A World Full of Women

by Ward, Martha C.; Edelstein, Monica D.

• ISBN13: 9780205584550
• ISBN10: 0205584551
• Edition: 5th
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2008-02-27
• Publisher: Pearson

Summary

This revision ofA World Full of Womenwill appeal to instructors and students in anthropology, or any discipline looking for an engaging, cross-cultural approach to the study of women."Reading this book is like sitting down for an intellectually stimulating, yet thoroughly comfortable, chat with the authors,"according to one reviewer. Written by an anthropologist who has taught undergraduates for more than 30 years and designed the first official women's studies course in Louisiana, this book has been fueled by the explosion of research on women since the 1970s. Co-author, Monica Edelstein, adds a wealth of ethnographic experience, research, and activism with women of North Africa, the Middle East, and the United States, particularly immigrants, refugees, and healers. Another reviewer describes this text as "one of the few books that analyzes cultures through a gender lenshellip;the book tackles and successfully dismisses many cultural-sexist illusions. . ."

Table of Contents

Supplements	p. xiii
Reviewer Acknowledgments	p. xiii
Introduction	p. 1
Old Words and New-Realities	p. 2
Where We're Coming From	p. 3
Where to Begin and What Follows	p. 6
Speaking of Women	p. 8
Tender Trap or Super Woman?	p. 9
Code Switching	p. 10
Talking Troubles and Carrying Conversations	p. 12
Loss and Lamentation	p. 13
Some Books That Changed Our Lives	p. 14
"What's for Dinner Honey?": Work and Gender	p. 16
Work: The First Fact of Life	p. 17
"What's for Dinner?": Gender and Practical Economics	p. 20
Hunting, Gathering, and Being Human	p. 20
The Pot-Luck Principle	p. 21
Honey, Meat, and Babies	p. 22
Tools with a Feminine Twist	p. 23
Planting and Harvesting: The Next Revolution	p. 25
Digging Sticks	p. 25
Plows	p. 26
Distaffs	p. 27
Peasants	p. 29
Off to Work We Go	p. 30
Home-Work	p. 32
Marriage as Work	p. 32
Mother-Work	p. 34
Kin-Work	p. 36
Sex-Work	p. 37
Work and a Revolution	p. 38
Value, Valued, and Valuable	p. 39
Interpreting Food, Work, and the Facts of Life	p. 41
A Few of the Many Books You May Want to Read	p. 42
Love and the Work of Culture	p. 44
More Than Personal Lives	p. 45
The Personal Is Professional	p. 47
Husbands, Lovers, and Fieldwork	p. 48
More Love, Husbands, and Fieldwork	p. 50
Sex and Temperament	p. 52
The Arapesh	p. 53
The Mundugumor	p. 55
The Tchambuli	p. 58
Situations on the Sepik	p. 60
Daughters of Sex and Temperament	p. 61
Beyond the Sepik	p. 63
Intimacy and the World Stage	p. 64
Conclusion: Their Last Great Work	p. 67
So Many Books: Where Can I Start?	p. 68
Blood and Milk: Biocultural Markers in the Lives of Women	p. 69
Where Biology and Culture Meet in the Bodies of Women	p. 70
Moonstruck Maidenhood: Taboo and Meaning	p. 70
Prime Time or Dirty Old Ladies	p. 74
Desire and Control	p. 76
Techniques and Methods	p. 77
Recipes and Recommendations	p. 78
Pilgrims for Pregnancy	p. 81
Abortion	p. 83
Infanticide and Social Birth	p. 84
Comparative Childbirth	p. 87
Midwife and Mother	p. 87
More Facts of Life-Giving	p. 89
Motherhood and Fetal Subjects	p. 91
To Test or Not to Test?: A Case Study	p. 93
Social Women in Biological Bodies: Some Conclusions	p. 96
Some Very Important Books to Read	p. 97
Patterns of Partnering from Romance to Resistance	p. 98
Varieties of Arrangements	p. 99
The Five Fires of the Longhouse	p. 100
"Mother-Centered" Models in the Caribbean	p. 102
Beyond the Virgin Mary in Latin America	p. 106
Duties and Obediences in China	p. 109
A Circle of Wives: African Experiences	p. 111
