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'{{Anthropology of kinship|Related articles}} {{Anthropology}} {{Feminism sidebar |expanded=all}} '''Feminist Anthropology''' is a four field approach to anthropology ([[archaeology| archeological]], [[biological anthropology| biological]], [[cultural anthropology| cultural]], [[linguistic anthropology| linguistic]]) that seeks to reduce male bias in research findings, anthropological hiring practices, and the scholarly production of knowledge.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Brodkin|first=Karen|coauthors=Sandra Morgen and Janis Hutchinson|title=Anthropology as White Public Space|journal=American Anthropologist|year=2011|volume=113|issue=4}}</ref> While feminists practiced cultural anthropology since its inception as an American discipline (see [[Margaret Mead]] and [[Hortense Powdermaker]]), it was not until the 1970's that feminist anthropology was formally recognized as a subdiscipline of anthropology. Since then, it has developed its own subsection of the [[American Anthropological Association]], [http://www.aaanet.org/sections/afa/ The Association of Feminist Anthropologists], and its own publication [http://www.aaanet.org/sections/afa/?page_id=246| Voices]. ==History== Feminist anthropology has unfolded through three historical phases beginning in the 1970's: the anthropology of women, the anthropology of gender, and finally, feminist anthropology.<ref name=LewinIntro>{{cite book|last=Lewin|first=Ellen|title=Feminist Anthropology: A Reader|year=2006|publisher=Blackwell|location=Malden|isbn=1405101962}}</ref> Prior to these historical phases, feminist anthropologists trace their genealogy to the late 19th century.<ref>{{cite book|last=Parezo|first=Nancy|title=Hidden Scholars: Women Anthropologists and the Native American Southwest|year=1993|publisher=University of New Mexico Press|location=Albuquerque|isbn=0826314287}}</ref> [[Erminnie A. Smith| Erminnie Platt Smith]], [[Alice Cunningham Fletcher]], [[Matilda Coxe Stevenson]], [[Frances Densmore]] -- many of these women were self-taught anthropologists and their accomplishments faded and heritage erased by the professionalization of the discipline at the turn of the 20th century.<ref name=WomenAnthros>{{cite book|last=Ute D. Gacs, Aisha Kahn|first=Jerrie McIntyre, Ruth Weinberg|title=Women anthropologists: selected biographies|year=1989|publisher=University of Illinois Press|location=Champagne|isbn=0252060849}}</ref> Prominent among early women anthropologists were the wives of 'professional' men anthropologists, some of whom facilitated their husbands research as translators and transcriptionists. Margery Wolf, for example, wrote her classic ethnography "The House of Lim" from experiences she encountered following her husband to northern Taiwan during his own fieldwork.<ref name=WolfInterview>{{cite journal|last=Rofel|first=Lisa|coauthors=Wolf, Margery|title=The Outsider within: Margery Wolf and Feminist Anthropology|journal=American Anthropologist|year=2003|volume=105|issue=3|pages=596-604}}</ref> While anthropological stars like [[Margaret Mead]] and [[Ruth Benedict]] are obvious representatives of the next stage in the history of feminist anthropology, the true theoretical pioneers of the field were women of color and ethnic women anthropologists. [[Hortense Powdermaker]], for example, a contemporary of Mead's who studied with British anthropological pioneer [[Bronislaw Malinowski]] conducted political research projects in a number of then a-typical settings: reproduction and women in Melanesia (Powdermaker 1933), race in the American South (Powdermaker 1939), gender and production in Hollywood (1950), and class-gender-race intersectionality in the African Copper Belt (Powdermaker 1962). Similarly, [[Zora Neale Hurston]], a student of [[Franz Boas]], the father of American anthropology, experimented with narrative forms beyond the objective ethnography that characterized the proto/pseudo- scientific writings of the time. Other African American women made similar moves at the junctions of ethnography and creativity, namely [[Katherine Dunham]] and [[Pearl Primus]], both of whom studied dance in the 1940's. Also important to the later