Sex and Gender Hierarchies

by Barbara Diane Miller

Overview

A generation of feminist research has explored the extent to which the roles—and expectations—of women and men vary across cultures. In this volume, leading anthropologists reflect on the evidence and theories, broadening the conventional field of comparison to include female/male relationships among nonhuman primates and introducing fresh case studies that range from lemurs to hominids, from Japanese peasants to male strippers in Florida, from skeletal remains of a Korean queen to mother/child conversations in Samoa. They document the rich and often surprising diversity in sex and gender hierarchies among both human and nonhuman primates.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521423687
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	02/18/1993
Series:	Publications of the Society for Psychological Anthropology , #4
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	424
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 8.94(h) x 1.10(d)

Table of Contents

Preface Barbara Diane Miller; A note on the discussions at Mijas Elizabeth Colson; Part I. Overview and Theoretical Perspectives: 1. The anthropology of sex and gender hierarchies Barbara Diane Miller; 2. Sex differences and gender hierarchies among primates: an evolutionary perspective Adrienne Zihlman; 3. The evolution of gender hierarchies: a trial formulation Marvin Harris; Part II. Sex and Gender Hierarchies from Conception to Death: 4. Blood: cultural effectiveness of biological conditions Brigitta Hauser-Schaublin; 5. Reproduction and gender hierarchy: amniocentesis in America Rayna Rapp; 6. Variations in male-female dominance and offspring care in nonhuman primates Patricia C. Wright; 7. Indexing gender Elinor Ochs; 8. The politics of polygyny in Mende education and child fosterage transactions Caroline Bledsoe; 9. Sexual repression, social control, and gender hierarchy in Sambia culture Gilbert Herdt; 10. Primatological perspectives on gender hierarchies Joan B. Silk; 11. Conjugal power in Tokugawa Japanese families: a matter of life and death G. William Skinner; Part III. Complexity and Change in Gender Hierarchies: 12. Skeletal evidence for sex roles and gender hierarchies in prehistory Mark Nathan Cohen and Sharon Bennett; 13. Gender hierarchy and the Queens of Silla Sarah M. Nelson; 14. Gender hierarchy in Burma: cultural, social and psychological dimensions Melford E. Spiro; 15. Turning the tables? Male strippers and the gender hierarchy in America Maxine O. Margolis and Marigene Arnold; 16. Women in Samoan history: a further critique of Derek Freeman Eleanor Leacock; 17. Sanskritization as female oppression in India Gerald D. Berreman; Index.

Editorial Reviews

"Should you make room in your financial and time budgets to buy and read yet another volume of expanded, revised conference papers? In the case of Sex and Gender Hierarchies, the answer is a resounding yes if your research or teaching interests include sex differences and gender relationships in primates. This collection of 17 chapters drawn from the four subfields of anthropology, accomplishes what many such volumes only promise to do. It is an impressive analysis of a specific issue—systematic relationships of inequality based on sex and gender—from the perspectives of first-rate biological and social/cultural anthropologists, archaeologists, and linguists." Barbara J. King, International Journal of Primatology

From the Publisher