Strange Reciprocity: Mainstreaming Women's
Work in Tepoztlán in "the Decade of the New Economy"
Sidney Perutz
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Littlefield Books Division, 2008 Residing in one of the earliest regions to be colonized industrially
and residentially, women of the ancient Mexican community of Tepoztlán
were one of the first New Spain populations to structurally adjust their
labor processes to this first wave of the technology/ideology of “global
feminization through flexible labor” (Standing 1989). Barred by
laws and customs from most new industries, by targeting diasporas of
foreign and indigenous men in need of care, Tepoztecas contrived to
invent the type of consumption-led economy now globally dominant. Into
the 21st century, Tepoztecas never stopped adjusting to waves (undertows,
really) of dominant orders that depend on gender inequality at work
to be global. The social actors-economic agents of this anthropology
of women’s complex of value/values creation processes are then
members of a venerable, vulnerable, and truly globally feminized working
class. Made explicit as workplace exchanges are “knowing”
women’s struggles to transform profoundly gendered global economy
constraints into profoundly gendered global economy strategies of their
own. Or not. The research backing this feminist standpoint study began
when the author worked in the for-profit and non-profit sectors of the
global economy alongside women of the developed and developing worlds.
Based on long term fieldwork in Tepoztlán, the book describes,
analyzes, and gives a history to women’s work processes across
the 1990 to 2000 period that Mexicans (increasingly ironically) call
“the Decade of the New Economy.” To June Nash, “the
author’s astute knowledge of economic paradigms and the feminist
and economic development literature” makes the book “a methodological
advance in the field of economics and anthropology [that] could provide
a text for courses in anthropology, women’s studies, or development.”
Eminent historian of Mexico William B. Taylor describes Strange Reciprocity
as “an unforgettable extension” to the literature. “Not
just a restudy; it is also a reconfiguration”; and, “a multifaceted
study with several layers of context, including a historical context
that is sustained and well done.” (8/08)
How Real Is Race? A Sourcebook
on Race, Culture and Biology. Carol Mukhopadhyay, Rosemary Henze and Yolanda T. Moses.
Rowman & Littlefield, 2007. How Real Is Race?integrates biological
and cultural anthropological approaches to race within an historical,
cross-cultural and educational context. Written in an accessible style,
it explores the fallacy of race as biology; how culture creates race,
including through restrictions on sexual activity, marriage, and definitions
of kinship; race and social stratification; cross-cultural perspectives;
and how race plays out in educational settings, from the academic achievement
gap, to the use of racial slurs, to interracial dating. The book is
useful background reading for anyone interested in race and diversity,
from a gender sensitive perspective, including anthropologists, social
scientists and educators--but it could also be used as a text or supplemental
reading for students. The book also complements and amplifies material
in the American Anthropological Association’s Traveling Museum
Exhibit, RACE: Are We So Different. (7/08)
A 'Consumer's Right' to
Choose a Midwife: Shifting Meanings for Reproductive Rights Under Neoliberalism. Christa Craven American Anthropologist109(4): 701-712,
2007. The 'right to choose' has long served as the ideological rallying
cry for reproductive rights activists. Yet, critical attention to the
social, political, and economic conditions under which individuals make
such choices has been central to anthropological research on reproduction.
In the context of neoliberal public policy shifts that favor trust in
the market to remedy all social and economic inequality, I explore how
women's reproductive rights are becoming characterized by one's ability
to consume uneven reproductive 'choices.' Based on my ethnographic fieldwork
with midwifery supporters in Virginia, I examine how organizers have
begun to utilize 'consumer rights' rhetoric in their struggle for legal
access to midwives. One often-unintended result has been intensified
divisions within this movement, particularly as low-income homebirthers
feel unable to claim the identity of 'consumer.' I use Virginia as a
case study to raise broader questions about women's shifting strategies
toward securing reproductive rights under neoliberalism. [Keywords:
reproductive rights, neoliberalism, midwifery, consumption, women's
activism](7/08)
Hollow Bodies: Institutional Responses to the
Traffic in Women in Armenia, Bosnia and India
Susan Dewey
Kumarian Press, 2008 In Hollow Bodies, Susan Dewey travels to Armenia,
Bosnia-Herzegovina, and India to follow the trade in women's bodies
and efforts to stop it. What she finds is a counter-trafficking system
at the mercy of funds from misguided international organizations and
foreign governments. From counterproductive restrictions placed on NGOs
by donors, to jaded employees and bribes given to prosecutors, Dewey
highlights the structural flaws in place that allow, and sometimes even
help, sex trafficking to continue. Based on research conducted with
the International Organization for Migration (IOM), Dewey speaks with
a range of actors from bar workers in Bombay to Embassy employees in
Armenia and senior officials at international organizations. She discovers
how a global problem plays on differently on the local level and why
millions of aid dollars make little difference in the lives of women
who are forced or compelled from their homes into the global sex trade.