spread of Feminist anthropology within other subfields beyond cultural anthropology was physical anthropologist Caroline Bond Day and archeologist [[Mary Leakey]]. The anthropology of women, introduced through Peggy Golde's "Women in the Field" and [[Michelle Rosaldo]] and [[Louise Lamphere| Louise Lamphere's]] "Women, culture, and society," attempted to recuperate women as distinct cultural actors otherwise erased by male anthropologists' focus on men's lives as the universal character of a society. Men anthropologists, Golde argued specifically, rarely have access to women in tribes and societies because of the sexual threat they prove to these women.<ref name=Golde>{{cite book|last=Golde|first=Peggy|title=Women in the Field: Anthropological Experiences|year=1970|publisher=University of California Press|location=Los Angeles|isbn=0520054229}}</ref> As such, they receive the stories of men about women in instances when women are present at all. The anthropologists' ignorance and the indigenous mens' domination congeal to create instances where, according to Rosaldo and Lamphere, the asymmetry between women and men becomes universal. A second anthropology of women would arise out of American engagements with [[Frederich Engels| Frederich Engels']] [[The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State]], arguing that this universal asymmetry was not timeless, but a product of capitalist relations that came to dominate the global mode of production through colonialism.<ref name=Leacock>{{cite journal|last=Leacock|first=Eleanor|title=Interpreting the origins of gender inequality: conceptual and historical problems|journal=Dialectical Anthropology|date=1983|volume=7|issue=4|pages=263-284}}</ref> As both approaches grew more vocal in their critique of male ethnographers' descriptions as one-sided, an 'add women and mix' approach to ethnography became popular, whereby women were not necessarily described at detail, but mentioned as part of the wider culture.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Schuller|first=Mark|title=Participation, more than add women and stir?|journal=Caribbean review of gender studies|year=2008|volume=1|issue=2}}</ref><ref name="Strathern">Strathern, M (1987) “An Awkward Relationship: The Case of [[Feminism]] and Anthropology,” in ''Signs'', Vol. 12, No. 2, pp276-292{{Cite journal|title=|issn=0097-9740|postscript=<!--None-->}}</ref> In the wake of [[Gayle Rubin]] and her critique of "the sex/gender system," the anthropology of women transformed into an anthropology of gender. Gender was a set of meanings and relationships related to but not isomporhic with biological sex. Women was not a universal community or category that was self evident.<ref name=Lugones>{{cite journal|last=Lugones|first=Mary C.|coauthors=Elizabeth V. Spelman|title=Have we got a theory for you! Feminist theory, cultural imperialism and the demand for 'the woman's voice'|journal=Women's Studies International Forum|year=1983|volume=6|issue=6}}</ref> Following the rise of women of color feminism, the anthropology of gender critiqued the early goals of first-wave feminists and anthropologists as overly concerned with bourgeois social ambitions. It did so through a move from documenting the experience of women as a universal population to interpreting the place of gender in broader patterns of meaning, interaction, and power. This includes the work of women anthropologists [[Henrietta Moore]] and Ethel Albert. Moore contended that anthropology, even when carried out by women, tended to "[order] the world into a male idiom [. . .] because researchers are either men or women trained in a male oriented discipline".<ref name="Moore">Moore, Henrietta L. (1988) ''Feminism and Anthropology'', Polity Press: Cambridge. {{cite book|title=Feminism and anthropology|isbn=0-8166-1748-1|oclc=18259349|author=Henrietta L. Moore.|year=1988|publisher=University of Minnesota Press|location=Minneapolis}}</ref> Anthropology's theoretical architecture and practical methods, Moore argued, were so overwhelmingly influenced by sexist ideology (anthropology was commonly termed the "study of man" for much of the twentieth century) that without serious self-examination and a conscious effort to counter this bias, anthropology could not meaningfully represent female experience. Today, feminist anthropology has grown out of the anthropology of gender to encompass the study of the female body as it intersects with or is acted upon by cultural, medical, economic, and other forces.