Woman, Culture, and Society Woman, Culture

Woman, Culture, and Society Woman, Culture, Contributors and Society Joan Bamberger Sherry B. Ortner Edited by Michelle Zimbalist Rosaldo Nancy Cbodorow Lois Paul Jane Fishburne Collier Michelle Zimbalist Rosaldo and Louise Lamphere Bette S. Denich Karen Sacks Carol P. Hoffer Peggy R. Sanday Louise Lamphere Carol B. Stack Nancy B. Leis Nancy Tanner Bridget O'Laughlin Margery Wolf Stanford University Press, Stanford, California \ Stanford University Press, Stanford, California Preface © 1974 by the Iloard of Truslees of the Leland Stanford Junior University Printed in the United States of America Cloth ISBN 0-8047-0850-9 Paper ISBN 0-8047-0851-7 Original edition 1974 Last figure below· indicates year of this printing: 83 82 81 So 79 78 77 76 There is no question that the 'von1en's liberation movement has stimu lated, in recent years, a good deal of interest in understanding and ana lyzing women's lives. At Stanford, in i971, a collective of female gradu ate students in anthropology organized an undergraduate lecture course, "Wo1nen in Cross-Cultural Perspective." At more or less the sa1ne time anthropologists in other colleges and universities began to prepare sim ilar courses, and to ask themselves what anthropologists might have to say about won1en and, conversely, how an interest in women might pro vide a new perspective in their field. When Rosal do (who taught that course, along with Jane Collier, Julia Howell, Kim Kramer, Janet Shepherd Fjellrnan, and Ellen Lewin) showed Lamphere a copy of the Stanford lectures, we both decided that the issues raised, the problems solved, and the questions that remained unasked (and so, unans\vered) were of sufficient importance and interest to be shared. The difficulties of bringing an entirely new perspective to bear on anthropological materials had encouraged a good deal of cre ative thinking, suggestive questioning, and research. I-low, for example, in a field that had a long tradition of describing men's.place in society, could we begin to characterize the interest of women's lives? And then, again, how were we to evaluate the great variation in female activities, roles, and powers that is found in different human groups? What were \Ve to make of the popular claim that women are, biologically, men's inferiors? If we rejected that claim, how then could we begin to explain and understand the fact that 1vomen are treated, culturally and socially, as inferior, in virtually all societies in the world? Ultimately, of course, all of these questions revolve around a need to reexamine the ways in \vhich we think about ourselves. The impetus for this book lies in Our conviction that the lack of in terest in women in conventional anthropology constitutes a genuine j) l vi Preface deficiency, that it has led to distorted theories and impoverished ethno graphic accounts. By focusing on women, and by addressing facts that have conventionally been ignored or taken for granted, we hope to re~ appraise old theories and pave the way for future thought. In anthro Contents pology, it is clear that our conceptions of human social life will be broadened when they address wo1nen's lives and strategies along with those of men. The problem, for us, was how to do it. The anthropological literature tells us relatively little about women, and provides almost no theoretical apparatus for understanding or describing culture from a woman's point of view. Because of our lack of both materials and theories, it seemed more reasonable to collect papers from a number of people working in this area than to attempt a book ourselves. In the last few years, we Introduction have found-all of us-that our own thinking about women has become MICHELLE Zl1v1BALIST ROSALDO AND LOUISE LAMPHERE l increasingly sophisticated, and this leads us to believe that a number of the papers here will be superseded by later work. In a sense, then, Woman, Culture, and Society: A Theoretical Overview these papers represent a first generation's attempt to integrate an interest MICHELLE ZIMBALIST ROSALDO 17 in women into a general theory of society and culture. They outline a Family Structure and Feminine Personality number of theoretical issues, and illustrate lines of thought that later NANCY CHODOROW studies might pursue. The authors vary in their theoretical commit 43 ments, their politics, and their methods. Some of the papers reflect re Is Female to Male as Nature Is to Culture? search initiated long before the contemporary women's movement be SHERRY B. ORTNER came relevant; others represent thinking undertaken specifically for this book. Most of the papers have not been published elsewhere. Taken Women in Politics together, all should serve, minimally, to correct a dominant bias that JANE FISHBURNE COLLIER 89 sees women's lives as lacking in order or in interest. And they illustrate Strategies, Cooperation, and Conflict Among Women ways in which anthropologists will have to begin to think about women in Domestic Groups ' if they are