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The ideal of "gender equality" seems forever elusive, always tantalizingly over the horizon. Shanshan Du suggests that by shifting our attention away from the various utopian ideals embedded in mainstream feminism, we may be surprised to learn that gender-egalitarian societies do exist. Based on extensive fieldwork, this book explores the Lahu society in Southwest China where practical gender equality has become the byproduct of a potent ideology of gender unity, vividly expressed by the proverb, "chopsticks only work in pairs."
Price: $38.00
Pages: 256
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Imprint: Columbia University Press
Publication Date:
18 December 2002
ISBN: 9780231119573
Format: Paperback
BISACs:
SOCIAL SCIENCE / Anthropology / Cultural & Social, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Gender Studies, HISTORY / Asia / China, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Cultural & Ethnic Studies / General
This book is delightfully readable and as the same time thought-provoking, full of lively and sensitive ethnography...Finely written.
Shanshan Du is assistant professor of anthropology at Tulane University and winner of the Elsie Clews Parsons Prize of the American Ethnological Society and the Sylvia Forman Prize of the Association for Feminist Anthropology.
Technical Notes
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part I: Mythology and Ideology
1. "Everything Comes in Pairs": A Dyadic Worldview
2. Husband-Wife Dyads in the Life Cycle
Part II: Joint Gender Roles
3. "Husband and Wife Do It Together": Unifying Gender in Labor
4. "Male-Female Co-Heads": Unifying Gender in Leadership
Part III: Structure and anti-Structure
5. Unifying Gender in Kinship and Interhousehold Organization
6. The Disfunction and Collapse of Gender Dyads: Divorce, Elopepment, and Love-Pact Suicide
Conclusion: Rethinking Gender Equality
Notes
Bibliography
Index