Advertisement

Transforming Knowledges

Anthropology’s Encounters with Feminism(s)
  • Piya Chatterjee
Chapter
  • 67 Downloads
Part of the Innovations in Science Education and Technology book series (ISET, volume 15)

Abstract

Ellen Judd, an anthropologist who writes on women’s political organizing in China, is reponding to a question posed by the editors of a recent collection on feminist ethnographic research: “Where do you place your work as a feminist within contemporary anthropology, and what directions do you see the relationship between anthropology and feminism taking in the future?” (Howard-Bobiwash 1999: 282) Both the question and Judd’s ambivalent, though powerful, reponse gesture towards the often tense—and indeed ambivalent—relationship between anthropology, the study “of women” and gender, and feminist scholarship writ large. Whether compensatory and/or critical in its perspective, feminist scholarship has had a profound, if vexed, impact on the discipline’s framings of cultural difference. Simultaneously, when feminist claims knowledge are also critiqued through other prims of difference—national location, race/ethnicity and class—then the task of “transformation” is inextricably coupled: women, gender, and cultural difference are mutually constitutive.

Keywords

Knowledge Claim Feminist Scholarship Gender Analysis Feminist Analysis European Philosophy 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in to check access.

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  1. Abu-Lughod, Lila. 1990. Can there be a feminist ethnography? Women and Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory 5.Google Scholar
  2. -. 1993. Writing women’s worlds. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
  3. Anzaldúa, Gloria. 1990. La conciencia de la mestiza: Towards a new consciousness. In Making face, making soul: Creative and critical perspectives by women of color, ed. Gloria Anzaldúa. San Francisco: Aunt Lute.Google Scholar
  4. -, and Cherríe Moraga, eds. 1981. This bridge called my back: Writings by radical women of color. Watertown, Mass.: Persephone.Google Scholar
  5. Asad, Talal. 1973. Anthropology and the colonial encounter. London: Ithaca Press.Google Scholar
  6. Behar, Ruth, and Deborah Gordon, eds. 1995. Women writing culture. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
  7. Block, Maurice, and Jean H. Bloch. 1980. Women and the dialectics of nature in eighteenth century French thought. In Nature, culture, gender, ed. Marilyn Strathern and Carol MacCormack. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
  8. Boxer, Marilyn J. 1998. Remapping the university: The promise of the women’s studies Ph.D. Feminist Studies 24: (Summer): 387–403.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  9. Buder, Judith, and Joan Scott, eds. 1992. Feminists theorise the political. London: Roudedge.Google Scholar
  10. Clifford, James, and George Marcus. 1986. Writing culture: The poetics and politics of ethnography, Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
  11. Collins, Patricia Hill. 1986. Learning from the outsider within: The sociological significance of black feminist thought. Social Problems 33: (December): S14–S32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  12. Comaroff, Jean, and John Comaroff 1992. Ethnography and the historical imagination. Boulder: Westview Press.Google Scholar
  13. -. 1997. Africa observed: Discourses of the imperial imagination. In Perspectives on Africa: A reader in culture, history and representation, ed. Richard Steiner and Christopher Grinker. Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell.Google Scholar
  14. Curtin, Phillip. 1964. The image of Africa: British ideas and action. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
  15. di Leonardo, Micaela, ed. 1991. Gender at the crossroads of knowledge. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
  16. -. 1993. What a difference political economy makes: Feminist anthropology in the postmodern era. Anthropological Quarterly 66 (2): 76–81.Google Scholar
  17. Enslin, Elizabeth. 1994. Beyond writing: Feminist practice and the limitations of ethnography. Cultural Anthropology 9: 537–568.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  18. Fraser, Nancy. 1989. Unruly practices: Power, discourse and gender in contemporary social theory. Cambridge: Polity.Google Scholar
  19. Gailey, Christine Ward. 1988. Eleanor Leacock. In Women anthropologists: A biographical dictionary, ed. Ute Gacs et al. New York: Greenwood Press.Google Scholar
