vieweswaran - histories of feminist ethnography

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Histories of Feminist Ethnography

Author(s): Kamala VisweswaranSource: Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol. 26 (1997), pp. 591-621Published by: Annual ReviewsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2952536.

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Annu.Rev. Anthropol.1997. 26:591-621Copyright? 1997 byAnnualReviews Inc. All rightsreserved

HISTORIESOF FEMINISTETHNOGRAPHYKamala VisweswaranDepartment f Anthropology,The Universityof Texas at Austin,Austin, Texas 78712-1086KEYWORDS:gender nalysis,eminism,womenanthropologists

ABSTRACTThis review essay illustrateshow changes in the conception of genderdefinethe historicalproductionof feminist ethnography n four distinctperiods. Inthe firstperiod (1880-1920), biological sex was seen to determine ocial roles,and gender was not seen as separablefrom sex, though it was beginning toemerge as an analyticalcategory. The second period (1920-1960) markstheseparationof sex fromgenderas sex was increasinglyseen as indeterminativeof genderroles. In the thirdperiod (1960-1980), the distinctionbetween sexand gender was elaborated nto the notion of a sex/gender system-the ideathatdifferent societies organizedbrutebiological facts into particulargenderregimes. By the contemporaryperiod (1980-1996), critiquesof "genderes-sentialism"(the reification of "woman"as a biological or universalcategory)suggest that the analytical separationbetween sex and gender is miscast be-cause "sex"is itself a social category.

IntroductionAlthough the term "feminist ethnography" has only recently emerged (Abu-Lughod 1990, Stacey 1988, Visweswaran 1988), and is now included in feministresearch manuals as one of a variety of interdisciplinary research methods (Rei-narz 1992), its relationship to the "writing culture" critique of anthropologicalrepresentation (Clifford & Marcus 1986, Marcus & Cushman 1982, Marcus &Fisher 1986) has meant that discussions of feminist ethnography have focusedmore on redefining the genre of ethnography than in actually exploring what ismeant by "feminist." Women in the discipline, however, have long experi-mented with form: Elsie Clews Parsons (Babcock 1992), Ella Deloria (1988),Zora Neale Hurston (1938), and Ruth Landes (1947) are but a few examples.

5910084-6570/97/1015-0591$08.00


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592 VISWESWARANThus, the focus on form and genre has meant that a lineage from Elsie ClewsParsonsto current eminist ethnographers as been establishedat the expenseof a more detailedexamination of what distinguishesParsons's ethnographyfrom that of her contemporariesor later writers.This review proposes to redirectsuch discussion by looking specifically atwhat modifies these texts as "feminist"to assess the historical influence offeminist ethnography upon the discipline (see also Collier & Yanagisako1989). It is an attempt o move away from the dominant erms that inform thehistory of anthropology-evolutionist or particularist, unctionalistor struc-turalist,Marxist or symbolic (Ortner 1984)-to understandhow gender hasbecome anorderingcategoryof anthropologicalanalysis.It furtherattempts ouse ethnographyas a meansof tracingshifts in theconceptualizationof genderin the anthropological iterature.The question of whether the term "feminist" s appropriateo describe thethoughtsand actions of women in other times and places is not an easy one(Burton 1992, Offen 1988, Riley 1990). If "feminism"has changed substan-tially in thepastone hundredyears, so too has ourunderstanding f what con-stitutesgender; hus,differentforms of feminism have produceddifferentun-derstandingsof gender,wheregenderitself cannotbe separated rom the cate-gories of race, class, or sexual identitythat determine t.

Gender s todaythesite of considerablecross-disciplinaryandtransnationalcrisis. As RosaBradiottihasnoted,"thesex/genderdistinction,which is one ofthe pillars on which English-speakingfeminist theoryis built, makes neitherepistemological nor political sense in many non-English,western-Europeancontexts,wherethe notions of 'sexuality' and 'sexual difference' are used in-stead"(Bradiotti& Butler 1994, p. 38).Forsome theorists,gender tself is a sociologism thatreifies the social rela-tions that are seen to produce t by failingto account for how the termsmascu-line and feminine are founded n languagepriorto any given social formation.The focus on sex difference, by contrast,examineshow masculine and femi-nine are constituteddifferentially, nsistingthat "this differential s nondialec-tical andasymmetrical n character,"where "recourse o a symbolicdomain isone in which those positionalitiesareestablishedand which in turnset the pa-rameters ornotions of the social"(Butler 1994, p. 18). In this view, genderisseen less as a structureof fixed relationsthan as a process of structuring ub-jectivities. While both genderand sexuality can be seen as the cultural con-structionof "sex,"neither of which can exist before representation,he majorchallengeto genderas an analytic concepthas come fromFoucauldianswhohave argued hat sex is not "thegrounduponwhich cultureelaboratesgender."Gender s rather he "discursiveoriginof sex"(Morris1995, p. 568-69); hencethe focus on sex difference.


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FEMINISTETHNOGRAPHY 593The sociologistic accountof gendertends to assume thata coregender den-tity is produced as an effect of social construction,requiring hatwomen notonly see themselves as a biological sex but as a social groupingwith which

they must identify. Postmodem thinkers, queer theorists, and feminists ofcolor have led the way in advancingsexuality as both counter-paradigm ndcritiqueof "genderessentialism."As Biddy Martin(1994, p. 105) succinctlyputs it:To the extent that gender is assumed to construct the ultimate ground ofwomen's experience, it has in much feminist work, come to colonize everyaspect of experience,psychological andsocial, as the ultimate root and ex-planationof thatexperience,consigning us, once again, to the very termsthatwe soughtto exceed, expandor redefine. When an uncriticalassumptionofthe category 'woman' becomes the 'subjectof feminism,' then genderpoli-tics takes the form of.. .the injunction o identify with/as women.

Thus, the assumptionthat gender comprises the core of all women's experi-ences produces a unified subject of identification, the need to identify"with/as"women.In this review essay, I attemptto provide an account of how gender hascome to signify "woman," hat s, a set of social relations hatproduceswomanas a universalcategorytranscendingdifference.I explorethe linked questionsof how women arefiguredas subjects,and what notions of thesubjectunderliethe productionof feministethnography o explainhow a subjectof identifica-tion is producedby particular nderstandingsf genderat distincthistoricalmo-ments. Though genderfirstemergedas a descriptive categoryforwomen, ra-cial and class formationshave atdifferenthistorical moments workedagainstgenderidentification,thatis, the emergenceof "woman"as a universalcate-gory.I thus ask how a feministethnographyhatdisplaces genderfromits cen-termight engage strategiesof disidentificationrather han identification.Since anthropologywas probably hedisciplinethatcontributedmost to theNorthAmerican(or sociologistic) account of gender,I think it is valuable totrace its operation n the feminist ethnography hatproduces t as an analyticalobject. Workingfrom the critiqueof genderessentialism,I arguethat feministethnographycan be defined as ethnography hatforegrounds he questionofsocial inequalityvis-'a-visthe lives of men, women, and children. This ap-proachto the literaturewidens the subject of feminist ethnography,but thelooseness of definition is important.Although much feminist anthropology

has presumed that women were its subjects,and this review focuses largelyupon the works of women anthropologistswritingabout other women, I sug-gest atthe close of this review thata broaderconceptionof the relationshipoffeministtheoryto social movementsmeansthat women should not be seen as


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594 VISWESWARANsole subjects, authors,or audiences of feministethnography.Variousforms ofcriticalethnographymight thusproductivelybe readas feministethnography.As a means of gauging the historicalproductionof feminist ethnographictexts, I propose to examinefourtime periods:1880-1920, 1920-1960, 1960-1980, and 1980-1996. These periodsshould be consideredroughapproxima-tions, not absolutechronologicalmarkers. suggest that we use these timepe-riods to think of genderless intermsof aprogressiveteleology than ntermsofcycles, whereit is importanto notedisjuncturesordoubledusagesof the term.In locatingthisanalysisas partof anongoingretellingof the historyof femi-nism(s) in theUnited States,1I want to emphasizethe decisive role anthropol-ogy hasplayed n shapingdebatesaboutgender ntheUnited States.While someauthorshave attempted o understand ow epistemologiessuch as feministem-piricism, standpointtheory, or postmodernism have informed feminist re-search(Cole & Phillips 1995) and others have concentratedon the ways thatfeminismhas beendelineatedby thetermsof classicalpoliticaltheory-liberal,radical,cultural,Marxist,or socialist (Jaggar1988) thesecategorizationsarelimitedforunderstandinghow anthropologyas a disciplinehas influenced thecourse of feminismin this country,and how feminismhas, in turn,defined it-self as amovementwithin the limits of US history(Cott1987,Giddens1984).Threeparadigmaticmarkershave been articulatedby US feminists for un-derstanding he historyof feminism(s) in this country:"firstwave" or suffra-gist feminism,secondwave, andthirdwave feminism.NancyCott's(1987) re-centworkholds that "feminism"did not emergeas a term of US politicaldis-courseuntil after 1910. Whatshe calls the nineteenth-century"womanmove-ment"comprisedvarioussuffrage,temperance,socialist, abolitionist,and so-cial reformorganizations.PhillippaLevine's (1987) distinctionbetween Vic-torianand modernfeminism, however, actuallysuggests thatboth forms areconstitutive of the first wave period. Thus the first period of review,1880-1920, roughlycorresponds o the ProgressiveEra andmarksthe transi-tionfromVictorian o modernfeminism,incorporatingwhatCottcalls the firstmajorphase of mass feministmobilizationfrom1912-1919.2 Thesecondperi-od of review, 1920-1960, while correspondingto a disaggregationof thewomen's movement(Cott 1987),also saw feministwork markedby modernistideas and experimentation.The thirdperiod, 1960-1980, marks the onset ofsecond wave feminism; alternately attributed to the publication of Betty'This poses disjunction orthe texts authoredby non-US anthropologistsdiscussed in this review(see Lutkehaus1986),butotherhistories of feministethnographymay yet be written.2Dates for the ProgressiveEra arevariable.I use 1920 as anendmarkerbecause it coincides withWarrenHarding's campaignfor a "returno normalcy"andwith what Cotttermsthe end of thesuffragemovement andemergence of modern eminism.