<ref name=FemEthnog>{{cite journal|last=Visweswaran|first=Kamala|title=Histories of Feminist Ethnography|journal=Annual Review of Anthropology|year=1997|volume=26}}</ref> This includes the expansion of feminist politics beyond cultural anthropology to physical anthropology, linguistic anthropology, and archeology, as well as feminist anthropology becoming a site for connecting cultural studies, history, literature, and ethnic studies. ==Feminist Archeology== <nowiki>[[Feminist archaeology]] initially emerged in the late 1970s and early 80s, along with other objections to the epistemology espoused by the processual school of archaeological thought, such as symbolic and hermeneutic archaeologies. Margaret Conkey and Janet Spector’s 1984 paper Archaeology and the Study of Gender summed up the feminist critique of the discipline at that time: that archaeologists were unproblematically overlaying modern-day, Western gender norms onto past societies, for example in the sexual division of labor; that contexts and artifacts attributed to the activities of men, such as projectile point production and butchering at kill sites, were prioritized in research time and funding; and that the very character of the discipline was constructed around masculine values and norms. For example, women were generally encouraged to pursue laboratory studies instead of fieldwork (although there were exceptions throughout the history of the discipline)[1] and the image of the archaeologist was centered around the rugged, masculine, “cowboy of science”.[2] In 1991, two publications marked the emergence of feminist archaeology on a large scale: the edited volume Engendering Archaeology,[3] which focused on women in prehistory, and a thematic issue of the journalHistorical Archaeology,[4] which focused on women and gender in post-Columbian America. Outside the Americas, feminist archaeology enjoyed an earlier emergence and greater support among the greater archaeological community.</nowiki> ==Feminist anthropology and feminism== The relationships of feminist anthropology with other strands of academic feminism are uneasy. By concerning themselves with the different ways in which different cultures constitute gender, feminist anthropology can contend that the [[Sexism|oppression of women]] is not universal. Moore argued that the concept of "woman" is insufficiently universal to stand as an analytical category in anthropological enquiry: that the idea of 'woman' was specific to certain cultures, and not a human universal. For some feminists, anthropologist [[Michelle Rosaldo]] wrote, this argument contradicted a core principle of their understanding of relations between men and women.<ref name="Rosaldo">Rosaldo, M.Z. (1980) “The Use and Abuse of Anthropology: Reflections on Feminism and Cross-Cultural Understanding,” in ''Signs'', Vol 5, No3, pp389-417 {{Cite journal|title=|issn=0097-9740|postscript=<!--None-->}}</ref> Contemporary feminist anthropology, [[Marilyn Strathern]] writes, disagrees internally about whether sexual asymmetry is universal. Strathern argues that anthropology, which must deal with difference rather than seeking to erase it, is not necessarily harmed by this disagreement, but notes nonetheless that feminist anthropology faces resistance.<ref name="Strathern"/> Anthropology engages often with feminists from non-Western traditions, whose perspectives and experiences can differ from those of white European and American feminists. Historically, such 'peripheral' perspectives have sometimes been marginalized and regarded as less valid or important than knowledge from the [[western world]]. Feminist anthropologists have claimed that their research helps to correct this systematic bias in mainstream [[feminist theory]].{{Citation needed|date=December 2008}} On the other hand, anthropologists' claims to include and engage with such other perspectives have in turn been criticised - local people are seen as the producers of [[Traditional knowledge|local knowledge]], which only the western anthropologist can convert into social science theory.