  20. -. 1998. Feminist methods. In Handbook of methods in cultural anthropology, ed. Russell Bernard. Walnut Creek: Altamira Press.Google Scholar
  21. Gilman, Sander. 1985. Black bodies, white bodies: Toward an iconography of female sexuality in late nineteenth century art, medicine and literature. Critical Inquiry 12 (1): 204–242.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  22. Gordon, Deborah. 1993. The unhappy relationship of feminism and postmodernism in anthropology, Anthropological Quarterly 66 (July): 109–119.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  23. -. 1999. E-mail note in Feminist fields: Conversations to be continued, compiled by Heather Howard-Bobiwash in Feminist fields: Ethnographic insights, ed. Rae Bridgeman et al. Toronto: Broadview Press.Google Scholar
  24. -. 1999. U.S. feminist ethnography and the denationalizing of “America”: A retrospective on Women writing culture. In Feminist fields: Ethnographic insights, ed. Rae Bridgeman et al. Toronto: Broadview Press.Google Scholar
  25. Haraway, Donna. 1989. Primate visions: Gender, race and nature in the world of modern science. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
  26. Harding, Sandra. 1986. The science question in feminism. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
  27. -. 1991. Whose science? Whose knowledge? Thinking from women’s lives. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
  28. hooks, bell. 1984. Feminist theory: From margin to center. Boston: South End Press.Google Scholar
  29. -. 1988. Talking back: Thinking feminist, thinking black. Boston: South End Press.Google Scholar
  30. Howard-Bobiwash, Heather, compiler. 1999. Feminist fields: Conversations to be continued. In Feminist fields: Ethnographic insights, ed. Rae Bridgeman et al. Toronto: Broadview Press.Google Scholar
  31. John, Mary E. 1996. Discrepant dislocations: Feminisms, theory and postcolonial histories. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
  32. Jordanova, L. J. 1980. Natural facts: A historical perspective on science and sexuality. In Nature, culture, gender, ed. Carol MacCormack and Marilyn Strathern. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
  33. Judd, Ellen. 1999. E-mail note in Feminist fields: Conversations to be continued, compiled by Heather Howard-Bobiwash, in Feminist fields: Ethnographic insights, ed. Rae Bridgeman et al. Toronto: Broadview Press.Google Scholar
  34. Kaplan, Caren. 1987. Deterritorializations: The rewriting of home and exile in feminist discourse. Cultural Critique no.6 (Spring): 187–198.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  35. Keesing, Roger M. 1985. Kwaio women speak: The micropolitics of autobiography in a Solomon Island society. American Anthropologist 87: 27–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  36. Keller, Evelyn Fox. 1985. Reflections on Gender and Science. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
  37. Khan, Aisha. 1988. Introduction. In Women anthropologists: A biographical dictionary, ed. Gacs et al. New York: Greenwood Press.Google Scholar
  38. Lamphere, Louise. 1989. Feminist anthropology: The legacy of Elsie Clew Parsons, American Ethnologist16 (August): 518–534.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  39. -, and Michelle Rosaldo. 1974. Introduction. In Women, culture and society, ed. Lamphere and Rosaldo. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
  40. Lazreg, Marnia. 1988. Feminism and difference: The perils of writing as a woman on women in Algeria. Feminist Studies 14 (Spring): 81–107.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  41. Leacock, Eleanor, and Mona Etienne, eds. 1980. Women and colonization. New York: Praeger.Google Scholar
  42. Lloyd, Genevieve. 1984. The man of reason: Male and female in western philosophy. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  43. Longino, Helen. 1993. Feminist standpoint theory, and the problems of knowledge: Review essay, Signs 19 (1): 201–213.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  44. MacCormack, Carol. 1980. Nature, culture, gender: A critique. In Nature, culture, gender, ed. Carol MacCormack and Marilyn Strathern. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
  45. Marcus, George, and Michael Fischer. 1986. Anthropology as cultural critique: An experimental moment in the human sciences. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
  46. Mikell, Gwendolyn. 1988. Zora Neale Hurston. In women anthropologists: A biographical dictionary, ed. Ute Gacs et al. New York: Greenwood Press.Google Scholar
  47. Minh-ha, Trinh T. 1989. Woman, native, other. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