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FEMINISTETHNOGRAPHY 595Friedan's (1963) Feminine Mystique or to the influenceof civil rightsandtheNew Left movements (Evans 1979, Giddens 1984, King 1988), it is cotermi-nous with a second wave of mass feminist politics between 1967 and 1974.The term "thirdwave feminism" is linked to the contemporaryperiod begin-ning in 1980s andis still very muchin contention.Some have traced ts emer-gence to the critique by queertheoristsand women of color of second wavefeminism's tendency to generalize from a white, heterosexual, middle-classsubject position, for again, while second wave feminism borrowedfrom thecivil rightsmodel, it failedto dealpracticallyortheoreticallywithquestions ofclass, sexualidentity, homophobia,race,andracismwithin the movement(seeAlarcon 1991; CombaheeRiver Collective 1982; hooks 1984; Lorde 1984;Mohanty 1987; Moraga & Anzaldu[a 981; Sandoval 1990, 1991).

These paradigmaticmarkers,while they might be much refined or jetti-soned altogether,areuseful forunderstandingbroadshifts in the theorizationof feministpolitics.We mightthensee the shift from firstto second wave femi-nism as embodyingthe transition romanunderstanding f genderas a largelyempiricalcategory designatingwomen, to anemergingform of social critiquelinked both to theorizationof a "sex/gender" ystem and the developmentofgender "standpoint heory,"the notion that women sharea point of view de-spite cultural or class differences. I am particularly nterested here in hownineteenth-centurynterest n the "womanquestion"was transformed y femi-nist ethnographyof the second periodinto a "woman'spoint of view," muchbefore the developmentof standpoint heoryin the 1970s and 1980s. The shiftfrom secondwave feminismto thirdwave feminism can be seen in the emerg-ing critiqueof the sex/gendersystem,andashiftawayfrom aunifiedsubjectofconsciousness in gender standpoint heory,to what has been called theoriesofmultipleconsciousness or positioning (Alarcon 1989, 1991; Anzaldu[a1987,1991; Haraway 1988;Jones 1996a,b;Sandoval 1991).A major theme of the first two periods was contesting stereotypes ofwomen, despite the emphasison culturalor racial differenceprohibitinganyform of identification between women. With the development of feministstandpoint heory in the 1970s and 1980s, however, gender identification orgenderessentialism workedto subordinatedifferences of race, class, or sexualorientation(Harris 1990, Sandoval 1991, Spelman 1988, Trinh 1987). Thethirdand fourthperiodshave been most markedbothby the desireof feministethnographerso identifywith theirsubjectsas "women"anda challengeto re-center difference throughtextual strategiesof "disidentification." f genderidentificationobscures difference and the workingsof power,gender disiden-tification might expose difference and the operationof power, as partof the"rearticulation f democratic contestation" Butler 1993, p. 4). I thus distin-guishbetween moments of genderidentification(women like "us")frommo-


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596 VISWESWARANments of gender differenceor disidentification women unlike"us")vis-'a-visracial, sexual, or class positioning.I argue that the writing of Victorian women anthropologists on NativeAmerican gender roles during the first period fomented central contradic-tions within the dominantevolutionary paradigm,which led to its demise. Itwas Elsie Clews Parsonswho firstforegroundedpatriarchyo examinesexualinequality during the Progressive Era, and MargaretMead who developed adistinctionbetween sex andgenderin the second period. Gayle Rubin(1975)proposedthe idea of a "sex-gender" ystem by the mid- 1970s, but in the fourthperiod,dual critiquesof the sex/gender system and"genderessentialism"arebeing posited.AlthoughParsonsinitially saw genderas an empiricalcategorythat couldbe documentedby examininghow women were treated n differentsocieties,she did eventually develop an understandingof the cultural construction ofgender.For this reason,she was one of the firstfeminists to arguethatpatriar-chy was a damaginguniversal,not the particular volutionaryachievement ofWestern civilization. Second wave feminists like Robin Morgan,who pro-poundedthe universality of patriarchyor sexual asymmetry,were later cri-tiqued by third wave feminists for ignoring that women occupied differentstructuralpositions within patriarchydepending upon groupmembership,ormighteven be subjected o multiple, interlockingpatriarchies. f second wavefeminists saw women as fundamentally equal in their subordination, hirdwave feminists insist on the inequalityof women's subordinationbaseduponthe particular ocation of different communities in racial/class formations orheterosexualeconomies.The historicalperspective of this review puts it at odds with recentreadingsof feminist ethnography hat locate the emergence of feminism in the disci-pline exclusively in the 1970s. This is surprisinggiven that feminist scholarswho began work in this periodhave alreadymoved away fromsuch readings(see Lamphere1989). Nor do I believe thatposing the questionof a distinctlyfeminist ethnographypresupposes an unhealthy separationof ethnographyfromthe discipline of anthropology.To the extent that the genre of ethnogra-phy has been appropriatedor otherpurposesandby feminists in other disci-plines (Chabram1990, Cvetkovich 1995, Frankenberg1993, Jones 1996a,b,Newton 1993, Patai1988, Smith & Watson 1996, Stacey 1990, Toruellaset al1991), sucha move seems to me bothhealthyandinvigorating,not the orphanof a fraughtexchangebetween feminist theoristsandanthropologists Gordon1995, p. 431). In this review, I use the concepts of feminist theoryto analyzethe productionof ethnographiesabout women.In so doing, I want to move away from the question of "experimental-ism"-it is clearto me that a varietyof textualforms(diary,memoir, review,


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FEMINISTETHNOGRAPHY 597life history, autobiography, ravelogue) have existed throughout he history ofanthropologicalproduction Behar & Gordon1995, Tedlock 1991). My focusis thus less on "new writing" han on renewedstrategiesfor reading.In callingfor sustainedattention o the works of earlierwomenanthropologists, hen, myargumentis not that feminist anthropologistsof the 1970s ignored earlierwork.Rather, hey readit in particularways, largelyto shed light on the ques-tion of universal sexual asymmetry, ess forattention o the conception of gen-derbeing advanced,or for informationabout self-reflexive styles of writing.My point is not that one set of readings s mistaken,only that differenthistori-cal moments engenderdifferentstrategiesof reading.Inattempting o track heintertextualityof feministethnography, engage and assess those strategiesofreading o understandhe continuitiesandbreaks n its production.Many otherworksmighthavebeenconsidered n this review; my objective is not to restrictwhat countsas "feministethnography" ut to suggest parameters o aid in un-derstandingwhat it has been andmight yet become.Since the focus of this review is uponethnography, reviewonly interdisci-plinarywritingor workin socioculturalanthropology, inguistic anthropology,and folklore. Considerablefeminist work also exists in the other subdisci-plines, and I refer interested readers to those accounts (Conkey & Williams1991, Liebowitz 1975, Zihlman 1985). Similarly,a numberof reviews haveperiodicallyassessedthe statusof feministscholarship n linguistic anthropol-ogy (Borker 1984, Eckert & McConnell-Ginet1992, Gal 1991), folklore(Ro-san & de Caro Jordan1986), life history (Geiger 1986), ethnohistory Strong1996),and socioculturalanthropology Atkinson1982, Lamphere1977,Morris1995, Mukhopadhyay& Higgins 1988, Quinn1977, Rapp 1979, Rogers 1978,Weston 1993), in additionto introductions or a numberof recent collections(di Leonardo1991, Ortner1981, Rapp 1975, Rosaldo & Lamphere1974).I 1880-1920: TheEmergenceof Genderas an AnthropologicalCategory ofAnalysis3When EdwardTyloraddressed he AnthropologicalSociety of Washington n1884,he heldthat,"themanof thehouse, thoughhe cando a greatdeal,cannotdo it all. If his wife sympathizeswith his work, andis able to do it, reallyhalfthe work of investigationseems to me to fall to her, so much is to be learnedthroiqgh he women of the tribe, which the men will not readily disclose."Speaking n particular f MatildaCox Stevenson's collaborationwith her hus-band, Tylorconcludedthat twas a lesson not to "warn he ladiesoff from theirproceedings,but rather o avail themselvesthankfullyof theirhelp" (in Parezo3For a fuller account of the writings of women anthropologists n this period, see Visweswaran(1997).


