In the discipline's early days, anthropologists by definition were assumed to be white and male. Women and black scholars were relegated to the field's periphery. From this marginal place, white feminist anthropologists have successfully carved out an acknowledged intellectual space, identified as feminist anthropology. Unfortunately, the works of black and non-western feminist anthropologists are rarely cited, and they have yet to be respected as significant shapers of the direction and transformation of feminist anthropology. In this volume, Irma McClaurin has collected-for the first time-essays that explore the role and contributions of black feminist anthropologists. She has asked her contributors to disclose how their experiences as black women have influenced their anthropological practice in Africa, the Caribbean, and the United States, and how anthropology has influenced their development as black feminists. Every chapter is a unique journey that enables the reader to see how scholars are made. The writers present material from their own fieldwork to demonstrate how these experiences were shaped by their identities. Finally, each essay suggests how the author's field experiences have influenced the theoretical and methodological choices she has made throughout her career. Not since Diane Wolf's Feminist Dilemmas in the Field or Hortense Powdermaker's Stranger and Friend have we had such a breadth of women anthropologists discussing the critical (and personal) issues that emerge when doing ethnographic research.

Female anthropologists scan patterns and changes in women's roles in various social systems

As an early reviewer wrote, “This is one of the clearest, most concise statements on social theory in general, let alone on gender, that I have ever read.” Now updated, Mascia-Lees and Black continue to expertly trace how anthropologists have used different theoretical orientations to examine the nature and determinants of gender roles and gender inequality. From the nineteenth century on, anthropologists have used different theoretical orientations to understand the emotionally charged topic of gender. With an insightful look at evolutionary, materialist, psychological, structuralist, poststructural, sociolinguistic, and self-reflexive approaches, this distinctive module also examines how these approaches best explain gender and sexual oppression in a global world. The authors pack great amounts of valuable information into such a slim volume yet leave readers with digestible material that does more than cover the surface of anthropological perspectives on gender roles and stratification. Readers gain insights and tools to develop their own critical analyses of gender.

One of the first works to focus on gender in anthropology, this book remains an important teaching tool on gender and life in the Amazon. Women of the Forest covers Yolanda and Robert Murphy's year of fieldwork among the Mundurucu people of Brazil in 1952, taking into account the historical, ecological, and cultural setting. The book features a new critical foreword written collectively by respected anthropologists who were all students of the Murphys.

Women Writing Culture is a collection of six interviews with internationally prominent scholars about feminism, rhetoric, writing, and multiculturalism. Those interviewed include feminist philosopher of science Sandra Harding; cultural critic and philosopher of science Donna Haraway; noted American theorist of women's epistemology Mary Belenky; African-American cultural critic bell hooks; Luce Irigaray, a major exponent of "French Feminism"; and Jean-Francois Lyotard, a philosopher and cultural critic who has helped to define "the postmodern condition." Together, these interviews afford significant insight into these eminent scholars' perspectives on women, writing, and culture, and explore how women write culture through the various postmodern discourses in which they engage.

This book traces the personal and intellectual histories of six remarkable women anthropologists, using a rich cocktail of archival sources.

In this ambitious new book, Henrietta Moore draws on anthropology, feminism and psychoanalysis to develop an original and provocative theory of gender and of how we become sexed beings. Arguing that the Oedipus complex is no longer the fulcrum of debate between anthropology and psychoanalysis, she demonstrates how recent theorizing on subjectivity, agency and culture has opened up new possibilities for rethinking the relationship between gender, sexuality and symbolism. Using detailed ethnographic material from Africa and Melanesia to explore the strengths and weaknesses of a range of theories in anthropology, feminism and psychoanalysis, Moore advocates an ethics of engagement based on a detailed understanding of the differences and similarities in the ways in which local communities and western scholars have imaginatively deployed the power of sexual difference. She demonstrates the importance of ethnographic listening, of focused attention to people’s imaginations, and of how this illuminates different facets of complex theoretical issues and human conundrums. Written not just for professional scholars and for students but for anyone with a serious interest in how gender and sexuality are conceptualized and experienced, this book is the most powerful and persuasive assessment to date of what anthropology has to contribute to these debates now and in the future.

Feminist Anthropology surveys the history of feministanthropology and offers students and scholars a fascinatingcollection of both classic and contemporary articles, grouped tohighlight key themes from the past and present. Offers vibrant examples of feminist ethnographic work ratherthan synthetic overviews of the field. Each section is framed by a theoretical and bibliographicessay. Includes a thoughtful introduction to the volume that providescontext and discusses the intellectual “foremothers” ofthe field, including Margaret Mead, Ruth Landes, Phyllis Kaberry,and Zora Neale Hurston.

What is it like to be an anthropologist or, more specifically, a woman anthropologist? Here we see highly trained and qualified women anthropologists examining their own efforts to live and work in alien cultures in many parts of the world. New chapters have been added to this ground-breaking volume, and each contributor is, in one way or another, a pioneer. All have chosen to devote their lives and energies to the understanding of worlds not their own. All have felt it important to explain what they do, why they do it, and how they feel about their work. Cultures vary widely in their perception of a woman engaged in anthropological field work. Each of these women has had to deal with the influence of her gender, as well as the subject of her study, on the mechanics of establishing a living-working relationship with people of another culture. The diversity of their responses to the presence of a foreign woman at work in their midst gives the book an invaluable cross-cultural perspective, as does the great variety of reactions and strategies on the part of the authors themselves. Besides providing rare insight into field work in general, Women in the Field mirrors the difficulties and delights of any person thrust into an unfamiliar culture.

"Gender at the Crossroads of Knowledge offers us much more than a sampling of current work in feminist anthropology. . . . Taken together, the chapters ought to convince readers that feminist anthropology is a force to be reckoned with in the reshaping of our intellectual life. It presents a challenge to the familiar conceptual categories out of which not only our theories but also our everyday experience are built. . . . Feminist anthropology has a very important analytical position in gender studies generally. . . . This volume will do a good job of presenting anthropological contributions to non-anthropological audiences."—Rena Lederman, Princeton University