{{Citation needed|date=December 2008}} Because feminist theorists come predominantly from the west, and do not emerge from the cultures they study (some of which have their own distinct traditions of feminism, like the [[grassroots feminism]] of [[Latin America]]), their ideas about feminism may contain western-specific assumptions that do not apply simply to the cultures they investigate. Rosaldo criticizes the tendency of feminists to treat other contemporary cultures as anachronistic, to see other parts of the world as representing other periods in western history - to say, for example, that gender relations in one country are somehow stuck at a past historical stage of those in another. Western feminists had, Rosaldo said, viewed women elsewhere as “ourselves undressed and the historical specificity of their lives and of our own becomes obscured”.<ref name="Rosaldo"/> Anthropology, Moore argued, by speaking ''about'' and not ''for'' women, could overcome this bias. Marilyn Strathern characterised the sometimes antagonistic relationship between feminism and anthropology as self-sustaining, since “each so nearly achieves what the other aims for as an ideal relation with the world.".<ref name="Strathern"/> Feminism constantly poses a challenge to the androcentric orthodoxy from which anthropology emerges; anthropology undermines the [[Ethnocentrism|ethnocentricism]] of feminism. ==The 'double difference'== Feminist anthropology, Rayna Rapp argues, is subject to a 'double difference' from mainstream academia. It is a feminist tradition, part of a branch of scholarship sometimes marginalized as an offshoot of [[postmodernism]] and [[deconstruction]]ism and concerned with the experiences of women, who are marginalized by an androcentric orthodoxy. At the same time it addresses non-Western experience and concepts, areas of knowledge deemed peripheral to the knowledge created in the west. It is thus doubly marginalized. Moore argues that some of this marginalization is self-perpetuating. By insisting on the 'female point of view', feminist anthropology constantly defines itself as 'not male' and therefore as inevitably distinct from and marginal to the mainstream. Feminist anthropology, Moore says, effectively ghettoizes itself. Strathern argues that feminist anthropology, as a tradition posing a challenge to the mainstream, can never fully integrate with that mainstream: it exists to critique, to deconstruct, and to challenge. ==Notes== {{reflist}} <references /> ==Further reading== * Duley, Margot I. and Mary I. Edwards. (1986) ''The Cross-Cultural Study of Women: A Comprehensive Guide''. New York, NY: Feminist Press. {{cite book|title=The cross-cultural study of women : a comprehensive guide|isbn=0-935312-45-5|oclc=9784721|author=ed. by Margot I. Duley ...|year=1986|publisher=Feminist Pr.|location=New York}} * Moore, Henrietta L. (1996) ''The Future of Anthropological Knowledge'', London; New York: Routledge, {{cite book|title=The future of anthropological knowledge|isbn=0-415-10786-5|oclc=32924172|author=edited by Henrietta Moore.|year=1996|publisher=Routledge|location=London}} * Nicholson, L. (1982) ‘Article Review on Rosaldo’s “The Use and Abuse of Anthropology,”’ in ''Signs'', Vol 7, No. 42, pp732–735{{Cite journal|title=|issn=0097-9740|postscript=<!--None-->}} * Reiter, Rayna R. (1975) ed. ''Toward an Anthropology of Women'', Monthly Review Press: New York. {{cite book|title=Toward an anthropology of women|isbn=0-85345-372-1|oclc= 1501926|author=edited by Rayna R. Reiter.|year=1975|publisher=Monthly Review Press|location=New York}} * [http://www.indiana.edu/~wanthro/fem.htm Bratton, A. (May 1998) Feminist Anthropology] * [http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/cultural/anthropology/Feminist%20Frame.html Soga, K. “Feminist Anthropology”] (15/12/03), Summary of McGee, R et al. (2004) Anthropological Theory: An Introductory History, New York: McGraw Hill. * Abu-Lughod, Lila (1986). Veiled sentiments: honor and poetry in a Bedouin society, University of California Press. * Abu-Lughod, Lila (1993). Writing Women's Worlds: Bedouin Stories. University of California Press. * Davis-Floyd, Robbie (1992/2003). Birth as an American rite of passage. Berkeley: University of California Press. * Ruth Behar and Deborah A. Gordon (eds.), Women Writing Culture. University of California Press, 1995. * Boddy, Janice (1990). Wombs and Alien Spirits: Women, Men, and the Zar Cult in Northern Sudan. University of Wisconsin Press. *Delaney, Carol. 