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598 VISWESWARAN1993). Elsie Clews Parsons (1906) also arguedthat women could aid ethnol-ogy because a "woman studentwould have many opportunities or observingthe life of women thatmale ethnographers ave lacked" p. 198). This suggeststhat early women ethnographers hargedwith the collection of informationonwomen understoodgender as largely an empirical or descriptive category.Still, while Alice Fletcher was interestedin the study of Native Americanwomen, "hoping to add to the historical solution of the 'woman question,"'9(Mark 1980, p. 67), only she, Cox Stevenson, andParsons actually producedextensive ethnographic nformationabout women and children, though theiranthropologywas not limitedto this realm.Victoriannotions of sexualdifferenceheld thatmen andwomenwere charac-terizedby theirbiology,whichinturndetermined heirsocial roles (Levine 1987,p. 129). This inseparabilityof sex from gendermeant that the term "woman"itself was taken for grantedrather than seen as something to be explainedthroughoutmuchof the nineteenthcentury.But ErminniePlatt Smith's writingon the Iroquois,Fletcher's work on the Omaha,and Cox Stevenson's on theZunishowedthatwomen in"primitive"ocieties led lives notof degradation utof honor andrespect.Such accountschallenged he Victorianevolutionarydeathat Western women occupiedthe highest place of honoramongthe rangeofworld culturesandposeda "womanquestion" equiring xplanation.Thecentralcontradictionof Victorian evolutionismcan thereforebe simply stated:If thestatusof women was seen to be the measure of a civilization, why was it thatwhite women were denied the vote, rightsto property,andindependence n arange of social activities, when "primitive"Native American women mighthave rights o property, sayinritualpractice,andconsiderable ocial freedom?Still, it would not be quiteaccurate o say that the "womanquestion"sun-dered the logic of Victorian evolutionism. Although it had become increas-ingly difficult for Victorianevolutionary heoryto explain awaythe results ofemergingfield-basedethnologyon matrilineal ocieties (Cox Stevenson 1894,1904;Fee 1975; Fletcher 1899), and this genderstraincertainlycontributed oits demise, high Victorianismheldthatwhile women wereunequal,they werenot inferior,cloakingtheir subordinationn the glories of innatespiritualityormaternalduty.In suggestingthatearlywomen anthropologistspointedto thecontradiction between lowly "independent"women and highly positioned"dependent"women, then, it must be remembered hat, apartfrom Parsons,they were not only unable to breakwith the conventions of Victoriansociety,but wereto a largeextent enabledby its gender deology. Indeed,the followingstatementsarevirtuallyall theseanthropologistshave to sayaboutthe"womanquestion" n a rather arge body of work.Cox Stevenson(1904) wrote that"Thedomestic life of the Zunismightwellserve as an examplefor the civilized world"(p. 293), and Parsons(1916) was


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FEMINISTETHNOGRAPHY 599to proclaim, "Fewwoman areinstitutionallyas independentas Pueblo Indianwomen.. particularly ] Zuni women (who) marryand divorcemoreor less atpleasure. They own theirhouses and theirgardens.Theiroffspringare reck-oned of their clan. Their husbands come to live with them in their familygroup"(p. 44). Fletcher (1883) also acknowledgedthat"civilization"for theIndianwoman was not without ts drawbacks."Their tatus s one of Independ-ence in many ways, particularlyas to property.Once whenourlaws respectingmarriedwomen were being explained to them, an Indianmatron exclaimed,'I'm glad I'm not a white woman "' (p. 314). In a laterarticle, "The IndianWomanand HerProblems,"Fletcher (1899, p. 174) expanded:

Under the old tribal regime, woman's industrieswere essential to the verylife of the people, and their value was publicly recognized. While she suf-feredmany hardshipsand laboredearlyandlate, her workwas exalted cere-monially and she had a partin tribal functions.Her influence in the growthand developmentof tribalgovernment,tribalceremonies, and tribalpowershows thatherpositionhadalwaysbeen one of honorrather hanone of slav-ery anddegradation.Even as Fletcherwas concernedto argue against stereotypesof Native Ameri-canwomen, the reverseportraitbecamea foil againstwhichtojudge theprog-ress of white women,an idealizedsymbolof what Victorianwomen did notyetenjoy: independence.In arguing for their own independence hen, earlywomen anthropologistsdid not argue for an end to the process that subjugatedNative Americanwomen as women. In fact, the perceived "independence" f Native Americanwomen in spite of forced removal andgenocide, may have workedas an ideo-logical shieldinmuch the sameway thatwhite women were not seen to be sub-jugatedas womenbecausetheywerewhite.Just at the moment the idea of gen-derdifference-that is, the differentsocial roles occupiedby women in nativeand white cultures mighthave challengedracial hierarchy,Parsons's (1916)insistence that,"Themain objective of feminism in fact, may be defeminisa-tion,the declassificationof women aswomen,therecognitionof womenashu-manbeings orpersonalities" p. 54) worked to erase racialdifferenceand ine-qualitiesbetween women altogether.In Parsons'swriting,such a paradoxicaldeclassification of women and subordination f differenceactually shapestheemergencein herwork of women as a universalcategory.This double move-ment is most presentin her early writings which she characterizedas "propa-gandaby theethnographicmethod,"butactuallypredateherentry ntoempiri-cal anthropologyaround 1915 (see Deacon 1997, Lamphere1989).Much has been written of Parsons's contribution o the culturalconstruc-tion of genderand herpolyphonic dispersed style of writing (Babcock 1992,Deacon 1997). She has been creditedwith establishinganinterest n "mother-


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600 VISWESWARANing as form and institution,"as well as in the cross-culturalconstructionofsexualitythroughher work onthe ZuniLa'mana, houghthisdesignationmoreproperlybelongs to Matilda Cox Stevenson, whose descriptionsof childbirtharewrittenas unfoldingsocial dramas,4and whose relationshipwith We'wha,Zuni "man/woman" s cataloguedwith affection and respect(see also Parezo1993). Still, an understandingof how gender distinctionsreflect institutionalsocial inequalityemerges more fully in Parsons'spopularwritings than in herethnographicwork.Parsons's (1906) first majorwork,"AnEthnographical ndHistorical Out-line of the Family,"is usually forgivenits apparentevolutionismandis moreoften rememberedfor her controversialadvocacy of trialmarriage,whereasherproblematicadvocacy of birthcontrolfor classes "the least culturallyde-veloped, andtherefore he leastself-controlled," p. 351) hasbeenoverlooked.As a solution to reducingthe cost to the state of such criminalreproductionbyits "diseased or vicious subjects,"Parsons had advocated use of Galton's"eugenicscertificates" p. 344).By 1909, however, Parsons's views of class difference seem to have beensubmerged n ethnographicuniversalsaboutwomen's condition.She held that"royal ladies of the African west coast" and the queens of medieval Europefought similarbattles to establishtheirindependence:"All these queens, nuns,and femmes de joie were the celibate or grass widow pioneers of woman'srights, the ancestressesof the modem emancipatedwoman"(1909, p. 758).Fouryears later, in The Old-Fashioned Woman,Parsons was again arguingthat the differences betweenWesternsociety and other societies werenotpro-nounced where women were concerned(1913, p. 24):

"Coming-out"s acustom otpeculiaro civilization.Ourdebutantesreaptto be older,to be sure,thanthose elsewhere. nsteadof a year or two"abroad"r in a "finishingchool," avagegirls usuallyspendbuta fewweeksormonthsnalonelyhutor na bedor na hammock rcage n a cor-nerof the houseoron the roof.But once"out," debutante'sife is every-wheremuch hesame.Everywheretthistimeparticularttentionspaid oagirl'slooks.

While Parsonsherearticulatesa form of genderidentificationby celebratingapracticecommon to diverse groupsof women, in the same moment she putsundererasure he class differencesof industrial ociety, and the very presenceof working women who were not attendingdebutanteballs but subject toeugenicistrecommendations.In her 1916work,Social Rule,however, such universalshad morenegativeconnotations, or"[f]rom he dominationof herfamily (a woman) passesunder4See her descriptionsf childbirth mong he Sia (1894, pp. 132-43) and Zuni(1904, pp.294-303).


