6/27/20151 Weiner and the Gender Revolution Or…a few criticisms of functionalism that Leach forgot about, or deliberately ignored…..

6/27/20152 Early Feminist Anthropology: Ortner: universal subordination of women. Male is to Female as Nature is to Culture. Led to: I. Liberal Feminism: goal was to study the roles of women in order to promote equality with men. ii. Radical Feminism: goal was to analyse the structures of gender subordination. iii. Another early approach was socialist feminism: took its ideas from Engels and tried to show that the subordination of women was due to the rise of classes and social inequality in general.

6/27/20153 Weiner: Introduced the Issue of Gender Analyses, rather than Feminist Studies Saw the roles and statuses of men and women in the Trobriands as complementary, rather than only being characterized by power inequalities. Matrilineal society; men would work for many months to produce banana bundles for women. Thought that gender relations had to be analysed at the local level, rather than through reference to a general theory. Book is a dialogue with Malinowski: i. What did Malinowski miss and why? Weiner “Took seemingly insignificant bundles of banana leaves as seriously as any kind of male wealth”. Role of male ethnographers in Melanesia: many claimed that they had no access to female activities, since many societies were gender segregated.

6/27/20154 Gender and the Symbolism of Exchange in the Trobriands The Kula Exchange and Male Wealth. Mortuary Ceremonies and Female Wealth. Social identity, exchange and the construction of the ‘social person’ through life. Social identity and deconstruction of the ‘social person’ through death. Women: control cosmic, ancestral time. Men: control everyday, historical time. In this sense, they are complementary.

6/27/20155 Significance of Weiner Showed that adding women to the analysis is not just a case of ‘adding and stirring.’ Understanding the complementary roles that women and men have in small-scale societies changes the total picture. Overall cosmology, worldviews of the Trobriands is different in Weiner’s analysis than in Malinowski’s.

6/27/20156 Topic Three Details about this topic Supporting information and examples How it relates to your audience

6/27/20157 Real Life Give an example or real life anecdote Sympathize with the audience’s situation if appropriate

6/27/20158 What This Means Add a strong statement that summarizes how you feel or think about this topic Summarize key points you want your audience to remember

6/27/20159 Next Steps Summarize any actions required of your audience Summarize any follow up action items required of you