1991. The Seed and the Soil: Gender and Cosmology in Turkish Village Society. University of California Press. * Gelya Frank, Venus on Wheels: Two Decades of Dialogue on Disability, Biography, and Being Female. University of California Press, 2000. * Carla Freeman, High Tech and High Heels: Women, Work, and Pink-Collar Identities in the Caribbean. Duke University Press, 2000. * Donna M. Goldstein, Laughter Out of Place: Race, Class, Violence, and Sexuality in a Rio Shantytown. University of California Press, 2003. * Hochschild, Arlie Russell (1983/2003). The managed heart: commercialization of human feeling. Berkeley, University of California Press. * Inhorn, Marcia Claire. 1994. Quest for conception: gender, infertility, and Egyptian medical traditions. University of Pennsylvania Press. * Kondo, Dorinne K. (1990). Crafting selves: power, gender, and discourses of identity in a Japanese workplace. Chicago:University of Chicago Press. * Layne, Linda L. (2003) Motherhood lost: a feminist account of pregnancy loss in America. New York: Routledge. *Lock, Margaret. (1993) Encounters with Aging: mythologies of menopause in Japan and North America. University of California Press. * Lutz, Catherine (1988). Unnatural emotions: everyday sentiments on a Micronesian atoll & their challenge to western theory. Chicago, University of Chicago Press. * Mahmood, Saba (2005). Politics of piety: the Islamic revival and the feminist subject. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-08695-8 (pb alk. paper). * Martin, Emily. 2001. The Woman in the Body: A Cultural Analysis of Reproduction. Boston: Beacon Press. * Moore, Henrietta L. (1988). Feminism and anthropology.Cambridge, UK, Polity Press. * Ong, Aihwa (1987). Spirits of resistance and capitalist discipline : factory women in Malaysia. Albany, State University of New York Press. * Radway, Janice A. (1991). Reading the romance : women, patriarchy, and popular literature. Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press. * Rapp, Rayna (2000). Testing Women, Testing the Fetus : The Social Impact of Amniocentesis in America. New York: Routledge. * Salzinger, Leslie (2003). Genders in production: making workers in Mexico's global factories. Berkeley: University of California Press. * Scheper-Hughes, Nancy (1992). Death without weeping: the violence of everyday life in Brazil. Berkeley, University of California Press. * Teman, Elly (2010). Birthing a Mother: the Surrogate Body and the Pregnant Self. Berkeley: University of California Press. * Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt (1993). In the realm of the diamond queen : marginality in an out-of-the-way place. Princeton, Princeton University Press. * Diane L. Wolf (ed.), Feminist Dilemmas in Fieldwork. Westview Press, 1996. * Margery Wolf, A Thrice-Told Tale Feminism, Postmodernism, and Ethnographic Responsibility. Stanford University Press, 1992. == See also == *[[Feminist sociology]] *[[Edwin Ardener]] *[[Margaret Ehrenberg]] *[[Louise Lamphere]] *[[Catherine Lutz]] *[[Phyllis Kaberry]] *[[Emily Martin (anthropologist)|Emily Martin]] *[[Henrietta Moore]] *[[Sherry Ortner]] *[[Michelle Rosaldo]] *[[Gayle Rubin]] *[[Adrienne L. Zihlman]] == External links == *[http://sscl.berkeley.edu/~afaweb/reviews/index.html Association for Feminist Anthropology] *[http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/cultural/anthropology/Feminist%20Anthropology.html Overview of Feminist Anthropology] *[http://www.as.ua.edu/ant/Faculty/murphy/feminism.htm Anthropological Theories: Feminist Anthropology] *[http://www.indiana.edu/~wanthro/fem.htm Page on feminist anthropology from Indiana University] {{Feminist theory}} {{DEFAULTSORT:Feminist Anthropology}} [[Category:Anthropology]] [[Category:Feminism and society]] [[Category:Feminist theory]]'