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FEMINISTETIHINOGRAPHY 601thedominationof herhusbandand,perhaps n addition,of his family" (p. 44).Thus,atthe same momentParsonsestablished he relativehighstatusandauton-omy of womenin "primitive" ultures,her move to equalizesources of oppres-sion between diversegroupsof women makes them all subjectsof the samepa-triarchy, ffacingdifference n theprocess. Parsons'sassertion hat t was patri-archal social organization hatoppresses women constitutes the majorbreakwith thedominant trainof evolutionisttheorythatheld thatpatriarchywas theform of civilized society (Fee 1975). The deploymentof culturaldifference toestablisha universalizedpatriarchys perhaps hecentralcontribution ndpara-dox of Parsons'sethnologicallyinformedfeminism,one which has hada trou-bledhistory n "second-wave"Anglo-American eminism,and the ideas of uni-versal sexual asymmetry hat informed he feminist anthropologyof the 1970sand1980s (cf. di Leonardo1991, Lamphere1989, Rapp1975,Rosaldo 1980).Victorian women anthropologists ike Fletcherand Cox Stevenson wereunableto sunder he notion that sex andgenderwere one and the same (thoughtheirwork posed the question of separating he two). Parsons,however,inrec-ognizing the varietyof roles women played throughouthistories andcultures,came close to suggesting, as MargaretMead laterdid, that different sex rolesmight be enabledby differentcultures.Parsonswas thusa transitional igure,one who presaged Mead's interventions,which clearly separatedsex fromgenderby developing a distinctionbetween sex and sex temperament.HI.1920-1960. Ethnographiesof Race, EthnographiesofWomen,and the Sex/GenderDistinctionMargaretMead was possibly not the first social scientist to develop a distinc-tion between biological sex and sociologically distinct genderroles, but shewas certainlythe first to use ethnography o do so. Her firstwork, ComingofAge in Samoa, investigatedwhether "theprocess of growthby which the girlbaby becomes a grown woman," or "the sudden and conspicuous bodilychangeswhich takeplace atpuberty"was accompaniedby aninevitableperiodof mental andemotional distress for the growing girl"(1928, p. 196). Mead'sanswerwas, of course,"no."Comingof age in Samoa had none of the fraughtconnotations t had in the United States(p. 197).5However,itwas not until hercomparativeworkinSex and TemperamentnThreeSocieties thatshe distinguishedbetween sex and sex temperamentn anow famous formulation 1935, p. 280): "many,if not all, of the personalitytraitswhich we have called masculine or feminine are as lightly linked to sexas are the clothing,the manners,andthe form of head-dressthat a society at agiven period assignsto eithersex." Significantly,Mead's early formulationof5Thistheme was exploredagainin hernext majorwork(1930), Growing Up in New Guinea.


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602 VISWESWARANgenderas sex temperamentwas often deployed by feminist ethnographers fthis period to emphasize cultural or racial difference, working against anyform of genderidentification.

Still, Mead's ComingofAge in Samoa inaugurated periodof textual pro-ductionduring he late 1930sto late 1940sin which"ethnographiesf women,"that s, texts with womenas their sole or main subject,were written hrough hemedium of the life history, "autobiography,"Landes 1971; Reichard 1934,1939; Underhill1979) ortravelnarrative Hurston1935, 1938;Landes 1947).Writers n this periodoscillated between the empiricistassumptionsof Tylorand Parsons (studyingwomen for a more completepictureof the society) andvindicationist approaches hat soughtto refute culturalor genderstereotypes.Early feminist ethnography hatrelied upon life history methodwas con-cernedto establishthe simultaneousuniquenessandtypicalityof the womenbeing written about.Ruth Landes's (1971) Ojibwa Woman onsists of storiesthatMaggie Wilson narrated o her daughteraboutotherwomen in the com-munity. Although Landesdescribes Maggie's achievementsas "boldly ven-turesomeand resourceful,""[o]nlyfragmentsof Maggie's life story appear nthepresentvolume" though"[h]ermajorattitudesareexposed inher choice oftales .. andin herturnsof phrase" p. viii). While Maggie is obviously apow-erfulpersonalityand a"giftedwoman,"Landes strugglestojustify the absenceof her authorialpresence by noting contradictorily,"A preliteratesocietymasks its personalitieswith anonymity" p. viii).Theinsistenceon makingawoman both uniqueandtypicalof herculture salso foundinRuthUnderhill'swork.For her,"aPapagowoman'shistoryis in-teresting in itself, because, in this culture, there exists strongly the fear ofwoman's impuritywith all its consequentsocial adjustments"1979, p. 33). Inchoosing Chonaas a subject,Underhillstruggledto see heras typical:"She isnot theaberrant ypewhich so frequentlyattracts he attentionof the Whitein-vestigator.She acceptedher culturecompletely, andone reason for choosingher was thatshe had come in contact with so many of its importantphases."Still, Chona was not the "idealPapagofemale type, for she was inclined to beindependentand executive..." (1979, p. 34).Autobiography,biography,and life history were often conflated to erasethe narratorial resenceof the white womananthropologist,while her author-ship was paradoxicallyunderscored.Some saw themselves as neithereditorsnor elicitors of the life stories gathered Landes 1971); otherswere more cog-nizant of their role in shapingthe narrative. n the introduction o Autobiogra-phy of a Papago Woman,RuthUnderhill(1979) calls it a "memorypicture,"(p. 10) underscoringher role as editor of Chona's narrative,noting that herstory "appearsn these pages,brief and concise..." though"thewritingof thatsimplestorytook threeyears"(p. 27). Thus,"inpresentingan Indianautobiog-


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FEMINISTETHNOGRAPHY 603raphy, there still remain importantquestions of technique. Indian narrativestyle involves a repetitionand a dwelling on unimportantdetails which con-fuse the White readerandmake it hard for him to follow the story"(p. 3).

The devices of fiction were also used to constructthe generalized subjectsof life history. Gladys Reichard 1939) began Dezba: Womanof the Desert bynoting that"Dezba s one of the 45,000 or 48,000 Navajo Indianswho inhabitavast territory rom NortheasternArizonaandNorthWesternNew Mexico," yet"In depicting the characterof the story I have used no incidents or detailswhich are not true. Nevertheless... the descriptionof the actors,the relation-ship they bear to the author,and the episodes in which they appearareall fic-tional. I know no Navajo exactly like anyonehereportrayed" p. vi).Others reflected specifically on the relationshipof anthropologicalnarra-tive tonovelistic fiction. When Mead likened thetechniquesof the fieldworkerto thatof the novelist (cited in Lutkehaus1995, p. 189), Kaberrry 1939) con-curred that "The anthropologistneeds the eye of a novelist..." (pp. 38-39)."Ethnographies f women," then,reveal considerableforethoughtand reflex-ivity about the conditions of textualproduction,often deliberatelyusing "fic-tion" as a strategicnarrativedevice to relay a "woman'spoint of view." Inthese texts, however, the function of a "woman's point of view" is to specifyculturaldifferenceand is not a pointof identificationbetween author,subject,andaudience.At the time of its publication,Phyllis Kaberry's(1939) Aboriginal Womanwas heralded orof its contribution"to ourknowledgeof the life of Aboriginalwomen" and creditedwith disprovingthe "widespread dea thatAboriginalwomen are mere drudges,passinga life of monotonyandbeing shamefully ll-treated by their husbands" (p. xxii). Like Fletcher before her, Kaberryde-ployed anthropology o debunkstereotype,revealingthe social constructionofgender,for theAboriginalwoman had to be envisaged"asanactive social per-sonality:as a humanbeing with all the wants, desires and needs that flesh isheir to" (p. 9). Like Mead, Kaberrywas also adept at showing how cultureandenvironmentshape differentnotions of womanhood (p. 10):

The countryfor the aboriginalwoman is not so much freehold or leaseholdproperty,but one she regardsas her own because she has inherited he rightto live and forage for food within its boundaries.In her patriotism,she isreadyto insist that there is an abundanceof game, fish, andyams, whetherthere is or not. To the white woman...the countryis one of plains and aridhills. It seems incredible to her that the native woman can forage day, afterday, wanderingapparentlyat random n the hope of finding a few tubers.Kaberry'sperceptionof aboriginalwomen's "patriotism"n ayearof drought,andawarenessof her own racialization, s perhapsdue to the heightened con-text of World WarII. As racial identities were reflectedthrough genderdis-


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604 VISWESWARANtinctions, so too were gender distinctions reflected through race relations.Thus the textualproductionof this era spanningthe Depression to the end ofWorldWarIIwas alsomarkedby "ethnographies f race"which moredeliber-ately deployed a "woman's viewpoint" to foregroundrace relations.6Manyworks, including ZoraNeale Hurston's(1938) TellMy Horse, which explorescross-cultural xperiencesof womanhood n theUnited States andCaribbean,orEllaDeloria's (1988) Waterlily,anovel aboutcomingto womanhood n Da-kota Sioux society, reveal the use of a formof gender standpoint o explore theimpact of raceuponthe authorsandthose they write about,but disturb he co-herence of identification between author,subject, and reader by generatingmultiplepositionings in their texts.

