Irma McClaurin. Women of : Gender and Change in . New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1996. xii + 220 pp. $59.00, cloth, ISBN 978-0-8135-2307-1.

Reviewed by Michael Stone

Published on H-LatAm (December, 1996)

The literature on gender relations in Latin sion of labor have produced distinct outcomes America and the ofers abundant his‐ from one society to the next, but insofar as patri‐ torical and contemporary evidence of women's archal control prevails over cultural and societal exploitation under prevailing patriarchal social institutions, the systematic under-valuation of formations. But an exhaustive catalog of the ev‐ women and their work reinforces their material eryday exercise of male domination cannot in it‐ and ideological vulnerability as marginalized so‐ self reveal why women in any given society con‐ cial, economic, and political actors. tinue to endure their subordination or how and This fact impinges most heavily upon poor under what conditions some women mobilize, women, whose need to work, as a matter of objec‐ successfully or not, to redress their individual and tive survival, entails diverse and invidious forms collective predicaments. To elaborate such an un‐ of exploitation, exacerbated by the constancy of derstanding requires clarifying how gender, race, women's culturally prescribed domestic and re‐ ethnicity, class, and nation interpenetrate, often in productive responsibilities. The pressure to bal‐ contradictory fashion, in the simultaneously local ance income production against labor-intensive and global historical processes of their sociocul‐ domestic roles and to maintain one's public repu‐ tural, ideological, and political-economic transac‐ tation imposes severe constraints on women's so‐ tions. cial and economic autonomy, and induces their Throughout Latin American history, the eco‐ ideological collusion to perpetuate the normative nomic roles of women and men respectively illus‐ conditions of female subservience. Given system‐ trate structural disparities that have conditioned atic economic, political, and legal gender disad‐ gender values and ideology in everyday social vantages, women's accommodation to their subor‐ practice to subvert women's potential equality dinate cultural, socioeconomic, and political sta‐ and autonomy. Variables of history, race, ethnicity, tus is usefully approached by analyzing the sur‐ class, nationalism, and the efective sexual divi‐ vival value that their ideologically and historically H-Net Reviews conditioned behavior patterns confer within the most articulate" narratives "form the core of this prevailing societal matrix. work." McClaurin thus acknowledges that her These observations are clearly borne out in ethnography is "biased toward women who are Irma McClaurin's ethnography, Women of Belize: activists" (p. 7). Gender and Change in Central America, a contri‐ McClaurin's analytical concern is with gender bution to Latin American women's testimonial lit‐ theory, oral narrativity, and ethnographic refex‐ erature from one of the region's most diverse but ivity. In her approach, the scrutiny of self in least noted cultural and historical crossroads. Be‐ recitals of female transformation is intended to lize (a former British colonial enclave carved serve didactically as a means of individual and from the Caribbean littoral of Spanish imperial collective liberation. Rather than "an elaborate Yucatan and Guatemala) remains enmeshed in an study of kinship, political institutions, systems of often antagonistic efort to reconcile its hybrid reciprocity, or the exotic 'Other,'" McClaurin Anglo-African, Latin, and Amerindian cultural builds on narratives of "the individual lives of a and social-historical pedigree with its Central few Belizean women." Her conclusions "emerge American geopolitical destiny, and a growing eco‐ from their voices, their experiences, and the sense nomic and cultural dependence upon the United that they make out of how the culture of gender States. in Belize is both constructed and lived" (p. 9). Drawing on women's life narratives, McClau‐ The work comprises an eclectic blend of in‐ rin explores how her subjects assign cultural and terviews, feld-note transcriptions, ethnographic political meaning to their experiences, how refection, a survey of NGO and ofcial reports on changing self-understandings serve to refashion women's status in Belize and the region, an inter‐ the social category "woman," and how they work rogation of Belizean fction, and the author's own to alter the material conditions of women's lives. poetry. This is a refexive, deeply personal, and She describes the culture of gender in terms of politically engaged ethnography. As such it joins a prevailing beliefs, values, and behaviors, and long tradition of frst-person narratives, especially seeks to articulate how conventional and emer‐ by female anthropologists, written against the gent understandings of gender roles, relations, grain in a critique of the norms of positivist social and stereotypes inform women's varied respons‐ science. In this era of postmodern scholarship the es. Hence McClaurin's work is a pioneering contri‐ researcher's self-positioning is obligatory, and Mc‐ bution that marks out the terrain for the future Claurin states her political position unapologeti‐ study of gender in Belize. cally: "In this work I do not pretend to be de‐ McClaurin's initial interest was women's tached--I owe no allegiance to scientifc objectivi‐ grassroots organization, and, consistent with oth‐ ty. Instead I insist that in any feldwork experi‐ er regional studies, she fnds that activism re‐ ence we are always involved, despite any postur‐ duces women's sense of social isolation, creates ing we may do to the contrary" (p. 17). new opportunities, and expands their cultural McClaurin's experimental approach asserts, horizons, while also engendering new cultural as most anthropologists and historians may agree, and political challenges. But in a survey of some that the boundaries between ethnography, fction, sixty participants in women's groups and their and personal narrative are often difcult to per‐ awareness of Belizean public policy on women, ceive. As Kamala Visweswaran (1994) notes, an‐ McClaurin was taken with the personal insights of thropologists as diverse as Sapir, Kroeber, Mali‐ several especially eloquent respondents. These nowski, Boas, Benedict, Zora Neale Hurston, and women she interviewed in depth, and "the three Elsie Clews Parsons all experimented with narra‐

