Toward an Anthropology of Women

420 Pages·1975·13.252 MB·English

by  Rayna R. Reiter (editor)

Toward an
Anthropology
of Women
edited by Rayna R. Reiter

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Toward an Anthropology
of Women
edited by Rayna R. Reiter
4
Monthly Review Press
New York
396 T6 5
Toward an anthropology
of uomen /
Copyright © 1975 by Rayna R. Reiter
All Rights Reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Main entry under title
Toward an anthropology of women.
Bibliography: p.
CONTENTS: Reiter, R.R. Introduction.—Linton,
S. Women the gatherer: male bias in anthropology.—
Leibowitz, L. Primate politics: sexual dimorphism
and sex roles—Gough, K. The origin of the family,
[etc.]
1. Women—Addresses, essays, lectures. 2. Sex
role—Addresses, essays, lectures. I. Reiter, Rayna R.
GN294.T68 301.41’2 74-21476
ISBN 0-85345-372-1
Jacket photos courtesy of Patricia Draper, Susan
Harding, Nancy Jervis, Harold Levine, Museum of
American Indian/Heye Foundation, Rayna Reiter,
Dorothy Remy, and Anna Rubbo
15 14
Monthly Review Press
122 West 27th Street, New York, N. Y. 10001
Manufactured in the United States of America
S.F. PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1223 04215 6779
Contents
f
4
Introduction
flayna R. Reiter 11
Perspectives on the Evolution of Sex Differences
Lila Leibowitz 20
Woman the Gatherer: Male Bias in Anthropology
Sally Slocum 36
The Origin of the Family
Kathleen Gough 51
IKung Women: Contrasts in Sexual Egalitarianism
in Foraging and Sedentary Contexts
Patricia Draper 77
Aboriginal Woman: Male and Female
Anthropological Perspectives
Ruby Rohrlich-Leavitt, Barbara Sykes,
and Elizabeth Weatherford 110
The Concept of Pollution Among the Kdfe
of the Papua New Guinea Highlands
Elizabeth Faithorn 127
Matriarchy: A Vision of Power
Paula Webster 141
The Traffic in Women: Notes on the
“Political Economy of Sex
”
Gayle Rubin 157
I
5
6 Contents
Engels Revisited: Women, the\Organization
of Production, and Private Property
Karen Sacks 211
Iroquois Women: An Ethnohistoric Note
Judith K. Brown 235
Men and Women in the South of France:
Public and Private Domains
Rayna R. Reiter 252
Women and Words in a Spanish Village
Susan Harding 283
The Life Crisis as a Clue to Social Function:
The Case of Italy
Sydel F. Silverman 309
Love Unites Them and Hunger Separates Them:
Poor Women in the Dominican Republic
Susan E. Brown 322
The Spread of Capitalism in Rural Colombia:
Effects on Poor Women
Anna Rubbo 333
Underdevelopment and the Experience of Women:
A Nigerian Case Study
Dorothy Remy 358
Collectivization, Kinship, and the
Status of Women in Rural China
Norma Diamond 372
Bibliography
396
Notes on the Contributors
*
Judith K. Brown is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Oakland
University in Rochester, Michigan. Her research interests include the
cross-cultural study of the role of women in subsistence, the socializa¬
tion of children, and the initiation of girls.
Susan Brown received her Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in
1972 and is now doing community advocacy work with Spanish¬
speaking people in Boston. She also teaches anthropology at Boston
University, and is particularly interested in women’s perspective and the
role of women in prehistory.
Norma Diamond received her degrees from Wisconsin and Cornell and
has been teaching anthropology at the University of Michigan since
1963. She has done field research in rural and urban Taiwan, and
recently spent two months in the People’s Republic of China. She is the
author of K'un Shen: A Taiwan Village, and several articles on the
status of women in Taiwan. Her research interests include social change,
problems of the peasantry, and psychological anthropology, as well as
an abiding interest in feminist studies.
Patricia Draper received her B.A. from Vassar and her Ph.D. from
Harvard. She did her fieldwork in northwestern Botswana in 1968 and
1969, studying child life among the IKung Bushmen of the Kalahari.
She is presently teaching anthropology at the University of New Mexico
in Albuquerque.
Elizabeth Faithorn is a doctoral candidate at the University of Penn¬
sylvania and is currently teaching anthropology at the University of
California, Los Angeles. Her involvement in the women’s movement, as
well as her research on female roles and male-female relations in Papua
New Guinea, has led to a developing interest in political, ritual, and
symbolic anthropology.
7
8 Notes on the Contributors
Kathleen Gough received her Ph.D.^from Cambridge University and has
taught in many universities in Britain and North America. She has
published widely on Jndian social institutions, comparative kinship, and
the ethics of social science research. She is a Research Associate in
Anthropology at the,University of British Columbia.
Susan Harding teaches at the Residential College of the University of
Michigan and is writing her doctoral dissertation in anthropology on the
recent social history of Oroel, Spain.
Ruby Rohrlich- Leavitt is associate professor in the Social Sciences
department at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, City
University of New York. She is the author of The Puerto Ricans:
Cultural Change and Language Deviance, and editor of Women Cross-
Culturally: Change and Challenge. Her articles, modules, and teaching
include the anthropological approach to woman’s status and roles.
Lila Leibowitz is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Northeastern
University, Boston. Her interest in primate behavior and sex roles is an
outgrowth of a concern with the origins of human family arrangements.
She is working on a “natural history” of sex and family.
Rayna R. Reiter received her degrees from the University of Michigan,
where she was often involved in juggling the relation between anthro¬
pology and politics. She now teaches courses on women, peasants, and
cities in the Graduate Division of the New School for Social Research in
New York City.
Dorothy Remy did her fieldwork with market women in Ibadan,
Nigeria, in 1967, and later in Zaria, Nigeria, in 1973, where she came to
integrate her work and politics. She received her Ph.D. in 1973 from
the University of Michigan. She is now teaching at Federal City College
in Washington, D.C.
Anna Rubbo studied architecture in her native Australia before leaving
to work in London. She went to Colombia in 1970 and spent two years
in rural areas. She is currently a graduate student in architecture at the
University of Michigan.
Gayle Rubin is working on her doctorate in anthropology and teaching
in the Women’s Studies program at the University of Michigan, where
she has survived many incarnations of feminist politics.
Karen Sacks has long been active in the women’s movement. She
received her Ph.D. from the University of Michigan and currently
teaches anthropology at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan.
Her current research and writing concerns women and class structure.