Otherworks of this period, however, do not necessarilymake women thesole subjects of analysis. Hurston's (1935) Mules and Men and Landes's(1947) City of Women, n particular,combine textual modes that enable amovement fromrace relations ntheAmericanSouth (Eatonville,Fisk Univer-sity) to the analysis of race relations in Afro-Brazilian and Afro-Caribbeancommunities.Despite Landes's mistaken claim that racialproblemsin Brazildid not exist (1947, p. xxxvi), Cityof Womendetails her ownnegotiationof pa-triarchal acialideologies in the United States andBrazil.Hortense Powdermaker's (1939) After Freedom similarly describes herown mediatingposition in race relations of the US south, writingof the diffi-culty of workingin a region of markedhostility between whites and blacks.Thus, Powdermaker 1939) is forced to accountfor the "woman's view" re-flected in herethnography p. xvi):Inthecommunitytudied,t is almost utof thequestionora whitewomanto interviewNegromen.Accordingly,he colored nformants eremainlywomen.Since,however, heNegro amily nCottonvilles so largelymatri-archal, nd ince twouldhavebeendifficultnanysituationoronepersonto getmaterial f equal ntimacyrommembers f bothsexes,thiswas notsucha serioushandicap. omethingf the malepointof view wasrevealedthroughhe women.

While Powdermaker elieduponunexaminedstereotypesof the "Negrofam-ily," her writing, along with work by Landes, Hurston, Deloria, and otherspoints to how genderdistinctions areinseparable romthe patriarchal ace re-lations thatDroduce hem.6These texts includeworks by sociologists working n the"CasteSchool of RacialRelations": ohnDollard's (1937) Caste and Class in a Southern Town,BG Gallaghers's (1938) American Casteand the Negro College, andworks by anthropologists, uch as Davis & Gardner's 1941) DeepSouth, Melville Herskovits's (1941) Myth of the Negro Past, and St. Clair Drake & HoraceCayton's(1945) Black Metropolis.


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FEMINISTETHNOGRAPHY 605Discussion of patriarchysometimes worked to displace analysis of racialconflict in feminist ethnographyof this period, however. Gladys Reichard's(1934) Spider Womans a firstpersonaccount of her own instruction n weav-

ing overaperiodof foursummers,butit is also stagedas a series of encounterswithNavajopatriarchy.Navajomen appear n her narrativeas thosewho sup-portherefforts to weave (especially important, ince it is theywho do the hardlaborfor setting upthe looms) orthose who challengeit (p. 96). Unfortunately,Reicharddisplays an inabilityto comprehend hat what is for heran aestheticpleasureor summerpastimeis laborthatmustultimatelyreceive economicre-muneration.When one mandemands hatReichardpayhis wife a largesum ofmoney for teachingher to weave because she might in turn"teachthe whitewomen to weave so thatNavajo women won't be able to earnmoney any-more," (p. 216) Reichard s unable to locate herself as partof a larger,white-dominatedpolitical economy, though she recognizes that the Navajo "havebeen exploited by whites foryears"and are "on the defensive." Her dismissalof demands for correctpayment is thus justified by what she sees as maledomination, "corroboratedby white observers and other Navajo"-that"Kinni's-Son s supported argely by the industryof his women, and he wantsto be supportedas well as possible" (pp. 216-17).

Despite both Reichard'sandParsons's identificationwith andadoptionofthe Spiderwoman ole inNative American eachings(Weigle 1982),racialandclass privilegeremainsunmarkedn their texts. This suggests thatthe feministethnographyof thisperiodevokes a "woman'spoint of view" not as a subjectof identification hatactivates woman as a universalcategory,but as the filterthroughwhich cultural and racial difference is both apprehendedand ab-stracted romunequalrelations of power.III. 1960-1980. Sex/GenderSystemsand Universalsof SexOppressionEthnographies hat sought to understand he structural ymbolic position ofwomen in society began to appear n the late 1950s (Berndt 1950, Richards1956) andcontinued nto the 1970s and 1980s (Goodale 1971, Strathern1972,Weiner 1976). In 1971, however,courses on the anthropologyof women weretaughtforthe firsttime at StanfordUniversity, theUniversity of Michigan, andthe University of California,Santa Barbara.These courses, and others likethem, properlymarkedthe inaugurationof US feminist anthropologyand thebooks that emerged from them: Michelle Rosaldo and Louise Lamphere's(1974) Women,Cultureand Society, Rayna Rapp's(1975) Towardan Anthro-pology of Women,and M Kay Martinand BarbaraVoorhies's (1975) Femaleof the Species.


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606 VISWESWARANMuch has alreadybeen written about the first two collections, for whichRobin Morgan's (1970) Sisterhood is Powerfulwas probablya motivating, ifunacknowledgedforce. And while second wave feminism was influenced by

civil rights and other movements for racial equality (Evans 1979, Giddens1984, King 1988), the analogy of sex oppressionto race oppressionwas theunstated ntellectualground or these collections, allowing the submergenceofracial and culturaldifferencein woman as a universal category.7Inreexamin-ing their moment of production,I want to suggest new ways of understandingthe emergenceand intertextuality f feministanthropology. f it is truethattheexpositoryreview was one of the first textualforms employed by this genera-tion of feminist anthropologists Gordon 1995), what was its relationshiptoethnographicwriting of this period?I arguethat the first manifesto-like re-views can be readin a kind of call and responsemode. Inresponseto the call,"Are women universallythe second sex?" feminist ethnographersansweredequivocally "yes"and "no."Women,Culture and Society opened with an invocation from Simone deBeauvoirand then went on to debunkthe theories of "matriarchy"sed as ex-planations for "women's past." Michelle Rosaldo and Louise Lamphere(1974) queried, "What hendo anthropologistsknow about ourheritage?" p.4) and concludedthat since muchof itwas negative, "[b]y treatingeverywherewomen's lives as interestingandproblematic,we hope to loosen the hold ofstereotypesthathave, unfortunately, hapedourown lives (p. 15).Likesome of theVictorianerawomen,secondwavefeministanthropologiststhought that understanding he lives of women in other culturescould helpthem make sense of their own (Rapp 1975,p. 11). In locatingfeminist workinthe struggle againststereotypes,the authorsof these collections placedthem-selves in the vindicationistmatrilineof Fletcher,Nuttal, Hurston,Deloria,andKaberry.Althoughrecent reflections (Lamphere1989) suggest thatMargaretMead was thefeministspiritbehindtheRosaldoandLamphere ollection,nei-ther Woman,Cultureand Societynor TowardanAnthropologyof Womende-tail in anysubstantiveway the contributionsof MargaretMead. Thatwas actu-ally left to Martin& Voorhies (1975), who dedicated Female of the Species"ToMargaretMead:A continuingpioneerin the anthropological tudyof sexand gender."Martin& Voorhies's notion of "genderstatus"was indebted toMead's workin Sex and Temperament ndto herlaternotion of "sex careers"(p. 95). For them, the "biological and cultural aspects of sex" were distin-guished by "featuresknownto have a genetic basis as a person'sphysical sex7Manyof theEngels-influencedwritersof the periodused the analogyof "sexoppression"o classoppression, recallingParsons's use of the term "sex class,"but the effect was again to produce"woman"as a universalcategory.


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FEMINISTTHNOGRAPHY 07orphenotypicsex" from "thosefeatures hat appear o have their foundation ncultural nstruction,andthatreflect... a person's social sex or gender" p. 3).Mead was still alive at the time these workswere produced;her controver-sial public persona, and perhapsher own apparentdisavowal of feminism,madeher a difficult figurefor 1970s feminists to claim.8Betty Friedan's sec-ondwave text, TheFeminine Mystique,also devotedan entirechapter o a cri-tique of Mead's ideas.9Friedan(1963) arguedthat while the "femininemys-tiquemight havetakenfrom MargaretMead hervision of the infinitevarietyofsexual patternsandthe enormousplasticityof humannature,avision based onthe differencesof sex andtemperament he foundin threeprimitivesocieties"(p. 136), what emergedfrom Mead's work was "aglorificationof women inthe female role as definedby their sexualbiological function"(p. 137).

By 1975, it was Gayle Rubin who defined the sex/gender system (againwithout recourse to Mead) as "the set of arrangementsby which a societytransformsbiological sexualityinto productsof humanactivity,andin whichthese transformed exual needs are satisfied" 1975, p. 159). Accordingto her,"Everysociety...has a sex/gendersystem-a set of arrangements y which thebiologicalrawmaterialof humansex andprocreations shapedby human,so-cial interventionand satisfied in a conventionalmanner" 1975, p. 165). It isthisnotion of a sex/gendersystemthatpermeates he ethnographicproductionof this periodand the next.AlthoughI cannot discuss the full rangeof texts that use some notion of asex/gendersystem, it is importanto note that not all of themproducea coher-entsubjectof identification.I have elsewhere(Visweswaran1994)written hatsecondwave feministethnographies uch as HortensePowdermaker's 1966)Strangerand Friend, LauraBohannon's(1966) ReturntoLaughter,ElizabethFernea's(1969) Guestsof the Sheikh,or Jean Briggs's (1970) Never inAngeroften reportthe authors' assignmentto the world of women, andmomentsofdisaffection or disidentification ollowing fromthe authors' inabilityto iden-tify with theirsubjectsto createaunified"woman'spointof view." This groupof textspowerfullysuggestsdisjunctionanddiscontinuityrather hanprogres-sive teleology in the historicalelaborationof genderwithin the discipline.Bycontrast,mostauthors hroughouthe 1980s and 1990s enact strategiesof iden-tificationwith their subjects(Abu-Lughod1987, 1993;Behar 1993;Bell 1993;Shostak 1981).8For example,in the introductiono Sex and Temperament,Mead (1935) pronounced,"Thisstudyis not .. a treatiseon the rightsof women, nor an inquiry nto thebasis of feminism"(p. viii). Herlegacy is still contested(Foerstel& Gilliam 1992)and has only recently been reclaimed,but morefor her contributionso writing (Behar & Gordon1995, Lutkehaus1995, Marcus& Fisher1986,Reinharz1991) than as the originatorof the sex/genderdistinction n anthropology.9See Chapter6, "The FunctionalFreeze, The Feminine Protestand MargaretMead."


