Gender in Cross-cultural Perspective

Caroline Brettell received her B.A. degree from Yale University and her M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Brown University. She joined the faculty of the Department of Anthropology at Southern Methodist University in 1988, and in 2008 was named University Distinguished Professor. From 1989 to 1994, she served as Director of Women’s Studies, and from 1994 to 2004 she served as Chair of the Department of Anthropology. From 2006 to 2008, she served as Interim Dean of Dedman College, the Humanities and Sciences College at Southern Methodist University. Her research interests are in the areas of immigration, gender roles, European ethnography, and anthropology and history. She is the author of Men Who Migrate, Women Who Wait: Population and History in a Portuguese Parish (1986), We Have Already Cried Many Tears: The Stories of Three Portuguese Migrant Women (1982, 1995), Writing against the Wind: A Mother’s Life History (1999), and Anthropology and Migration: Essays on Transnationalism, Ethnicity and Identity (2003); coauthor with Richard Brettell of Painters and Peasants in the 19th Century (1983); editor of When They Read What We Write: The Politics of Ethnography (1993) and Constructing Borders/Crossing Boundaries: Race, Ethnicity, and Immigration (2007); coeditor of International Migration: The Female Experience (1986), Gender in Cross-Cultural Perspective (Prentice Hall 1993, 1997, 2001, 2005), Gender and Health: An International Perspective (1996), Migration Theory: Talking Across Disciplines (2000, 2007), Citizenship, Political Engagement, and Belonging: Immigrants in Europe and the U.S (2008), and America’s Twenty-First Century Immigrant Gateways: Immigrant Incorporation in Suburbia (2008). Her most recent book, co-authored with Deborah Reed-Danahay is titled Civic Engagements: The Citizenship Practices of Indian and Vietnamese Immigrants (2012). She is also the author of numerous book chapters, and articles. Professor Brettell has served as a member of National Institutes of Health (NIH) Study Section-SNEM 3 and several selection panels for the Social Science Research Council and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). She has served as President of the Society for the Anthropology of Europe and of the Social Science History Association. She has conducted field research in France, Portugal, and Canada and is currently engaged in a long-term study of new immigrants into the Dallas–Fort Worth metropolitan area with funding from the National Science Foundation and the Russell Sage Foundation.

Carolyn Sargent received her B.A. degree from Michigan State University, her M.A. degree from the University of Manchester, and her Ph.D. from Michigan State University. She is Professor of Anthropology and Professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Washington University in St. Louis. From 1979 to 2008, she served as Professor of Anthropology at Southern Methodist University, where she was Director of Women’s Studies from 1994 through 2007. She is currently a research fellow at IRIS, an interdisciplinary social science laboratory associated with the University of Paris 13, CNRS, EHESS, and INSERM. Her research interests are in the areas of global health, gender and reproduction, and bioethics. Sargent is the author of The Cultural Context of Therapeutic Choice: Obstetrical Decisions among the Bariba of Benin (1982), and Maternity, Medicine and Power: Reproductive Decisions in Urban Benin (1989); and coeditor of Reproduction, Globalization and the State (Duke University Press 2011); Medical Anthropology: A Handbook of Theory and Method, Gender in Cross-Cultural Perspective (Prentice Hall 1993, 1997, 2001, 2005), Gender and Health: An International Perspective (1996), Childbirth and Authoritative Knowledge (1997), and Small Wars: The Cultural Politics of Childhood (1998). In addition to several book chapters, she has also authored numerous articles, many of them published in Medical Anthropological Quarterly and Social Science and Medicine. She has conducted fieldwork in West Africa and the Caribbean and is currently engaged in a long-term study of West African immigrants in France funded by the Wenner Gren Foundation and the National Science Foundation. She has served on a Senior Advisory Panel of the National Science Foundation and on the Executive Board for the Society for Medical Anthropology. In 2007 she assumed the role of President of the SMA. She has also served on the French Agence Nationale de la Recherche as external reviewer for social science research.

Found in this Section:

1. Brief Table of Contents

2. Full Table of Contents

1. BRIEF TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface   

About the Authors   

I. Biology, Gender, and Human Evolution   

II. Gender and Prehistory   

III. Domestic Worlds and Public Worlds   

IV. Equality and Inequality: The Sexual Division of Labor and Gender

V. The Cultural Construction of Gender and Personhood   

VI. Culture, Sexuality, and the Body   

VII. Gender, Property, and the State   

VIII. Gender, Household, and Kinship   

IX. Gender, Ritual, and Religion   

X. Gender, Politics, and Reproduction   

XI. Gender and the Global Economy   

2. FULL TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface   

About the Authors   

I. Biology, Gender, and Human Evolution   

Animal Models and Gender

Marlene Zuk

Delusions of Gender: What Does it All Mean Anyway? and Brain Scams   

Cordelia Fine

Gender and War: Are Women Tough Enough for Military Combat?

