Women Writing Culture

by Ruth Behar

Book Overview

In this collection of new reflections on the sexual politics, racial history, and moral predicaments of anthropology, feminist scholars explore a wide range of visions of identity and difference. How are feminists redefining the poetics and politics of ethnography? What are the contradictions of women studying women? How have gender, race, class, and nationality been scripted into the canon? Through autobiography, fiction, historical analysis, experimental essays, and criticism, the contributors offer exciting responses to these questions. Several pieces reinvestigate the work of key women anthropologists like Elsie Clews Parsons, Margaret Mead, and Ruth Benedict, while others reevaluate the writings of women of color like Zora Neale Hurston, Ella Deloria, and Alice Walker. Some selections explore how sexual politics help to determine what gets written and what is valued in the anthropological canon. Other pieces explore new forms of feminist ethnography that 'write culture' experimentally, thereby challenging prevailing, male-biased anthropological models.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0520202082
• ISBN13: 9780520202085
• Release Date: January 1996
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Length: 470 Pages
• Weight: 1.78 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

must read for feminist anthropologists

An inspired and insightful book! Women Writing Culture is a must read for feminist anthropologists. This book provides a wealthy historical base imperative to new up and comings in academia. The biographical pieces offer a sense of community to anthropologists and gender studies majors and the fresh, new voices offer a challenge to take feminist anthropology and gender studies to the next level. Additional to the many perks this book offers to students and others surviving in academia, it is also written in accecible language so that the general public reading for pleasure may understand and enjoy it as well. Ruth Behar and Deborah Gordan challege their readers to think outside of the popularly accepted boundaries of women's studies, feminist studies, and cultural studies. Stepping outside of this box can be uncomfortable, but I'll guess that you'll find that "uncomfortable" is where you'll rather be.