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608 VISWESWARANIn noting this contrast, want brieflyto explore how feministethnographersof differing periods read, and reread each other's work to produce ethno-graphicsites of intertextualityand contestation.I am particularlynterested n

EleanorLeacock's (1978) critique of Landes's (1971) work and Diane Bell's(1993) engagement with Phyllis Kaberry's (1939) work in her 1983 bookDaughters of theDreaming.Leacock's (1978) critiqueof RuthLandes's work is foundin her classic ar-ticle "Women's Statusin EgalitarianSociety: Implicationsfor Social Evolu-tion." LeacockpresentsLandes'swork as an exampleof "theextentto whichdata can be skewed by a nonhistoricalapproach..based on (ethnocentric)as-sumptionsaboutpublic-prestigiousmales versusprivate-deferentemales"(p.251). Leacock accuses Landes of providingtwo contradictorydescriptionsofwomen in Ojibwasociety: "Inone, women are extremely self-sufficient andindependentand much more versatilethan men.""By contrast, he secondde-scriptiondeals with a hunting society in which women are 'inferior' andlack'distinct raining,' n which thegeneralizations made that'anyman is intrinsi-cally andvastly superior o any woman..." (p. 251).Leacock held that if women were excluded frompublic decision-making(as RosaldoandLamphereargued) t was the result of a particular ex-gendersystem producedby capitalistdevelopment.The failureto identifyaparticularpublic/privatedichotomyas the lens of ourown sex/gendersystem operatingthroughcapitalismamounted, or Leacock,to a projectionof false ideologicalcategoriesonto others.It is, however, possible to see Landes's descriptionsof Ojibwa life as arichlywoven accountthatconveys thecomplexityof women's socialposition-ing and a productive nabilityto say decisively whetherthey arewholly inde-pendentor subordinate. suggest thatit is not the accountsthatarefaultybutthe formof a questionthat asked feminists to decide conclusively one way orthe other.10Diane Bell, in contrast o Leacock,located herself in a line of vindicationistscholarshipon aboriginalwomen which included Phyllis Kaberry (1939),CatherineBemdt (1950), and Jane Goodale (1971). Based on fieldwork con-ducted between 1976 and 1982, Daughtersof theDreamingis simultaneouslya first-personaccountof "learning o be a woman"in aboriginalsociety (Bell1993, pp. 21, 28, 34-35) and an account of genderrelationswithin it. Bell de-t0Such contradictory complexity also marks Ruth Underhill's work. Remarking upon thedifferences between Underhill's (1938) monographSingingfor Power, and her 1965 study, RedMan's Religion, MarthaWeigle (1982, pp. 172-73) notes thatwhile Underhill's first account ofPapago menstrual taboos and beliefs positions women as fearful and dangerous sites ofcontamination,her later accountreworked he same passagesin dialogical formto conclude thatwomen's monthly social separationwas a sign of sacredpower.


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FEMINIST THNOGRAPHY 09scribesherself as "dedicated o learninga woman's point of view" (p. 33). Atvarious points, however, her own identification with aboriginalwomen ispuncturedby moments of unease: "It was as if I had been acceptedbecause Iwas a white woman andtheWarlpirihadlearnednotto arguewithwhites.Iwasa Nakamarra, widow, amother,butI was also awhitewoman. MaybeIwas alittle like the welfare people" (p. 27). This is one of the few places in the textwhere Bell's genderidentificationwith aboriginalwomen is undercutby a re-flection upon the structural ositionof power implied in her racialpositioning.Bell clearly sees herethnographyas akind of response to the debatesaboutuniversal sexual asymmetry,noting, "I have throughoutthis book avoidedspeakingof sexual equalityor inequalitybecauseI believe these conceptsdis-tortour understanding f male-female relationships n desert society" (p. 237).However, while Bell explicitly aligned herself with Leacock's position, herwriting aboutaboriginalwomen was not reducible o it.1 Like PhyllisKaberrybefore her,Bell soughtto underlinepositive yet complex imagesof Aboriginalwomen. The feministethnographieshatemerged nresponseto the debatesonuniversalsexual asymmetry, hen,were remarkable or their refusal to decidethe questionone way or the other.Inthe epilogue written 10 yearsafterthe initialpublicationof the book, Bellwrites of herownprocessof identifyingwith the women she studied,explicitlyaligning herselfwith the standpoint heoryof Nancy Hartsock 1987) and San-draHarding 1993). Bell's recognitionof the allianceof feministethnographywith standpoint heory is important; largernumberof feministethnographiesare produced by standpointtheory without their authors' acknowledgment.Standpointperspectivesrely upona notion of thesex/gender system,which as-sumes women are all members of the same "sex"notwithstandingdifferentgenderidentificationsproducedby culture,for to producea "women's stand-point,"which is sharedby womenregardlessof culture, s to rely upontheonlything women share in common: biology (see Jagger 1988, p. 377).12

Standpoint heory,as CatherineO'Leary (1997) so cogently argues,univer-salizes the categoryof genderso that difference is subordinated o a unifiedsubjectof identification.As standpoint heorywas formalizedin the 1980s, itwas held thatthe feministstandpointwas founded"on thebasis of the commonthreadsof female experience..." (Hartsock1987). Despite the Marxistoriginof muchstandpoint heory, it producesgender identificationbetweenfeminist1Nor was Marjorie Shostak's (1981) Nisa limited to the debates about "egalitarian bandsocieties," though it is these questionsthat informher fieldwork.

12lnterestinglyenough, Dorothy Smith's (1987) early formulationof standpoint heory read JeanBrigg's ethnography ot for its ruptures nd disaffections Visweswaran1994) but for evidence of a"'woman's erspective."


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610 VISWESWARANethnographers nd their subjects,erasing differencesof race, class, or sexualorientation. 3Other forms of standpoint heory operatein field memoirs like KatherineDunham's (1994) Island Possessed, where negritudeis advancedas an exis-tentialethnographic ens. Written n Senegal, some thirty-oddyears after herfirst experiencesin the field, it is a partialmeditationof her own positioning inthe scholarshipon Haitiby Melville Herskovits and his students (p. 4):

They were white and male these writers. Of my kind I was a first-a loneyoung woman easy to place in the clean-cut American dichotomyof color,harder o place in the complexity of Caribbeancolor classifications; a mu-latto when occasion called for, an in-between, or "griffon"actually, I sup-pose; most of the time an unacceptable, which I prefer to think of as"noir"-not exactly the color black, but the qualityof belongingwith or be-ing at ease with black people when in the hills or plains or anywhere,andscramblingthrough daily life along with them. Though the meaning of theword negritudehas never beencompletely clear tome, herein the countryofthe conceiver of the concept, reflectingonmy early years,IknowImusthavepracticed,preachedand lived it.For Dunham,negritude is the standpointthat allows her to reflect upon hershifting racialpositionin US and Caribbean ocieties. The extent to which herunderstandingof negritudeis essentialist, or only strategicallyso, entails afuller discussion of racialvindicationism as a sociopolitical strategy againstracismandmustbe balanced against her understandingof color andclass dif-ference as central o thesocially constructedcharacter f race.Like ZoraNealeHurston,Dunhamdeploystheethnographicmediumto reflecton hergenderedracial identitiesin the United Statesand Haiti, suggestingmultiplesubjectpo-sitioningsorhyphenatedconsciousness. Furtherworkmight explorethe extentto which black feminist standpointtheory (Collins 1990, hooks 1984, King1988) the notion of a "both/andorientation"derived from black women'sexperiences as African-Americansand as women (Collins 1990, p. 29) isuseful forunderstandinghe ethnographiesof Hurston,Dunham,and others.IV 1980-1996. Beyondthe Sex/GenderDistinction: CritiquesofGenderEssentialismIn 1980, arguably he most influentialessay for feminist anthropology,andforUS feminist scholarshipin general, was Michelle Rosaldo's "The Use andAbuse of Anthropology:Reflections on Feminism and Cross-CulturalUnder-13Importantevisions to standpointheoryhavebeen advancedby PatriciaHill Collins (1990) andPatricia Zavella (1995) on the question of race and racial identification;some theorists alsopropound the notion of multiple standpoints.These versions of standpoint theory broachformulationsof multiplepositioningand consciousnessdiscussedin the next section.