2 H-Net Reviews tive and fctional modes, establishing a little-noted ically Spanish-speaking and of Mexican, tradition that persists into the present. McClaurin Guatemalan, Honduran, or Salvadoran descent), herself makes instructive use of the classic Be‐ and of Maya and Mennonite women (the two lizean coming-of-age novel, Beka Lamb (Edgell, most endogamous ethnic groups, and those least 1982) to illustrate how young girls are socialized likely to be drawn into political activism). Collec‐ to domestic compliance, to examine "Creole" no‐ tively, these largely rural groups now comprise tions of gender respectability and sanctions well over half the total Belizean population, so against unwed motherhood, and to take note of this ethnography of urbanized women who assert women's involvement in the Belizean nationalist Creole, , and East Indian ethnicity cannot movement. be taken as representative of the overall national But a deeper interrogation of Edgell's novel situation, as McClaurin herself acknowledges. would further elaborate the contradictory gender, McClaurin is candid regarding her research racial, ethnic, class, and nationalist complexities interests and methods, which predilections in‐ of Belizean society and history. The country's long evitably curtail other potentially productive in‐ and uneasy relationship with its Spanish-speaking vestigative avenues. Compare Visweswaran, who neighbors (dating from the seventeenth-century suggests the value of a feminist ethnography genesis of the Anglo-Spanish imperial regional keyed on analyzing women's relationships with struggle) informs the vexed nature of ethnic dis‐ one another, and the inevitable power diferential course and cultural-nationalist politics into the that conditions all such encounters. Such an ap‐ present. The fction of Edgell and such other Be‐ proach she contrasts with feminist anthropology's lizean writers as Zoila Ellis (1988) illustrates the early positing of a universal sisterhood, which en‐ multiple dimensions of women's subordination in dowed an untenable position. To counterpoise a Belize, including such matters as Creole identity universal gendered or racial self against a domi‐ (cf. Bolland, 1992); prevailing ideologies of femi‐ nant (i.e., male) "other" undercuts a sense for the nine beauty (cf. Wilk, 1993); sexuality and prosti‐ basic integrity of cultural diference, and favors tution (cf. Kane, 1993); race, class, and gender in appropriation in the guise of an empathetic iden‐ the social context of domestic service (cf. Moore, tifcation with and "rescuing" of subordinate voic‐ 1988); kinship and class (cf. Smith, 1990); the sup‐ es. posed "Spanish" plague of machismo and the The potency of McClaurin's research relation‐ plight of women (cf. Ehlers, 1991); and ships with the women she interviews cannot be the Guatemalan diplomatic impasse (cf. Payne, diminished, built as they were upon the parallel 1990), as each informs the social-historical con‐ autobiographies (e.g., common issues of marriage, struction of gender, race, and nation in Belize. children, economic struggle, divorce, gender poli‐ McClaurin is most interested in the narrative tics) of the researcher and her subjects. But Mc‐ analysis of women's difcult relationships with Claurin overlooks the patent dimension of power men, and women's commentary on popular gen‐ in the amicable relationships she reports with her der ideology and institutionalized forms of gender impoverished respondents, each of whom, it discrimination. Her research focus and approach should be noted, is highly motivated to improve preclude refection on women who (due to a vari‐ her individual situation. ety of family, ethnic, and linguistic constraints) do Surely, McClaurin's empathy and interest in not become activists. Hence this study can ofer the plight of women, her own status as a mother, only general and secondary insights into the cul‐ her professional rank, her U.S. citizenship, and turally subordinate status of Mestizo women (typ‐ her potential as an employer position her as an

