of gender, edited by Peggy Reeves Sanday and Ruth Gallagher Goodenough. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
13.
Bookman, Ann
, and Sandra Morgen, eds. 1988. Women and the politics of empowerment.Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
14.
Bourdieu, Pierre.
1977. Outline of a theory of practice. Translated by Richard Nice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
15.
Bourdieu, Pierre.
1984 (Winter). Distinction: A social critique of taste. Translated by Richard Nice. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 22:3-14.
16.
Browne, Dallas L.
1991. Christian missionaries, western feminists, and the Kikuyu clitoridectomy controversy. In The politics of culture, edited by Brett Williams. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution.
17.
Caplan, Pat.1988. Engendering knowledge: The politics of ethnography (Part 1).Anthropology Today4:8-12.
18.
Clifford, James
, and George E. Marcus, eds. 1986. Writing culture: The poetics and politics of ethnography.Berkeley: University of California Press.
19.
Deloria, Vine.
1969. Custer died for your sins: An Indian manifesto.New York: Avon.
20.
di Leonardo, Micaela
, ed. 1991a. Gender at the crossroads of knowledge: Feminist anthropology in the postmodern era.Berkeley: University of California Press.
21.
di Leonardo, Micaela
1991b. Women's culture and its discontents. In The politics of culture, edited by Brett Williams. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution.
22.
Dwyer, Kevin.
1982. Moroccan dialogues.Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
23.
Fabian, Johannes.
1983. Time and the other: How anthropology makes its object.New York: Columbia University Press.
24.
Fabian, Johannes.1990. Presence and representation: The other and anthropological writing.Critical Inquiry16:753-72.
25.
Feld, Steven.
1982. Sound and sentiment: Birds, weeping, poetics, and song in Kaluli expression.Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
26.
Fox, Richard G.
, ed. 1991. Recapturing anthropology: Working in the present.Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press.
27.
Ginsburg, Faye D.
1989. Contested lives: The abortion debate in an American community.Berkeley: University of California Press.
28.
Gordon, Deborah.
1990. The politics of ethnographic authority: Race and writing in the ethnography of Margaret Mead and Zora Neale Hurston. In Modernist anthropology: From fieldwork to text, edited by Marc Manganaro. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
29.
Gorelick, Sherry.1991. Contradictions of feminist methodology.Gender & Society5:459-77.
30.
Habermas, Jürgen.1981. Modernity versus postmodernity.New German Critique, winter, 22:3-14.
31.
Harding, Sandra.
1991. Whose science? Whose knowledge? Thinking from women's lives.Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
32.
Huizer, Gerrit.
1986. Women in resistance and research: Potential against power. In Visibility and power: Essays on women in society and development, edited by Leela Dube, Eleanor Leacock, and Shirley Ardener. Delhi: Oxford University Press.
33.
Huizer, Gerrit
, and Bruce Mannheim, eds. 1979. The politics of anthropology: From colonialism and sexism toward a view from below.The Hague: Mouton.
34.
Joseph, Suad.
1988. Feminization, familism, self, and politics. In Arab women in the field: Studying your own society, edited by Soraya Altorki and Camilla Fawzi El-Solh. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press.
35.
Kalpagam, U.
1990. Feminist academics and disciplinary contradictions. IWAC Newsletter (International Women's Anthropology Conference) 12:6-7.
36.
Kirby, Vicki.1991. Comments on Mascia-Lees, Sharpe, and Cohen's “The postmodernist turn in anthropology: Cautions from a feminist perspective.”Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society16:394-400.
37.
Kondo, Dorinne.
1990. Crafting selves: Power, gender, and discourses of identity in a Japanese workplace.Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
38.
Lederman, Rena.
1990. Contested order: Gender and society in the southern New Guinea highlands. In Beyond the second sex: New directions in the anthropology of gender, edited by Peggy Reeves Sanday and Ruth Gallagher Goodenough. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
39.
Levi-Strauss, Claude.
1969. The elementary structures of kinship. Translated by James Harle Bell and John Richard von Sturmer. Boston: Beacon.
40.
MacCormack, Carol
, and Marilyn Strathern, eds. 1980. Nature, culture, and gender.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
41.
Marcus, George E.
, and Michael M. J. Fischer. 1986. Anthropology as cultural critique: An experimental moment in the human sciences.Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
42.
Martin, Emily.
1987. The woman in the body: A cultural analysis of reproduction.Boston: Beacon.
43.
Mascia-Lees, Frances E.
, Patricia Sharpe, and Collen Ballerino Cohen.1989. The postmodernist turn in anthropology: Cautions from a feminist perspective.Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society15:7-33.
44.
Mohanty, Chandra Talpade.
1991. Cartographies of struggle: Third world women and the politics of feminism. In Third world women and the politics of feminism, edited by Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Ann Russo, and Lourdes Torres. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press.
45.
Moore, Henrietta L.
1988. Feminism and anthropology.Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
46.
Morsy, Soheir.
1988. Fieldwork in my Egyptian homeland: Toward the demise of anthropology's distinctive-other hegemonic tradition. In Arab women in the field: Studying your own society, edited by Soraya Altorki and Camilla Fawzi El-Solh. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press.
47.
Myerhoff, Barbara G.
1979. Number our days.New York: Simon & Schuster.
48.