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FEMINISTETHNOGRAPHY 611standing."Rosaldo (1980) beganher review with a sympatheticcritiqueof thepopular eminist literatureorits attempts o "catalogcustoms of thepastin or-der to decide if womankind can claim through time, to have acquired orlost.. .power, self-esteem, autonomy and status" (p. 391). While Rosaldo in-sisted that "maledominance, thoughapparentlyuniversal,does not in actualbehavioral erms, assumea universal contentor universalshape"(p. 394), sheheld that "every social systemuses the facts of biological sex to organize andexplain the roles and opportunitiesmen may enjoy, just as all known humansocial groups appealto biologically based ties in the constructionof familialgroups and kinship bonds (p. 395) concludingthat, "it would appear hat cer-tain biological facts-women's role in reproduction and, perhaps, malestrength-have operated n a nonnecessaryway to shape and reproducemaledominance"(p. 396). Rosaldo's critiquewas thus boundby the same adher-ence to biology of which FriedanaccusedMargaretMead.Yet Rosaldo's review attempted o addresshow the very argument or uni-versal sexualasymmetrymightessentialize thecategoryof "woman" p. 401):

To talkof women's tatus s to thinkabouta socialworld n ultimately i-chotomouserms,wherein"woman"s universally pposed o man n thesame ways in all contexts.Thus,we tend repeatedly o contrastand stresspre-sumably given differences between women andmen, instead of askinghowsuch differences are themselves createdby genderrelations.In so doing, wefind ourselvesthevictims of a conceptual radition hatdiscovers"essence" nthe naturalcharacteristicswhich distinguishus frommen and then declaresthatwomen's presentlot derives from what"in essence" women are....

In attemptingto stress that universal facts were not reducibleto biology (p.397), and in suggestingthenonnecessaryways in whichbiology was readintostructuresof domination,Rosaldo initiated a critiqueof genderessentialismbutwas ultimatelyunable to achieve it because of her insistence that"'brute'biological factshave everywherebeenshapedby social logics" (p. 399). Posit-ing a directrelationshipbetweenbiology and genderroles (however variouslydefined)runscounter o one of the central nsightsof queertheory,thatbiologymay not be determinativeof sexualityor sexual identification.JudithButler(1990) perhaps evels thecritiqueof thesex/gendersystemthemost succinctly:14"thisconstructcalled 'sex' is as culturally constructedasgender; indeed, perhapsit was always already gender,with the consequencethatthe distinctionbetween sex andgenderturnsout to be no distinctionatall.Itwould make no sense, then,to define gender as the cultural nterpretation f141 do not want to imply that there is only one critique of the sex/gender distinction; severalacknowledge and work from Rubin's early distinctions (see de Lauretis 1987, Sedgewick 1990,Warner1993).


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612 VISWESWARANsex, if sex itself is a genderedcategory"(p. 7). She concludes that"gender snot to cultureas sex is to nature;gender s also the discursive/culturalmeans bywhich 'sexed nature'or a 'naturalsex' is producedand established as 'predi-scursive,' priorto culture,a politically neutralsurface on which cultureacts"(p. 7). It is worthnoting that n this particular ritiqueof the sex/gendersystem,sex and gender are once again seen to be indistinguishable, hough in termsquite distinctfrom the Victorian era.In the Victorianera, biological sex wasseen to entailparticular ocial roles; in the currentmoment,sex is inseparablefrom gender because sex itself is seen to be a social category.15Butler suggests that it is inperformativity tself that gender operates,reem-bodied (or disembodied);as Mead first suggested, sexual identitycan be lik-ened to puttingon or takingoff a set of clothes. Gendercan be seen as some-thing people do rather hanas a quality they possess, pushing the shift fromgenderas principle structuring ocial relations to forms of subjectivitya stepfarther.Rewriting de Beauvoir, we might say, "Oneis notborn,one performs(oris performedas) a woman."Themetaphor,while useful, also has its limita-tions: Subjectsdo not always freely choose theirperformances;gender,race,and class distinctionsmay also be performedupon them,with devastatingef-fects.16A numberof feministethnographiesnow focus on the emergenceof genderin performance Harrison 1990, Jones 1996a,b, Kapchan 1996, Kondo 1995,Steedly 1993, Stewart1996,Tsing 1993);some likeNadia Serematakis 1991)also use a form of genderstandpoint o understand he performanceandpoet-ics of particularspeech genres such as the funeral lament, for "to examinedeath n InnerMani is to look at Maniatsociety through emaleeyes" (p. 15).Several have also turned to playwriting as a means of scripting ethno-graphic performances.Dorinne Kondo (1995) and Joni Jones (1996a,b) ex-plore throughthe medium of performancewhat Angie Chabram 1990) hascalled "institutionalethnography"by locating their gender identities in thecontext of racialization within the United States academy. Reworking deBeauvoir's formulationof woman asother,Jonesforegrounds he constructionof identityin performance o ask, "What s an African Americanin Africa?"ForJones, performanceethnographyde-essentializes notions of blacknessbyhonoring the embodied acts of interactionanddialogue (1996a). While Dun-ham uses "negritude"as a means of describingthe sense of ease she felt in15AlthoughEve Sedgewick works from Rubin's distinctions, she concludes that gender is "thewhole packageof physicalandculturaldistinctionsbetween men andwomen" 1990, p. 29). Martin(1994) has argued,"Iffor Sedgewick, gender becomes sex, andineluctably ollows the principlesof binarydivision, forButler, sex becomes gender, hat is sociallyconstructed,andthe principleofbinarydivisionis itself contested, even at the level of the body" (p. 110).16Butlerhas addressed his criticismin hersubsequent 1993) book.


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FEMINISTETHNOGRAPHY 613working with black folk in Haiti, Jones foregroundsquestionsof "homeandfield," reflecting upon her sense of unease with culturallydistinct othersandthe difficulties of articulatinga Pan-African dentity.Like Kathleen Stewart(1996), Jones emphasizes the role of memory in ethnography o reworkthecontoursbetween self andothers, subjectsandobjects.In these works,genderemergesin the very performanceof raced, classed, and sexed identities.ShortlyafterRosaldo's review appeared,ThisBridge Called MyBack, ed-ited by CherrieMoragaandGloriaAnzalduia 1981), was published owide ac-claim. A decade later,another collection edited by GloriaAnzalduia 1991),MakingFace/Making Soul, was publishedwith Norma Alarcon's critical re-view "TheTheoreticalSubjectsof This Bridge CalledMy Back."Here Alar-con contrasted he "modalsubject"of Anglo-American eminism,"anautono-mous, self-making,self-determiningsubject, who firstproceedsaccording tothe logic of identificationwith regard o the subject of consciousness"(p. 357)with the subjectsof ThisBridge CalledMyBackdisplaced"acrossamultiplic-ity of discourses(feminist/lesbian,nationalist,racial,socioeconomic, histori-cal) implyinga multiplicityof positionsfromwhichtheyare drivento grasporunderstand hemselves and theirrelations with the real..." (p. 356).In the wake of the critiques eveled by ThisBridge and MakingFace, somefeministethnographersave evolvedstrategies o deal withthequestionof mul-tiple positioning.Referring o themselvesas "halfie"or"hyphenated"thnogra-phers, they describehow mixed parentage,ethnicheritage,or racialposition-ing have shapedtheirethnographic dentifications(Abu-Lughod1993, Behar1993, Narayan 1993, Kondo 1995, Visweswaran 1994). Othershave fore-groundedmoreradicallythemeaningof biracial ormultiracial dentity (Ajani1994) or have attempted o understand he "social constructionof whiteness"(Frankenberg1993). Althoughreferencingof postcolonial theoryis common(Cole & Phillips 1995, Mascia-Lees et al 1989, Steedly 1993, Tsing 1993),manyfeministethnographers avebeenreluctant o dealexplicitlywith race-a markeddifferencefrom the ethnographicworks of the 1930s and 1940s.NormaAlarcon(1991) andCatherineO'Leary (1997) have both suggestedthatif standpoint heoryworks to createsubjects of identification,or counteri-dentification,theories of multiple positioning createsubjectsof "disidentifi-cation."While there has been some ethnographicworkthatexploresstrategiesof disidentification or multiple positioning within the text (Jones 1996a,b,Steedly 1993, Tsing 1993), thecritiqueof genderessentialismhas been slow towork itself into recent feministwriting n anthropology.Thoughwork on femi-nism andpostmodemismcritiques genderessentialism(Alcoff 1988, Gordon1993, Nicholson 1990), the discussion in anthropologyhas actually reifiedunproblematizednotions of gender (Mascia-Leeset al 1989, Strathern1987),perhapsbecause it has narrowlyread the debateas one of experimental orm.