3 H-Net Reviews ideal patron for many . As she herself Notwithstanding, every ethnographer will notes, Belizeans immigrate to the United States to recognize the emotional buoyancy of this singular work (legally or illegally), and commonly, U.S. feldwork moment, the fush of cross-cultural "ar‐ travelers and tourists invite Belizean women to rival," the symbolic conferral of honorary native come work for them, typically as live-in domes‐ membership. But concurrent claims of ethno‐ tics, an expectation (acknowledged or not) that graphic authority and other-identifcation are McClaurin's own status as a mother and U.S. pro‐ problematic for any anthropologist invested in fessional will have stimulated in at least some of the concept of cultural relativism, and the radical her feld encounters. proposition that all human diference is culturally Ethnography as "fables of rapport" (the term (not naturally) endowed, and socially prosecuted. is Visweswaran's) can mask how ethnic, racial, This is particularly salient given the per‐ class, cultural, and national diferences operate in plexed nature of racial and ethnic relations in Be‐ the context of specifc historical struggles to re‐ lize. The legacy of African slavery, a deliberate produce structural relations of domination, both policy of fostering a diverse immigrant labor between men and women, and between women force, and the conscious crafting of a complex and of disparate origins. To downplay such palpable contradictory racial aesthetic and ethnic hierar‐ diferences masks the inevitably unequal relation‐ chy rooted in the colonial experience demand ships between subjects (including the anthropolo‐ careful deliberation in order to avoid confating gist and her interlocutors), and sustains a dubious the usefully distinct concepts of race and ethnici‐ pretense of understanding that favors essentialist ty. representation and the acute fattening of histori‐ "Race" (a common human fxation on classify‐ cal specifcity and insistent cultural diference. ing sociocultural groups on the basis of physical McClaurin's deliberation of her own position characteristics, with an implicit premise of racial as a researcher is also instructive as it informs a inferiority and superiority) is not a self-evident discussion of the ethnographer's duality of status quality. It is a sociocultural artifact inscribed in as an outsider who seeks an insider perspective. the folk taxonomies of particular societies, cul‐ Regarding "the difculty of fnding a community tures, and histories. Ethnicity entails a broader that might allow an anthropologist to 'go native'" human classifcatory principle of a self-prescribed (which McClaurin regards as a decided research or externally ascribed combination of endogamy advantage), she relates, "In addition to my gender, and common descent, place of origin, language, I believe that my 'race'/ethnicity was ... a signif‐ religion, and phenotype. So ethnicity may (but cant factor in my feldwork" (pp. 14-15). This fa‐ does not always) draw on conceptions of "race" in vored "[my] acceptance by most Belizeans as a the social construction of identity, but in a more kindred spirit in a way they assured me could not encompassing and culturally "coherent" way. happen for white anthropologists, no matter how The validity of "race" has been repudiated in empathetic they may be." McClaurin attributes the biological and social sciences, but its everyday her entree to "[being] black in a country where usage in ethnic discourse endures to fuel tena‐ people of African ancestry had dominated the cious forms of racism. And precisely because population" (p. 15). Such essentialist assertions of racial classifcations persist in popular practice, cross-cultural insider status would beneft from a the analytical challenge remains to interrogate perusal of Zora Neale Hurston's work in the historical and geographical specifcity of their (cf. also Narayan, 1993 and Visweswaran, 1994). emergence, and to understand racism's power to collate tenacious ethnic divisions in any given so‐

