Gendered Fields

Virtually all anthropologists undertaking fieldwork experience emotional difficulties in relating their own personal culture to the field culture. The issue of gender arises because ethnographers do fieldwork by establishing relationships, by learning to see, think and be in another culture, and this is done as a person of a particular age, sexual orientation, belief, educational background, ethnic identity and class. In particular it is done as men and women. To what extent can such differences be transcended? Given that anthropology has a long-standing interest in the realtions between the sexes (marriage, kinship) it is ironic that its observations still reflect what are for the most part male standpoints, represented as the norm. Yet, since the mid-1970s feminist anthropology has begun to produce a literature of its own which draws upon earlier feminist work and also crosses boundaries, utilising the work of philosophers, literary critics, linguists, historians and others in its search for paradigms. Gendered Fields examines and explores the progress of feminist anthropology, the gendered nature of fieldwork itself, and the articulation of gender with other aspects of the persona of the ethnographer. The contributors draw upon a gender perspective, showing how it actually takes shape in interpersonal and group dynamics in the field. The book is international in its scope and in the background of its contributors. It builds on and advances a current dialogue in anthropology, feminism and post-modernism. It will be of great interest to undergraduates, postgraduates and lecturers in anthropology, social sciences and gender studies.