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614 VISWESWARANSome dismiss outright the "philosophical deconstruction" of the term"woman" Scheper-Hughes1992), while other feminist anthropologistsnotethattheassumptionsof aunifying gender dentityare"exclusionaryandmysti-fying," cite a "few illustrious examples" of critique (Steedly 1993), and thenproceed to privilege gender as thecenterof analysis. Notions of sisterly identi-fication abound, and feminist ethnography continues to traffic in intimateforms of address, despite Ann Oakley's (1981) and JudithStacey's (1988,1990) cautions about the dangerous ground between intimacy and betrayal.The terms "friend"and "informant" re often used interchangeably n thesetexts; often without furtherreflection or comment on the intrinsic contradic-tions of power that are maskedin such a slippage.Workingfrom the genreof feministtestimonial(Patai 1988, PersonalNar-ratives Group 1989), recent feminist ethnographyhas elaborateda concernwith "giving voice" to its subjects. Nancy Scheper-Hughes(1992) contendsthat in spite of "the dissonantvoices in the backgroundprotestingjust thischoice of words"that "there s still a role for theethnographer-writern givingvoice, as best she can, to those who have been silenced..." (p. 28). KarenMcCarthyBrown(1991) similarlyaffirmsthat"thepeoplewho arebeingstud-ied should be allowed to speakfor themselves wheneverpossible..." (p. 14).Such concernsalign contemporary eminist ethnographywith the life his-tory/autobiographies f the 1930s and 1940s thatsoughtto make the narratortransparent r absent from the text. Unlike work of the second period, how-ever, therehas been more ambivalenceabout the questionof fiction in currentwork than one might expect.AlthoughLilaAbu-Lughod's(1993) recentproj-ect is abouttelling stories,she is concerned o distanceherself fromfiction, in-sistingthat all of the stories she recountsare "true"andthatthey havenotbeen"madeup."A similarcautionappears n Ruth Behar's (1993) recentethnogra-phy:"Thisbook is not awork of fiction"(p. xiv). Even recentattempts hatde-ploy the devices of fiction to highlight their ethnographicreporting (Brown1991, Wolf 1990) juxtaposeit with more "ethnographic" ccounts(see, how-ever, Behar& Gordon1995, Visweswaran 1994).Alternate orms of feministethnographyhave elaborateduponthe questionof culture by defining "women's culture" (Abu-Lughod 1987), women's"work culture" Lamphere1987, Sacks 1984, Zavella 1987), women at work(Fernandez-Kelly 1983, Kapchan 1996, Ong 1987, Quinn 1977), therapeuticculture(Cvetkovich 1995), and morerecently,women's participationn popu-larculture(Ajani 1994, Mankekar1993). Women's field accounts(Altorki &El-Sohl 1988) have shifted towardexplicitly feministself-reflexive narratives(Narayan 1993), andfeminist work on kinshiphas similarlyshifted fromsym-bolic analysis (Collier& Rosaldo 1981,Collier&Yanagisako1987, Raheja&Gold 1994, Strathern1972) to more reflexive accountsof kin structures Bell


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FEMINISTETHNOGRAPHY 6151993, Trawick 1990, Weston 1991,Yanagisako 1985). InMargaretTrawick's(1990) Notes on Love in a TamilFamily, the unspoken partof most ethno-graphicresearch,"WhatLed Me to Them,"exploreshow her own life experi-ences andethnic identityresulted n fieldworkin India.JudithStacey's (1990)Brave New Families is a reflection on "accidentalethnography," ostmodernkin relations,"recombinant amily life," feminism and fundamentalism,whileKath Weston's (1991) Families We Choose critiques the nuclear family toquestion the exile of gays and lesbians fromkinship, arguingfor gay familiesas alternate orms of family. Feminist ethnographershave also triedto detailwomen's speech communities,focusing on speech genres that areperformedparticularly by women (Abu-Lughod 1987, Kapchan 1996, Serematakis1991), and in linguistic anthropology, eminists have turned heir attention o"communitiesof practice" Hall& Bucholtz 1995,Eckert& McConnell-Ginet1992). Othershave turned o neighborhoodor "backyard" thnography Smith& Watson 1996). Work on the culturalconstructionof masculinity (Ajani1994, Ebron 1991;ETGordon,unpublishedmanuscript),expanding iteratureon gay andlesbian communities Kennedy&Davis 1993,Lewin& Leap 1996,Newton 1993, Weston 1993), and studies on sexuality in the field (Herdt &Stoller 1990, Seizer 1995) are also recent topics of feminist ethnography.Some forms of feminist ethnographyworkdirectlyfrom Mead's sense of an-thropology as culturalcritique (Ginsburg 1989, Tsing 1993), exploring thequestionof reproductiverights in cross-culturalcontexts (Ginsburg& Tsing1990, Jordan1978).Despite a varietyof textualformsandstrategiesadvancedby feministeth-nography, ife histories,or life stories,continue to be popularmodes for firstworldfeministethnographerso write about(largely)thirdworldsubjects (Be-har 1993, Brown 1991, Davison 1987, Patai 1988), who somehow reflecttheentireculture.This is in markedcontrastto the developmentof the genre offeminist biography n the discipline, where subjects like Alice Fletcher,Ma-tilda Cox Stevenson, Elsie Clews Parsons,RuthBenedict, Gladys Reichard,MargaretMead, or Ruth Landes areportrayedas complex, exceptional,oftenheroic figures who transcendtheir cultures (Babcock 1992, Deacon 1997,Parezo1993, Weigle 1982), suchthattheirclass, race, or genderprejudicesareoverlooked or simply ignored (see, however, Foerstel & Gilliam 1992, Mark1980). This strongly suggests the need to understandhow the very genre con-ventions of feminist ethnographyaredefined by the identification(s)of femi-nist anthropologistswith theirsubjects.ConclusionIf anthropologists ike Elsie Clews Parsons, MargaretMead,andGayleRubinshapedthe configurationsof US feminism in importantways, contemporary


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616 VISWESWARANfeminist ethnographers avebeen largely unresponsiveto feministchallengesto gender essentialism, relying upon gender standpoint heory, which erasesdifference throughthe logic of identification.Yet if we learnto understandgenderas not the endpointof analysisbut ratheras anentrypointintocomplexsystems of meaningandpower, thensurely thereareother equally valid entrypoints for feminist work. Gender s perhapsbest understoodas a heuristic de-vice and cannot be understooda priori,apart romparticular ystems of repre-sentation.To mistake the categoryfor the realityis to creategenderas a soci-ologism, reducing t to a male/femaledichotomy mistakenlyconstituted n ad-vance of its operation n any system of social representation.One of the threadsrunningthroughthis review concernedfeminist ethno-graphic nterestin relaying the "woman'spoint of view." Such vindicationistwriting sought to defend women in other cultures, or used knowledge ofwomen in other culturesto cast light on our own. Yet, as MaryJohn (1996)notes, this particular ethnographicrelationship between (largely) Westernwomen writing about (largely) non-Westernwomen has produceda curiouseffect (pp. 116-17):

Suddenly a new divide opens out "between feminists" and "otherwomen"-wherethe assumptioneems to be that feminists nhabitoneworld-the Western ne-whereasotherwomen ive elsewhere ndarenotfeminist.Whynotanethnographyboutbeingafeminist n otherplaces?

This is where a broaderconceptionof the relationshipof feminist theoryto so-cial andnationalistmovementsmightsuggestnew directionsfor feminist eth-nographicwork.Yet while feministethnographyhas emergedwithin the con-text of nationalist raditions,as a genre,it has largely failed to address tself tonationalismor state forms of power (butsee Williams 1996). To takeseriouslytheideaof writing ethnographiesof feminists and feminist movementsin otherplacesmeans we firstunderstand omethingaboutthe shapefeminism takesinotherpartsof the world. That these feminisms may go by other names-na-tionalist, Pan-Africanist,socialist, Islamist-pushes feministanthropology oexplore different forms of social inequality and the possibility that it mayauthorizeand inscribediverse movements for political equality (Ajani 1994;Alarcon1991; Anzalduia 987, 1991;Chabram1990; Giddens 1984; Sandoval1991;Warner1993;ETGordon,unpublishedmanuscript),posing again,otherhistoriesof feminist ethnography.ACKNOWLEDGMENTSThis review is dedicatedto those who taughtme by examplethat thepresenceof women in the discipline mattered:JaneCollier, ElizabethColson, PaulineKolenda, LauraNader, MarilynStrathern, ndSylvia Yanagisako.I thankthe


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FEMINISTETHNOGRAPHY 617organizersand participantsof the AnnualConferenceon Feminist Anthropol-ogy and Archeology, April 27, 1996, University of Minnesota, for their in-structive comments on this essay, as well as Ann Cvetkovich, Ted Gordon,CharlieHale, CatherineO'Leary, and Katie Stewart.I thank also Faye Harri-son, Louise Lamphere,and Peter Orneof the AnnualReview.I am gratefultoJenniferBurrelandNicolas Prat for helping to locate numerousmaterialsforthe review.

Visit the Annual Reviews home page at http://www.AnnualReviews.org.

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vieweswaran - histories of feminist ethnography

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