4 H-Net Reviews ciety, and to complicate other gender, class, and "racial" experience that McClaurin presumes be‐ status diferences. tween herself and Belizeans of African descent. Certainly, U.S. varieties of racism, the cultural‐ This lesson became clear to university-educated ly and historically specifc product of an involun‐ Belizeans who, returning from overseas study tary hemispheric African Diaspora, remains a during the 1960s, discovered the fundamental in‐ harsh reality. But racism takes its own particular applicability of the U.S. Black Power movement to forms in Belize, and "race" assumes diferent spe‐ the Belizean social reality, which grew out of a cifc meanings as well, meanings which may well distinct historical trajectory (e.g., Hyde, 1970). elude the easy comprehension of outsiders. This issue resides in McClaurin's own re‐ For instance, McClaurin reports people's fre‐ portage that her conditioning in the U.S. racial for‐ quent speculation "that I must have a Belizean an‐ mation (see Omi and Winant, 1994) often led to cestor somewhere in my past"; with her denial unfounded assumptions about an individual's "they settled upon the idea that our ancestors presumed ethnic identity. In one example, "Atfrst must have come from the same area in Africa but I thought A.B. was Mestizo because of her looks ended up on ships with diferent destinations" (p. and her Spanish-sounding last name, as well as 16). The assertion of fctive kinship assumes unde‐ her fuency in Spanish. But she is adamant about niable symbolic import, recalling the practical her origins. She is of African ancestry and states and metaphorical signifcance of the "shipmate" she is proud of her heritage. She tells me today relationship as an enduring principle of social or‐ she is 'of white and African mixture which makes ganization in the shaping of social relations in me Creole.' She speaks three languages, Creole, many African American cultures and societies (cf. English, and Spanish.... She also has an adopted Mintz and Price, 1992). But the invocation of kin‐ Maya daughter" (p. 36). ship may have even broader symbolic and instru‐ This outwardly contradictory self-presenta‐ mental foundations, and the presumption of tion "makes cultural sense" given the social-histor‐ cross-cultural racial solidarity in the abstract is ical fact that an ability to claim Creole identity rarely capable on its own strength of sustaining (notably, Anglo afnity) and to speak Belizean personal relationships for very long. In this re‐ Creole were prerequisites to social mobility and spect it would be more useful to know something government employment under the British colo‐ of the evolving texture and content of the person‐ nial regime. Such ideals die hard; many self-iden‐ al relationships between McClaurin and her fe‐ tifed Creoles perceive their ascendancy and privi‐ male respondents. lege to be in decline since independence in 1981, What remains is the constructed nature of as the government and society at large come more race and the fact that "national" identity (long as‐ to refect the country's actual ethnic diversity. Mc‐ sumed to be an exclusive Creole prerogative in Claurin notes the salient Belizean debate over Belize) has been and remains a highly negotiable, whether an "authentic" Creole culture exists, an opportunistic, and elusive endowment of social argument given certain popular urgency by re‐ belonging in the post-colonial era. A conspicuous cent Asian and (Spanish-speaking) Central Ameri‐ racial aesthetic (with collateral symbolic and can immigration, which many see as threatening metaphorical content) certainly persists in popu‐ the very ethnic and cultural identity of the nation. lar Belizean discourse, but its conceptual open‐ The Belizean dilemma has its universal dimen‐ ness and contradictory content favor a confation sion, as seen in comparison with the punitive of race and ethnicity conducive to purposes that anti-immigration and anti-welfare tone of popular may be quite distinct from the convergence of

