Woman, culture, and society

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Bibliographic Information

Woman, culture, and society

edited by Michelle Zimbalist Rosaldo and Louise Lamphere

Stanford University Press, 1974

  • : pbk.

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Note

Bibliography: p. [321]-339

Includes index

On cover and spine: SP133

Description and Table of Contents

Description

Sixteen women anthropologists analyze the place of women in human societies, treating as problematic certain questions and observations that in the past have been ignored or taken for granted, and consulting the anthropological record for data and theoretical perspectives that will help us to understand and change the quality of women's lives. The first three essays address the question of human sexual asymmetry. Recognizing that men's and women's spheres are typically distinguished and that anthropologists have often slighted the powers and values associated with the woman's world, these essays examine the evidence for asymmetrical valuations of the sexes across a range of cultures and ask how these valuations can be explained. Explanations are sought not in biological "givens" of human nature, but in universal patterns of human, social, psychological, and cultural experience-patterns that, presumably, can be changed. The remaining papers explore women's roles in a wide variety of social systems. By showing that women, like men, are social actors seeking power, security, prestige, and a sense of worth and value, these papers demonstrate the inadequacies of conventionally male-oriented accounts of social structure. They illuminate the strategies by which women in different cultures achieve a surprising degree of political power and social recognition; and investigate, from case-oriented and comparative perspectives, the social-structural, legal, psychological, economic, ritual, mythological, and metaphorical factors that account for variation in women's lives.

Table of Contents

Contents ROSALDO MICHELLE ZIMBALIST LAMPHERE LOUISE ROSALDO MICHELLE ZIMBALIST CHODOROW NANCY ORTNER SHERRY B. COLLIER JANE FISHBURNE LAMPHERE LOUISE STACK CAROL B. TANNER NANCY WOLF MARGERY HOFFER CAROL P. SANDAY PEGGY R. SACKS KAREN LEIS NANCY B. DENICH BETTE S. BAMBERGER JOAN PAUL LOIS O'LAUGHLIN BRIDGET

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