Gendered Anthropology

240 Pages·1993·4.08 MB·English

by  Teresa Del Valle (ed.)

Gendered anthropology
During the last three decades a remarkable degree of progress has
occurred in the study of gender within anthropology. Gendered
Anthropology offers a thought-provoking, lively examination of
current debates focusing on sex and gender, race, ethnicity and
politics, and provides insights which are still too often lacking in
mainstream anthropology.
The acceptance of gender as a new analytical category implies the
acceptance of a knowledge that has formerly been considered
marginal and on the periphery. Clearly, the reason for the absence of
gender studies from mainstream anthropology does not reside in its
lack of relevance to theoretical, methodological and ethnographical
advances and the chapters in this volume show its capacity to bring
new understanding to current controversial problems. Demon-
strating this relevance, the contributors consider critically both
advances in gender studies and contemporary controversial issues
concerning gender and its interrelations with other areas including the
effects of new reproductive technologies, rights to sexual variance,
controversy over the nature of marriage, and the relationship between
gender, class, ethnicity and race.
Gendered Anthropology will be of particular value to under-
graduates and lecturers in social anthropology and gender studies.
Teresa del Valle is Professor of Anthropology at the Universidad del
Pais Vasco/Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea.
European Association of Social
Anthropologists
The European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA) was
inaugurated in January 1989, in response to a widely felt need for
a professional association which would represent social
anthropologists in Europe and foster co-operation and interchange
in teaching and research. As Europe transforms itself in the nineties,
the EASA in dedicated to the renewal of the distinctive European
tradition in social anthropology.

Other titles in the series

Conceptualizing Society
Adam Kuper
Revitalizing European Rituals
Jeremy Boissevain
Other Histories
Kirsten Hastrup
Alcohol, Gender and Culture
Dimitra Gefou-Madianou
Understanding Rituals
Daniel de Coppet
Gendered anthropology
Edited by Teresa del Valle

London and New York
First published 1993
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2003.

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001

© 1993 Teresa del Valle, the edited collection as a whole; chapters to
the individual contributors
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data
Gendered anthropology/edited by Teresa del Valle.
p. cm.—(European Association of Social Anthropologists)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Sex role—Cross-cultural studies. 2. Sex—Cross-cultural
studies. I. Series: European Association of Social Anthropologists
(Series)
GN479.65.G49 1993
305.3–dc20 92–40487
CIP

ISBN 0-203-41323-7 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-72147-0 (Adobe eReader Format)
ISBN 0-415-06126-1 (hbk)
ISBN 0-415-06127-X (pbk)
Contents

