Politics of Ethnography: Feminism and Anthropology

1. Politics of Ethnography: Feminism and Anthropology First, patterns of male dominance, West and rest, have tended to restrict the study of “exotic” women to female ethnographers--both because female Others often were not deemed important enough for male anthropologists to study, and because non-Western female worlds were often off-limits to strange males (Di Leonardo 1998: 149).

2. What is the relationship between feminism and anthropology? • Ignorance of contribution of women in the discipline • Anthropological genealogies (male oriented) • Their contribution to reflexivity (personal experience or autobiography) ignored or appropriated (I.e. Powdermaker 1966 and Mead 1977)

3. Why has main stream anthropology been reluctant to acknowledge that gender makes a difference in ethnography?

4. Because: • Considered less objective (associated with emotions) • Considered confessional literature • Considered outside of the generic “he” • Considered outside the gender neutral “neo-positivist” paradigm

5. Male ethnographer… Profane Economically unimportant Excluded Marginal Female ethnography… Central role Important in ritual Respected Non-marginal The positionality of women makes a difference

6. Three layers • Bias imported by the male ethnographer • The bias inherent in the society studied • The bias inherent in Western culture

7. Deconstruction of gender symbolism and sexual stereotypes • Men associated with culture and women with nature; physiology • Women social roles; domestic domains • Concept of pollution

8. Deconstructing the structure of male bias by • Focusing on women • Building data: about women by women • Reworking and redefining anthropological theory

9. Ardener (1975) and the theory of “Muted Groups” • control over modes of expression • Male dominated structures • --ways of communicating (linguistic concepts) • --ways of writing (mankind for humankind) • --dominant ideology • --different world views

10. The Challenges from without • Minorities • Women • Decentred authority • Forced to become reflexive

11. The reflexive turn” Crack in the Mirror by Myerhoff and Ruby 1982) • to examine a field problem • to examine anthropology itself • to publicly examine the anthropologist's response to the field situation

12. Problems with the assumption of a privileged status (women studying women) • Ghettoization of feminist anthropology • --too specialized --image problem • The assumption of a universal category of “women” • --not the same in all cultures • Perception of ethnocentrism • --a bias in favor of one culture ( that of the woman anthrop)

13. Discussion Question • What are the advantages and disadvantages of a feminist anthropology in the construction of ethnographic knowledge?