  48. Mohanty, Chandra Talpade. 1984. Under western eyes: Feminist scholarship and colonial discourse. Boundary 2 (Spring/Fall): 333–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  49. -. 1991. Cartographies of struggle: Third World women and the politics of feminism. In Third World women and the politics of feminism, ed. Chandra Mohanty, Ann Russo, and Lourdes Torres. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
  50. Moore, Henrietta. 1988. Feminism and anthropology. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
  51. Mudimbe, Valentin. 1988. The invention of Africa. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
  52. Narayan, Kirin. 1993. How native is a native anthropologist? American Anthropologist 95: 671–686.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  53. Newman, Louise. 1996. Coming of age, but not in Samoa: Reflections on Margaret Mead’s legacy for western liberal feminism. American Quarterly 48 (2): 233–272.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  54. O’Leary, Cathy. 1997. Counteridentification or counterhegemony? Transforming feminist standpoint theory. Women and Politics 18 (3): 45–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  55. Ong, Aihwa. 1986. Colonialism and modernity: Feminist representations of women in non-western societies. Inscriptions 3 and 4: 79–93.Google Scholar
  56. -. 1995. Women out of China: Traveling tales and traveling theories in postcolonial feminism. In Women writing culture, ed. Ruth Behar and Deborah Gordon. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
  57. Rosaldo, Michelle Zimbalist. 1974. Woman, culture, and society: A theoretical overview. In Women, culture and society, ed. Louise Lamphere and Michelle Rosaldo. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
  58. Sacks, Karen. 1974. Engels revisited: Women, the organization of production, and private property. In Women, culture and society, ed. Louise Lamphere and Michelle Rosaldo. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
  59. Said, Edward. 1989. Representing the colonized: Anthropology’s interlocuters. Critical Inquiry 20: 205–225.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  60. Sandoval, Chela. 1990. Feminism and racism: A report on the 1981 National Women’s Studies Association conference. In Making face, making soul: Creative and critical perspectives by women of color, ed. Gloria Anzaldúa. San Francisco: Aunt Lute.Google Scholar
  61. Savigliano, Marta. 1995. Tango and the political economy of passion: Exoticism and decolonization. Boulder: Westview Press.Google Scholar
  62. Smith, Dorothy. 1990. Texts, facts and femininity: Exploring the relations of ruling. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
  63. -. 1992. Sociology from women’s experience: A reaflfirmation. Sociological Theory 10 (Spring).Google Scholar
  64. Spelman, Elizabeth V. 1988. The Inessential Woman: Problems of Exclusion in Feminist Thought. Boston: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
  65. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravarty. 1988. Can the Subaltern speak? In Marxism and the interpretation of culture, ed. Cary Nelson and Larry Grossberg. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
  66. Stacey, Judith. 1988. Can there be a feminist ethnography? Women’s Studies International Forum 2: 21–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  67. Stocking, George Jr. 1968, 1982. Race, culture and evolution: Essays in the history of anthropology. Chicago: University of Chicago.Google Scholar
  68. Stoler, Ann. 1989. Rethinking colonial categories: European communities and the boundaries of rule. Comparative Studies in Society and History 31 (January).Google Scholar
  69. -. 1995. Race and the education of desire: Foucault’s history of sexuality and the colonial order of things. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
  70. Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt. 1993. In the realm of the diamond queen: Marginality in an out-of-the-way place. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
  71. Visweswaran, Kamala. 1994. Fictions of feminist ethnography. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
  72. Wolf, Marjory. 1974. Chinese women: Old skills in a new context. In Women, culture and society, ed. Louise Lamphere and Michelle Rosaldo. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar

Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media New York 2003

Authors and Affiliations

  • Piya Chatterjee

There are no affiliations available

Personalised recommendations

Cite chapter

Buy options