5 H-Net Reviews discourse on cultural and national belonging in association and social leveling of peoples from di‐ the United States today. verse backgrounds under the brutal prerogatives It is thus the hemispheric perspective that f‐ of an emergent global political economy. Some nally demands consideration. McClaurin's wari‐ time ago, Sidney Mintz made clear the critical val‐ ness of "traditional ethnographic writings that fo‐ ue of comparative socio-historical research in cus primarily on the analysis of structures and building analytical subtlety into an ethnographic systems" (p. 9) is understandable given the nature and structural comprehension of Caribbean cul‐ of her undertaking, but the Belizean experience is tural and social phenomena. He wrote, "[I am] most enlightening in precisely the comparative necessarily concerned with the processes by context that such an approach enables. Consider which Caribbean societies were simultaneously the tendency of many Belizeans (especially Cre‐ given their distinctive, individual character on the oles) to downplay the marked diversity of the na‐ one hand, yet made importantly alike, on the oth‐ tion's collective ethnic and cultural roots, as in‐ er. That likeness, the consequence of a diverse yet scribed in individuals' actual genealogies and the homogeneous colonialism, is the basis of the his‐ bi- and multilingual abilities of many. This is a na‐ torical integrity of the region" (1989 [1974], xix). tion whose demographic and cultural mix refects But as should also be clear, the cultural forma‐ an unbroken history of forced and voluntary im‐ tions that emerged were unique and genuinely migration from Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Caribbean in character. Europe. Hence the reported readiness of Be‐ Most acutely, Mintz observed that the Carib‐ lizeans to assimilate McClaurin to their personal bean "present is, for better or worse, much of the lineages is compatible with the society's long his‐ rest of the world's future" (1989 [1974], xxi). The tory of cultural, linguistic, and ethnic hybridity, a Caribbean social experiment's structurally depen‐ condition that essentialist appeals to "race" or the dent character stands as an imperative material‐ persuasions of personal sentiment and empathic ization of the skewed social relations of capitalist identifcation are incapable of explaining. modernity. The fattening of cultural diversity, the In this regard, McClaurin is best read as an devaluation of vital social roles and their reduc‐ experimental ethnographic assessment of the con‐ tion to categories of oppression, the unmitigated temporary gender status of women in Belize. She social displacement concealed in the ideology of presents impressive testimony to illustrate wom‐ "development," and the utter commoditization of en's strategic adaptation to their continued subor‐ human potential that emerge from Caribbean so‐ dination in Belizean society. The task that remains cial history require that any politically committed is to ground these and like narratives in the con‐ analysis engage the full range of evidence at fictive history of their actual genesis, as particu‐ hand, and situate the concerted struggles for indi‐ lar tales of a more extensive process whereby the vidual and group self-determination in the con‐ peoples and social categories of the Caribbean text of broader social processes, if there is to be were forged, under conditions not entirely of any chance of countervailing Mintz's prescient ap‐ their own making, in the project of European prehension. colonial expansion that registered the very emer‐ Sources Cited gence of "the West" as a hypothetical cultural enti‐ Bolland, O. Nigel ty and a geopolitical reality. 1992 "Creolization and Creole Societies: A Cul‐ In its historical constellation Belize thus re‐ tural Nationalist View of Caribbean Social Histo‐ mains a quintessentially Caribbean society, the ry". In Intellectuals in the Twentieth-Century Car‐ culturally dynamic hybrid product of the forced

6 H-Net Reviews ibbean, vol. 1, Alistair Hennessy, ed. London: Visweswaran, Kamala 1994 Fictions of Femi‐ Macmillan Caribbean, 50-79. nist Ethnography. Minneapolis: University of Min‐ Edgell, Zee 1982 Beka Lamb. London: Heine‐ nesota Press. mann International. Wilk, Richard 1993 "Beauty and the Feast: Of‐ Ehlers, Tracy Bachrach 1991 "Debunking Mar‐ fcial and Visceral Nationalism in Belize." Ethnos ianismo: Economic Vulnerability and Survival 58: 294-316. Strategies among Guatemalan Wives". Ethnology Copyright (c)1997 by H-Net, all rights re‐ 30(1): 1-16. served. This work may be copied for non-proft Ellis, Zoila 1988 On Heroes, Lizards, and Pas‐ educational use if proper credit is given the au‐ sion. Benque Viejo, Belize: Cubola Books. thor and the list. For other permission, please con‐ tact H-Net at [email protected]. Hyde, Evan X 1970 The Crowd Called UBAD: Story of a People's Movement. Belize: Modern Printers. Kane, Stephanie C. 1993 "Prostitution and the Military: Planning AIDS Intervention in Belize". Social Science and Medicine 36(7): 965-979. Mintz, Sidney W. 1989 [1974] Caribbean Transformations. New York: Columbia University Press. Mintz, Sidney W., and Richard Price 1992 [1976] The Birth of African-American Culture: An Anthropological Perspective. Boston: Beacon Press. Moore, Henrietta L. 1988 Feminism and An‐ thropology. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Narayan, Kirin 1993 "How Native is a Native Anthropologist?" American Anthropologist 95(3): 671-686. Omi, Michael, and Howard Winant 1994 Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1980s. Second Edition. London: Rout‐ ledge. Payne, Anthony J. 1990 "The Belize Triangle: Relations with Britain, Guatemala, and the United States." Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Afairs 32(1): 119-135. Smith, Raymond T. 1990 Kinship and Class in the : A Genealogical Study of Jamaica and Guyana. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Citation: Michael Stone. Review of McClaurin, Irma. Women of Belize: Gender and Change in Central America. H-LatAm, H-Net Reviews. December, 1996.

URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=715

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