Love Marriages and Lavish Weddings	p. 115
Reading from Romance to Resistance	p. 120
Everyday Power: Women's Agency, Authority, and Influence	p. 121
Rethinking Women's Power	p. 122
Minangkabau Matriarchs	p. 123
West African Market Queens	p. 127
From Respet to Co-op: Shifting Sources of Power among the Zapotec	p. 128
Migrants, Immigrants, and Refugees: Crossing the Boundaries of Domestic Power	p. 132
New Levels of Domestic Authority: Japanese Homes Abroad	p. 132
Dirty Nurses and Domestic Patriarchs: The Saga of the Keralite Immigrants	p. 135
Palestinian Women Create Powerful Spaces	p. 138
Conclusions from One End of the Power Spectrum to the Other	p. 141
Powerful Books to Read	p. 141
A Two-Bodied World: Cultural Systems for Separating Females and Males	p. 143
Amazon: Women of the Forest and the Flutes	p. 145
The Mythic Past of the Mundurucu	p. 145
The Ethnographic Present	p. 146
The Future Arrived	p. 148
Melanesia: Birth and Semen	p. 149
Blood Fears and Womb Envy	p. 150
Looped String Bags	p. 152
Wok Meri: "Mothers of Money"	p. 154
Islamic Middle East: Veiled Separations	p. 155
Bedouin Veils	p. 158
Female Faces and Female Spaces	p. 160
Harems and Other Female Worlds	p. 161
Conclusions: What Do Systems of Separation Mean?	p. 163
Check Out These Books	p. 164
A Third Sex?: Gender as Alternative or Continuum	p. 165
Making Out and Making Up Sexes and Genders	p. 167
Biological Sex and Intersexes	p. 167
Social and Cultural Genders	p. 169
Objects of Our Desires	p. 170
Crossing Over and Cross-Dressing	p. 171
Military Maids	p. 171
Intersexed Children: A Case for Consideration	p. 173
When Boys Will Be Girls	p. 175
Neither Woman nor Man: Hijras of India	p. 175
Two-Spirits in Native North America	p. 177
Females, a Man-Woman, and Zuni Pueblo	p. 179
A Fourth Sex? Cross-Gendered Females	p. 181
Gone-to-the-Spirits	p. 182
The Cultures of Women-with-Women	p. 183
Conclusions beyond the Categories of Sex, Gender, and Desire	p. 186
Important Books beyond the Natural Attitude	p. 187
Life's Lesions: Suffering and Healing	p. 189
Women's Wounds	p. 191
Paths to Authority	p. 192
Gendering Religions	p. 193
Healers and Healing	p. 198
Midwifery	p. 200
A Healer by Trade	p. 201
Visiting Spirits	p. 202
Ritualized Rebellions and Extraordinary Emotions	p. 203
From Housewife to Shaman	p. 205
Wombs and Wounds	p. 206
To Conclude	p. 210
A Field Full of Books to Read	p. 211
Who Owns Her Body?: Challenges to Cultural Relativism	p. 212
Human Rights and Cultural Relativism	p. 214
The "Nature" of Violence	p. 215
A Worldwide Case: Wife Beating and Wife Battering	p. 217
Another Worldwide Case: International Sexual Services	p. 220
Sexual Tourism	p. 220
Rape on a University Campus	p. 224
Disappeared and Endangered Daughters	p. 226
Genital Cutting	p. 229
Women's Rights and Critical Cultural Relativism	p. 231
Books to Empower Us	p. 234
Jnvisible Workers: Women as the Earth's Last Colony	p. 235
Characteristics of Women's Lives in the Last Colony	p. 237
Forever Working	p. 238
Death and Poor Health	p. 240
International Strategies for Solving the Problem(s) of Women	p. 242
High Fashions for Low Incomes	p. 242
Work and Housewifization	p. 243
Housework Revisited	p. 244
Working Daughters: The Feminization of Factories	p. 246
A Marxist-Feminist Thinks about Women and Work	p. 248
Eleanor Leacock	p. 249
Women's Powers as the Roots of Grass	p. 251
Mothers, Family Values, and the Military	p. 252
Self-Employed, Organized, and Cooperative	p. 254
Conclusions in the Post-Modern Manner	p. 256
Reading, Writing, and Resistance	p. 260
Glossary	p. 263
Bibliography	p. 273
Index	p. 283
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