List of illustrations vii
Notes on contributors viii
Preface xi
Acknowledgements xii
Introduction 1
Teresa del Valle
1 Is sex to gender as race is to ethnicity? 17
Verena Stolcke
2 The study of kinship; the study of person; a study of
gender? 38
Signe Howell and Marit Melhuus
3 The illusion of dualism in Samoa. ‘Brothers-and-sisters’
are not ‘men-and-women’ 54
Serge Tcherkezoff
4 Blood, sperm, soul and the mountain. Gender relations,
kinship and cosmovision among the Khumbo (N.E. Nepal) 88
Hildegard Diemberger
5 Home decoration as popular culture. Constructing homes,
genders and classes in Norway 128
Marianne Gullestad
6 Impure or fertile? Two essays on the crossing of frontiers
through anthropology and feminism 162
I Women in the field—reflections on a never-ending
journey 162
Sabine Strasser and Ruth Kronsteiner
vi Contents
II The impurity of research and female fertility 177
Sabine Strasser
7 The differences within and the differences between 193
Henrietta L.Moore
References 205
Name index 220
Subject index 224
Illustrations
1 Khumbo kinship terminology: (a) from the viewpoint of a
male ego, (b) from the viewpoint of a female ego, (c) the
Seme relation 93
2 Khumbo ‘household mothers’ ritually sharing the cup of
chang during a ceremony 106
3 The interpretation of the human body (drawing by Karen
Diemberger) 110
4 Tibetan embryology as represented on a Thanka painting
of the 17th century (today at the Institute of Medicine and
Astrology—sMan-rtsis-khang—in Lhasa) 111
5 Khumbo children are usually born at the pasturage huts.
The father usually assists the mother at childbirth and
afterwards 115
6 A Khumbo lhaven makes dough figures as provisional bodies
for clan and mountain deities and presents the new child
to them 117
7 This 84-year-old Tibetan woman is a contemporary
representative of the mystic traditions which flourished
throughout the area of Beyul Khenbalung 120
Contributors
Teresa del Valle, Professor of Social Anthropology and Head of the
Seminario de Estudios de la Mujer, Universidad del Pais Vasco. She
trained in both History and Anthropology and has taught at the
University of Guam, was a researcher at the Micronesian Area
Research Center, and was a grantee at the East-West Center of
Honolulu, Hawaii. The result of fieldwork among the Chamorros
of Guam (1975–6) was published as Social and Cultural Change in
.
the Village of Umatac Southern Guam and Culturas ocaanicas,
Micronesia (1987). She was the first EASA vice-president (1988–
90). Publications on Basque culture include: Mujer vasca. Imagen y
realidad (1985) and Korrika, rituales de la lengua en el espacio
(1988).
Hildegard Diemberger received her training in both social
anthropology and Tibetan studies at Vienna University. Since 1982
she has been doing research in eastern Nepal and more recently in
southern Tibet. Besides gender, her main topics are history, religious
traditions and the conceptualization of landscape among Tibetan
marginal groups, and she is currently working as a researcher of the
‘Arbeitsgruppe für Ethnologische Studien Tibets’, University of
Vienna.
Marianne Gullestad, Research Professor of Anthropology at the
Norwegian Centre for Child Research at the University of Trond-
heim, Norway. She has spent 3 years as a visiting research associate
at the University of Chicago. Her fieldwork interests have led her
to the study of Norwegian gender systems, family relations and the
cultural practices of everyday life. Her many publications include:
Kitchen Table Society. A Case Study of the Family Life and Friend-
ships of Young Working Mothers in Urban Norway (1984) and The
Art of Social Relations. Essays on Culture, Social Action and
Everyday Life in Modern Norway (1992).
Contributors ix
Signe Howell, Professor in the Department and Museum of
Anthropology at the University of Oslo, Norway. Fieldwork in the
Malay peninsula led to Chewong Myths and Legends (1982) and
Society and Cosmos: Chewon of Peninsular Malaysia. The applied
dimension of her work is evident both from time spent in
Kathmandu, Nepal at the International Centre for Integrated
Mountain Development and from her report on Women and
Development in Nepal.
Ruth Kronsteiner, University of Vienna, is working on her PhD
thesis, ‘Processes of “Hausfrauisierung” in a Black Sea village in
Turkey in consideration of migration’. From 1985 to 1990 she
worked in a women’s association for Turkish migrants. She is co-
founder of the Coordination Office of the Educational and Advisory
Institutions for Women from Foreign Countries in Vienna and is
currently training in analytical psychotherapy.
Marit Melhuus is Senior Lecturer and Head of Department at the
Department and Museum of Anthropology, University of Oslo. She
has worked for many years with Latin-American peasantries,
including doing fieldwork in Argentina, which resulted in the
publication Peasants, Surplus, and Appropriation: An Analysis of
Tobacco Growers in Corrientes, Argentina (1987). Her last
fieldwork was conducted in Mexico. She was formerly a researcher
at the Work Research Institute, Oslo, heading a project on
Norwegian seamen’s families. Author of numerous articles focusing
on gender, modernity and change, she is currently completing a
manuscript based on a Mexican mestizo community.
Henrietta Moore, Lecturer in Social Anthropology, London School
of Economics. Her published works include: Space, Text and
Gender: An Anthropological Study of the Marakwet of Kenya
(1986) and Feminism and Anthropology (1988).
Verena Stolcke, Associated Professor of Social Anthropology,
Universidad Autonoma of Barcelona, Catalunya. She studied at the
University of Oxford and subsequently taught at the University of
Campinas in Sao Paulo, where she was head of the Department of
Anthropology. She is the author of Marriage, Class and Colour in
Nineteenth-Century Cuba (1974) and Coffee Planters, Workers and
Wives. Class Conflict and Gender Relations on Sao Paulo Plan-
tations, 1850–1989 (1988). She communicates her knowledge in