to understand our human world. LOUISE LAMPHERE M.Z.R. 97 L.L. Sex Roles and Survival Strategies in an Urban Black November r973 Community CAROL B. STACK Matrifocality in Indonesia and Africa and Among Black A1nericans • NANCY TANNER 129 Chinese Women: Old Skills in a New Context MARGERY WOLF 157 Madam Yoko: Ruler of the Kpa Mende Confederacy CAROL P. HOFFER 1 73 l viii Contents Female Status in the Public Domain PEGGY R. SANDAY 189 Engels Revisited: liVonien) the Organization of Production) and Private Property Contributors KAREN SACKS W 011ien in Groups: I jaw Women's Associations NANCY B. LEIS 223 Sex and Power in the Balkans BETTE S. DENICH 243 The Myth of Matriarchy: Why Men Rule in Primitive Society JOAN BAMBERGER JoAN BANIBERGER received her Ph.D. in anthropology from Harvard Univer sity in i967. Her field research has been among the Northern l(ayap6 of Cen The Mastery of Work and the Mystery of Sex in a tral Brazil. A 1nonograph on the subject is forthcoming. She is on the faculty Guatemalan Village of Brandeis University. LOIS PAUL NANCY CnoDORO\V is Instructor at Welli::sley College, with responsibilities Mediation of Contradiction: Why Mbum Women Do Not concerning the study of women and women's education. She is currently com Eat Chicken pleting ,1 doctoral dissertation in the Department of Sociology at Brandeis Uni 1 versity. She works in the fields of psychoanalytic personality theory and the BRIDGET 0 LAUGI-I°LIN 301 comparative study of 1vcmen and the family. References Cited 321 JANE FISHBURNE COLLIER received her Ph.D. from Tulane University in Index 1970 and is now Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Stanford University. 343 J\,fost of her research has been carried out in Zinacantan, a :rviaya con1munity in southern 1Vfexico, but she has also done limited fieldwork in an Andalusian village in Spain and in a J(pclle comn1unity in Liberia. She is the author of Lan1 and Social Change in Zinacantan. BETTES. DEN ICI-I received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berke ley, She is now 1\ssistant Professor of .A~nthropology at Barnard College and Cohnnbia University. f-Ier field research in Yugoslavia has focused on indus trialization and rural-urban 111igration, but has also included more traditional ethnological interests. She is the author of several articles based on Yugoslavian :research, and is presently completing a monograph on economic and political revolution in a Serbian to1vn. CAROL P. I-IoFFER received her Ph,D. from Bryn lVfawr College and is pres ently Assistant Professor and Chairman of the DeparLment of Anthropology at Franklin and lVIarshall College. She has done fieldwork in the :rvrende/Sherbro ethnic area of Sierra Leone and ethnohistorical research in Freetown and Lon don. Her previous publications are on West African women in high office. 66 NANCY CHODOROW Loosening her tie to her mother therefore does not entail the rejection SHERRY B. ORTNER of all women. The close tie that remains between mother and daughter is based not simply on mutual overinvolvement but often on mutual understanding of their oppression. Is Female to Male as Nature Is to Culture? Conclusion Women's universal mothering role has effects both on the developu ment of masculine and feminine personality and on the relative status of the sexes. This paper has described the development of relational per sonality in women and of personalities preoccupied with the denial of relation in men. In its comparison of different societies, it has suggested that men, while guaranteeing to themselves sociocultural superiority over women, always ren1ain psychologically defensive and insecure. Much of the creativity of anthropology derives from the tension between Women, by contrast, although always of secondary social and cultural two sets of demands: that we explain human universals, and that we status, may in favorable circumstances gain psychological security and explain cultural particulars. By this canon, woman provides us with one a firm sense of worth and importance in spite of this. of the more challenging problems to be dealt with. The secondary status Social and psychological oppression, then, is perpetuated in the strucm of woman in society is one of the true universals, a pan-cultural fact. ture of personality. The paper enables us to suggest what social arrangeA Yet within that universal fact, the specific cultural conceptions and ments contribute (and could contribute) to social equality between men symbolizations of woman are extraordinarily diverse and even mutually and women and their relative freedom from certain sorts of psychologA contradictory. Further, the actual treatment of wo1nen and their relative ical conflict. Daughters and sons must be able to develop a personal power and contribution vary enormously from culture to culture, and identification with more than one adult, and preferably one embedded over different periods in the history of particular cultural traditions.

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