Ong, Aihwa.
1987. Spirits of resistance and capitalist discipline: Factory women in Malaysia.Albany: State University of New York Press.
49.
Ortner, Sherry B.1984. Theory in anthropology since the sixties.Comparative Studies in Society and History26:126-66.
50.
Ortner, Sherry B.
1991. Reading America: Preliminary notes on class and culture. In Recapturing anthropology: Working in the present, edited by Richard G. Fox. Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press.
51.
Ortner, Sherry B.
, and Harriet Whitehead. 1981. Introduction: Accounting for sexual meaning. In Sexual meanings: The cultural construction of gender and sexuality, edited by Sherry B. Ortner and Harriet Whitehead. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
52.
Owusu, Maxwell.
1979. Colonial and postcolonial anthropology of Africa: Scholarship or sentiment? In The politics of anthropology: From colonialism and sexism toward a view from below, edited by Gerrit Huizer and Bruce Mannheim. The Hague: Mouton.
53.
Polier, Nicole
, and William Roseberry.1989. Tristes tropes: Post-modern anthropologists encounter the other and discover themselves.Economy and Society18:245-64.
54.
Rabinow, Paul.
1986. Representations are social facts: Modernity and post-modernity in anthropology. In Writing culture: The poetics and politics of ethnography, edited by James Clifford and George E. Marcus. Berkeley: University of California Press.
55.
Rapp, Rayna.
1990. Moral pioneers: Women, men, and fetuses on a frontier of reproductive technology. In Gender at the crossroads of knowledge: Feminist anthropology in the postmodern era, edited by Micaela di Leonardo. Berkeley: University of California Press.
56.
Reddock, Rhoda.
1986. Overview: Constructing a cross-cultural comparative framework. IWAC Bulletin (International Women's Anthropology Conference) 1:46-9.
57.
Ridd, Rosemary
, and Helen Callaway, eds. 1987. Women and political conflict: Portraits of struggle in times of crisis.New York: New York University Press.
58.
Rosaldo, Renato.
1993. Culture and truth: The remaking of social analysis.Boston: Beacon.
59.
Roseberry, William.
1989. Anthropologies and histories: Essays in culture, history, and political economy.New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
60.
Roseberry, William
, and Jay O'Brien. 1991. Introduction. In Golden ages, dark ages: Imagining the past in anthropology and history, edited by Jay O'Brien and William Roseberry. Berkeley: University of California Press.
61.
Ruby, Jay
, ed. 1982. A crack in the mirror: Reflexive perspectives in anthropology.Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
62.
Said, Edward.1989. Representing the colonized: Anthropology's interlocutors.Critical Inquiry15:205-25.
63.
Schmink, Marianne.
1986. Women in Brazilian “Abertura” politics. In Visibility and power: Essays on women in society and development, edited by Leela Dube, Eleanor Leacock, and Shirley Ardener. Delhi: Oxford University Press.
64.
Scott, James.
1985. Weapons of the weak: Everyday forms of peasant resistance.New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
65.
Shostak, Majorie.
1981. Nisa: The life and words of a!Kung woman.Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
66.
Sider, Gerald M.
1986. Culture and class in anthropology and history: A Newfoundland illustration.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
67.
Silverblatt, Irene.
1991. Interpreting women in states: New feminist ethnohistories. In Gender at the crossroads of knowledge: Feminist anthropology in the postmodern era, edited by Micaela di Leonardo. Berkeley: University of California Press.
68.
Strathern, Marilyn.1987. An awkward relationship: The case of feminism and anthropology.Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society12:276-92.
69.
Strathern, Marilyn.
1988. The gender of the gift: Problems with women and problems with society in Melanesia.Berkeley: University of California Press.
70.
Strathern, Marilyn.
1992. Reproducing the future: Anthropology, kinship, and the new reproductive technologies.New York: Routledge.
71.
Sutton, Constance
, and Helen Safa. 1986. Introduction.IWAC Bulletin (International Women's Anthropology Conference) 1:1-3.
72.
Trinh, Minha T.
1989. Woman, native, other.Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
73.
Trouillot, Michel-Rolph.
1991. Anthropology and the savage slot: The poetics and politics of otherness. In Recapturing anthropology: Working in the present, edited by Richard G. Fox. Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press.
74.
Vincent, Joan.
1991. Engaging historicism. In Recapturing anthropology: Working in the present, edited by Richard G. Fox. Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press.
75.
Walter, Lynn.1990. The embodiment of ugliness and the logic of love: The Danish Redstockings Movement.Feminist Review, no. 36:103-26.
76.
Whitehead, Tony Larry
, and Mary Ellen Conway, eds. 1986. Self, sex, and gender in cross-cultural fieldwork.Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
77.
Williams, Brett
, ed. 1991. The politics of culture.Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution.
78.
Willis, Paul.
1977. Learning to labour.Farnborough, Hants, UK: Saxon House.
79.
Wolf, Eric R.
1982. Europe and the people without history.Berkeley: University of California Press.
80.
Young, Kate
, Carol Wolkowitz, and Roslyn McCullagh, eds. 1981. Of marriage and the market: Women's subordination in international perspective.London: CSE Books.
81.
Zavela, Patricia.
1987. Women's work and Chicano families: Cannery workers of the Santa Clara valley.Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
