Nature, Culture and Gender

Nature, Culture and Gender

by Marilyn Strathern (Series Editor), Marilyn Strathern (Series Editor), Carol MacCormack (Editor)

Synopsis

Categories of analysis in the social sciences include the binary pair 'nature' and 'culture', as defined by western societies. Anthropologists have often imputed these categories to the world-views of non-western people and the construct has acquired the status of a universal. It has been further argued that culture (that which is regulated by human thought and technology) is universally valued as being superior to nature (the unregulated); and that female is universally associated with nature (and is therefore inferior and to be dominated) and male with culture. The essays in this volume question these propositions. They examine the assumptions behind them analytically and historically, and present ethnographic evidence to show that the dichotomy between nature and culture, and its association with a contrast between the sexes, is a particularity of western thought. The book is a commentary on the way anthropologists working within the western tradition have projected their own ideas on to the thought systems of other peoples. Its form is largely anthropological, but it will have a wide appeal within the social sciences and the humanities, especially among those interested in structuralist thought and women's studies.

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More Information

Format: Illustrated
Pages: 238
Edition: Illustrated
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 31 Dec 1980

ISBN 10: 052128001X
ISBN 13: 9780521280013
Book Overview: The nature-culture dochotomy and its projection on to the thought systems of non-western peoples.

Media Reviews
Professor MacCormack had done a superb job of exhausting the sources and establishing his case for his thesis that aspects of Confucianism he emphasizes has a profound influence on the codes....His book is a great step forward for the field....this is an illuminating book. The American Journal of Legal History