(7/08)
Making Miss India Miss World:
Constructing Gender, Power and the Nation in Postliberalization India
Susan Dewey Syracuse University Press, 2008 Through the unexpected lens of the 2003 beauty pageant, Susan Dewey's
Making Miss India Miss World examines what feminine
beauty has come to mean in a country transformed by recent political,
economic, and cultural developments. Dewey offers readers an up-close
view of the beauty pageant through her discussion of the contestants'
intense training program, a process that involves extensive physical,
emotional, and cultural transformations. Covering everything from proper
table etiquette to preferred skin tone, the author reveals the exacting
standards set by pageant officials and reflected in Indian society.
Yet she also recognizes the empowerment these women are afforded by
their status as beauty symbols in a culture increasingly shaped by the
visual influence of national and international media. (7/08)
Fixing Sex: Intersex Medical
Authority and Lived Experience Katrina Karkazis
Duke University Press, 2008 What happens when a baby is born with “ambiguous”
genitalia or a combination of “male” and “female”
body parts? Clinicians and parents in these situations are confronted
with complicated questions such as whether a girl can have XY chromosomes,
or whether some penises are “too small” for a male sex assignment.
Since the 1950s, standard treatment has involved determining a sex for
these infants and performing surgery to normalize the infant’s
genitalia. Over the past decade intersex advocates have mounted unprecedented
challenges to treatment, offering alternative perspectives about the
meaning and appropriate medical response to intersexuality and driving
the field of those who treat intersex conditions into a deep crisis.
Katrina A. Karkazis offers a nuanced, compassionate picture of these
charged issues in Fixing Sex, the first book to examine contemporary
controversies over the medical management of intersexuality in the United
States from the multiple perspectives of those most intimately involved.
Drawing extensively on interviews with adults with intersex
conditions, parents, and physicians, Karkazis moves beyond the heated
rhetoric to reveal the complex reality of how intersexuality is understood,
treated, and experienced today. As she unravels the historical, technological,
social, and political forces that have culminated in debates surrounding
intersexuality, Karkazis exposes the contentious disagreements among
theorists, physicians, intersex adults, activists, and parents—and
all that those debates imply about gender and the changing landscape
of intersex management. She argues that by viewing intersexuality exclusively
through a narrow medical lens we avoid much more difficult questions.
Do gender atypical bodies require treatment? Should physicians intervene
to control the “sex” of the body? As this illuminating book
reveals, debates over treatment for intersexuality force reassessment
of the seemingly natural connections between gender, biology, and the
body. (7/08)
The Gender of Globalization:
Women Navigating Cultural and Economic Marginalities Nandini Gunewardena (Editor), Ann Kingsolver (Editor) School for Advanced Research Press, 2008 As "globalization" moves rapidly from buzzword to cliche,
evaluating the claims of neoliberal capitalism to empower and enrich
remains urgently important. The authors in this volume employ feminist,
ethnographic methods to examine what free trade and export processing
zones, economic liberalization, and currency reform mean to women in
Argentina, Sri Lanka, Mexico, Ghana, the United States, India, Jamaica,
and many other places. Heralded as agents of prosperity and liberation,
neoliberal economic policies have all too often refigured and redoubled
the burdens of gender, race, caste, class, and regional subordination
that women bear. Traders, garment factory operatives, hotel managers
and maids, small farmers and agricultural laborers, garbage pickers,
domestic caregivers, daughters, wives, and mothers: Women around the
world are struggling to challenge the tendency of globalization talk
to veil their marginalization. (6/08)