Lucinda J. Peach

Lifeboat Ethics: Mother Love and Child Death in Northeast Brazil   

Nancy Scheper-Hughes

The Cultural Nexus of Aka Father—Infant Bonding   

Barry S. Hewlett

II. Gender and Prehistory   

The Past is a Foreign Country: Archaeology of Sex and Gender   

Rosemary A. Joyce

The Fashioning of Women   

J. M Adovasio, Olga Soffer, and Jake Page

Inca Gender Relations: From Household to Empire   

R. Alan Covey

III. Domestic Worlds and Public Worlds   

The Domestic Sphere of Women and the Public World of Men: The Strengths and Limitations of an Anthropological Dichotomy   

Louise Lamphere

From “Private” Affairs to “Public” Scandals: The Modern Woman’s Challenge to Husband’s Infidelities in Uganda   

Shanti Parikh

Fatherhood and the Mediating Role of Women   

Nicholas W. Townsend

Marriage, Modernity and Migration: Changing Dynamics of Intimacy in a Mexican Transnational Community

Jennifer S. Hirsch   

IV. Equality and Inequality: The Sexual Division of Labor and Gender Stratification   

Woman the Hunter: The Agta   

Agnes Estioko-Griffin and P. Bion Griffin

Gender, Horticulture, and the Division of Labor on Vanatinai   

Maria Lepowsky

Do Tents and Herds Still Matter? Pastoral Nomadism and Gender among the Tuareg in Niger and Mali   

Susan Rasmussen

Gender, Business, and Space Control: Yoruba Market Women and Power   

Toyin Falola

V. The Cultural Construction of Gender and Personhood   

My Encounter with Machismo in Spain   

David D. Gilmore

Rituals of Manhood: Male Initiation in Papua New Guinea   

Gilbert H. Herdt

The Named and the Nameless: Gender and Person in Chinese Society   

Rubie S. Watson

Gender and the Stories Pittsburgh Police Officers Tell about Using Physical Force   

Bonnie MCElhinny

Surgical Transformation in the Pursuit of Gender

Lauren E. Gulbas   

VI. Culture, Sexuality, and the Body    

Is There a Muslim Sexuality? Changing Constructions of Sexuality in Egyptian Bedouin Weddings   

Lila Abu-Lughod

From Pollution to Love Magic: The New Anthropology of Menstruation   

Alma Gottlieb

Hijras: An “Alternative” Sex/Gender in India   

Gayatri Reddy and Serena Nanda

Constructing the Lesbian Body: The Worker Community of the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival   

Alexis Matza

VII. Gender, Property, and the State   

Encountering the State: Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Women’s Political Experience   

Josephine Caldwell Ryan

Japanese Mothers and Obentos: The Lunch-Box as Ideological State Apparatus   

Anne Allison

"Single Women are Bitter”: The Gendered Production of Affective States in Chile

Nia C. Parson

Women’s Autonomy, Islam, and the French State

John R. Bowen

VIII. Gender, Household, and Kinship   

What to do with Unmarried Daughters? Modern Solutions to a Traditional Dilemma in a Polyandrous Tibetan Society

Geoff Childs, Melvyn G. Goldstein, and Puchung Wangdui

Between a Rock and a Hard Place: The Labyrinth of Working and Parenting in a Poor Community   

Sharon Hicks-Bartlett

Rethinking Caribbean Families: Extending the Links   

Mary Chamberlain

Resignation and Refusal: The Moral Calculus of Lesbian and Gay Parenthood in the US   

Ellen Lewin

IX. Gender, Ritual, and Religion   

Spirit Possession and Gender Complementarity: Zâr in Rural Northern Sudan   

Janice Boddy

“Tradition” and Threat: Women’s Obscenity in Giriama Funerary Rituals   

Janet MCIntosh

Shamans, Bodies, and Sex: Misreading a Korean Ritual   

Laurel Kendall

How to Change a Man: Spiritual Transformation and Shifts in Gender Ideology in Evangelical El Salvador   

José Leonardo Santos

X. Gender, Politics, and Reproduction   

Natural Birth at the Turn of the 21st Century: Implications for Gender   

Margaret MacDonald

Political Demography: The Banning of Abortion in Ceausescu’s Romania   

Gail Kligman

Surrogate Motherhood: Rethinking Biological Models, Kinship, and Family   

Heléna Ragoné

Female Genital Cutting: Culture and Controversy   

Ellen Gruenbaum

XI. Gender and the Global Economy   

Enter Microcredit: A New Culture of Women’s Empowerment in Rajasthan

Megan Moodie

Factory as Home and Family: Female Workers in the Moroccan Garment Industry  

M. Laetitia Cairoli

Sexuality and Discipline among Filipina Domestic Workers in Hong Kong  

Nicole Constable

Migration, Money and Masculinity in Kerala

Caroline Osella and Filippo Osella

Sex Tourism, Globalization, and Transnational Imaginings   

Denise Brennan

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