The gender of the gift problems with women and problems with society in Melanesia - Strathern, Marilyn (University of California Press, 1988)
Includes bibliographical references (pages 387-405) and index
Anthropological Strategies -- A Place in the Feminist Debate -- Groups: Sexual Antagonism in the New Guinea Highlands -- Domains: Male and Female Models -- Power: Claims and Counterclaims -- Work: Exploitation at Issue -- Some Definitions -- Relations which Separate -- Forms which Propagate -- Cause and Effect -- Conclusion -- Domination -- Comparison
In the most original and ambitious synthesis yet undertaken in Melanesian scholarship, Marilyn Strathern argues that gender relations have been a particular casualty of unexamined assumptions held by Western anthropologists and feminist scholars alike. The book treats with equal seriousness-and with equal good humor-the insights of Western social science, feminist politics, and ethnographic reporting, in order to rethink the representation of Melanesian social and cultural life