Women of Value, Men of Renown


Book Description

This study of women, men, and exchanges of wealth in the Trobriand Islands, Papua New Guinea, makes an interesting comparison with the work of pioneer ethnographer Bronislaw Malinowski, who conducted his seminal research there between 1915 and 1918. While Malinowski and others have focused on men, dismissing "women's work" as unimportant, Weiner shows that women play a vital role in Trobriand society.




Women of Value, Men of Renown


Book Description

This study of women, men, and exchanges of wealth in the Trobriand Islands, Papua New Guinea, makes an interesting comparison with the work of pioneer ethnographer Bronislaw Malinowski, who conducted his seminal research there between 1915 and 1918. While Malinowski and others have focused on men, dismissing "women's work" as unimportant, Weiner shows that women play a vital role in Trobriand society.




The Trobrianders of Papua New Guinea


Book Description

Book about the social life and customs of the Trobriand Islanders of Papua New Guinea




Respectable Lives


Book Description

Where do we get our notions of social hierarchy and personal worth? What underlies our beliefs about the goals worth aiming for, the persons we hope to become? Elvin Hatch addresses these questions in his ethnography of a small New Zealand farming community, articulating the cultural system beneath the social hierarchy. Hatch describes a cultural theory of social hierarchy that defines not only the local system of social rank, but personhood as well. Because people define respectability differently, a crucial part of Hatch's approach is to examine how these differences are worked out over time. The concept of occupation is central to Hatch's analysis, since the work that people do provides the skeletal framework of the hierarchical order. He focuses in particular on sheep farming and compares his New Zealand community with one in California. Wealth and respectability are defined differently in the two places, with the result that California landholders perceive a social hierarchy different from the New Zealanders'. Thus the distinctive "shape" that characterizes the hierarchy among these New Zealand landholders and their conceptions of self reflect the distinctive cultural theory by which they live.




Myth and materiality in a woman’s world


Book Description

Shetland has a history unique in Europe, for over the past two centuries it was a place where women dominated the family, economy, and the cultural imagination. Women ran households and crofts without men. They maintained families and communities because men were absent. And they constructed in their minds an identity of themselves as 'liberated' long before organised feminism was invented. And yet, Shetland is a place which was made by the most masculine of societies - those of the Picts, Scots and above all the Vikings - and its contemporary identity still draws on the heroic exploits and sagas of medieval Norsemen. This book examines how against this tradition Shetland became a female place, and offers answers as to how, in this most isolated island community, the inhabitants transgressed and reversed their traditional gender roles. Reconstructing this 'woman's world' from fragments of cultural experience captured in written and oral sources, this book will appeal to scholars in the fields of social and cultural history, social anthropology, gender and women's studies.




The Metamorphoses of Kinship


Book Description

With marriage in decline, divorce on the rise, the demise of the nuclear family, and the increase in marriages and adoptions among same-sex partners, it is clear that the structures of kinship in the modern West are in a state of flux. In The Metamorphoses of Kinship, the world-renowned anthropologist Maurice Godelier contextualizes these developments, surveying the accumulated experience of humanity with regard to such phenomena as the organization of lines of descent, sexuality and sexual prohibitions. In parallel, Godelier studies the evolution of Western conjugal and familial traditions from their roots in the nineteenth century to the present. The conclusion he draws is that it is never the case that a man and a woman are sufficient on their own to raise a child, and nowhere are relations of kinship or the family the keystone of society. Godelier argues that the changes of the last thirty years do not herald the disappearance or death agony of kinship, but rather its remarkable metamorphosis—one that, ironically, is bringing us closer to the “traditional” societies studied by ethnologists.




Sex and Gender Hierarchies


Book Description

This edited collection attempts to revive a unified anthropological approach to the study of sex and gender hierarchies. Seventeen distinguished contributors - from cultural anthropology, physical anthropology, archaeology, and anthropological linguistics - have produced a wealth of fascinating data on human and primate, ancient and contemporary, and 'primitive' and developed societies, covering topics such as mothering and child care, work, health, intrafamily relationships, and public power. The interdisciplinary approach successfully contributes to the development of better theory and methodology in anthropology.




Reader in Gender Archaeology


Book Description

This Reader in Gender Archaeology presents nineteen current, controversial and highly influential articles which confront and illuminate issues of gender in prehistory. The question of gender difference and whether it is natural or culturally constructed is a compelling one. The articles here, which draw on evidence from a wide range of geographic areas, demonstrate how all archaeological investigation can benefit from an awareness of issues of gender. They also show how the long-term nature of archaeological research can inform the gender debate across the disciplines. The volume: * organizes this complex area into seven sections on key themes in gender archaeology: archaeological method and theory, human origins, division of labour, the social construction of gender, iconography and ideology, power and social hierarchies and new forms of archaeological narrative * includes section introductions which outline the history of research on each topic and present the key points of each article * presents a balance of material which rewrites women into prehistory, and articles which show how the concept of gender informs our understanding and interpretation of the past.




Values and Valuables


Book Description

A group of distinguished anthropologists and economists discuss the value attached to material objects by different cultures. The authors consider the sacred nature of objects that are exchanged between individuals, the value and power of markets, money, and credit, and the ways in which contemporary people bestow symbolic value on objects or individuals. With its emphasis on the interplay of cultural and economic values, this volume will be a great resource for economists and economic anthropologists.




An Introduction to Cultural Anthropology


Book Description

This book engages young scholars, teachers and students in a critical dialogue with past and present directions in cultural-historical studies. More particularly, it prepares prospective anthropologists, as well as readers interested in human cultures for understanding basic theoretical and methodological ethnographic principles and pursuing further what has been known as cultural anthropological perspectives. The book discusses key, field-based studies in the discipline and places them in dialogue with related studies in social history, linguistics, philosophy, literature, and photography, among others.