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URL: http://sociology.berkeley.edu/faculty/wacquant/wacquant_pdf/3wacquant.pdf

by Nancy Bonillain

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Analyses of gender roles in societies throughout the world have raised questions about the causes of equality or inequality in status and inter-gender relations. Much of the recent research contradicts the often-stated claim that some degree of male dominance exists in all societies. The notion of reputed universal male dominance has been challenged on several fronts. First, most anthropologists have been male and have dealt with male informants in their fieldwork, and ethnographic material has been framed by the gender perspective of observer and participant. Second, historical accounts of earlier cultures are like-wise tainted by the attitudes of explorers, missionaries and government officials, all of whom were men. It is well to be reminded of Lafitau’s admonition in 1724 that “… authors who have written on the customs of the [Native] Americans” concerning the rights and status of women “… have formed their conceptions, in this as in everything else, on European ideas and practices.” Finally, by the time colonial agents, and later anthropologists, interacted with indigenous peoples, traditional gender relations were already distorted by rapid sociocultural and political changes resulting from colonial processes. Therefore, even the earliest post-contact data are not truly representative of aboriginal society.

This paper will examine gender differences in five Native American societies: The Naskapi, Navajo, Eskimo, Iroquois, and Plains peoples. We will see the extent to which ecological and social conditions have molded gender roles in Amerindian cultures and the extent to which they have been re-shaped by post colonial historical forces. We begin with the discussion of societal features bearing on gender relations and then proceed to the analysis of each of the five societies, which were chosen to demonstrate the impact of various factors in different ecological contexts. 

by Kathryn E. Holland Braund

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URL: http://www.mediafire.com/?mmzymnnmery

Muscogulge or Creek women were members of the largest Indian nation in the southeast. The Creeks claimed most of the territory encompassed by the states of Georgia, Alabama, and northern Florida, but most of the population was concentrated in interior settlements along major rivers. By the late eighteenth century, Creek population stood at twenty thousand persons. The loosely structured confederacy had two geopolitical divisions comprised of many different ethnic groups. The Upper Towns, in modern north-central Alabama, were peopled by Alabamas, Tallapoosas, and Abeikas, Cowetas dominated the Lower Towns, which were scattered along the Chattahoochee River, though there was much ethnic diversity. Although, there were sixty-two major Creek towns.  

Beginning in the late seventeenth century, the Creek towns established trade relations with the Europeans who had settled around them in Carolina and Florida. By the middle of the eighteenth century, most Creek commerce was conducted by traders from Augusta, Georgia. the barter of deerskins for European goods was the single most powerful force in Creek history during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Though they were dependent on foreign goods for their survival, Creeks were able to retain their most cherished beliefs and social systems. Although most historians have overlooked women in their discussions of Creek life during this period, Creek women were central elements in a complicated cycle of cultural adaptation, change, and persistence that dominated Creek history in the late eighteenth century. 

There are several difficulties associated with the study of Creek women. Most importantly, the written sources are entirely European and exclusively male in origin. White male traders, travelers, and employees of the British, French, Spanish, and American governments left general descriptions of these women and their place in Indian society. But, white European males were denied access to many feminine activities. And even when they married Creek women, European males were excluded from many aspects of their wives’ social lives. moreover, they often did not record information avilable to them that would be valuable to Creek scholars today. Sometimes, they drew the wrong conclusion from what they recorded. For example, only a few ever acquired a working knowledge of Creek kinship. Nevertheless, it is possible to understand women’s role in tribal life from the accounts left by white men who lived and traveled among the Creek towns during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

by Priscilla K. Buffalohead

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Until recently in American history the only women from native or tribal cultures who mattered were those influences on past events were too important to ignore or those whose lives provided anecdotal filler in historical scenes both great and small in which men were the primary actors. While this orientation is beginning to change as a result of a growing interest in the history of women, contributions of women in tribal cultures remains a much neglected field of study. This neglect may stem from a general ignorance of historians and other scholars, an ignorance fostered by the unquestioned acceptance of ethnocentric notions that modern America somehow represents the pinnacle of civilization and that tribal cultures are but relics of an ancient age. Unfortunately, all too many feminist scholars wear the same ethnocentric blinders as their male counterparts, viewing the study of the history of tribal women as veluable only insofar as it illuminates the origins of sexism in human society.

Whether they realize it or not, feminist scholars dealing with the history of Euro-American women become caught up in issues of sex equality precisely because they belong to what has always been class-stratified society characterized by unequal access to power, prestige, and privilege. Many tribal societies, on the other hand, stem from egalitarian cultural traditions. These traditions are concerned less with equality of the sexes and more with the dignity of individuals and with their inherent right- whether they be women, men, or children - to make their own choices and decisions. Clearly, then, issues associated with the status of women in stratified societies may be somewhat different from those in egalitarian societies. With these differences in mind, we can compare the two if we treat egalitarian societies as viable alternative systems rather than as relics of an ancient past. 

by Betty J Harris

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URL: http://www.mediafire.com/?o0zmjmqn4gz

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World-system theory has provided a vehicle for the global analysis of politico-economic change. However, as formulated, the theory has focused on the historical process of European incorporation of non-European societies at the macro-level in a fashion that obscures the emergence of new social categories and processes at the micro-level. This article analyzes the relationship between ethnicity and gender in two peripheral contexts- among Basotho women of Lesotho and Navajo women in the American Southwest.

In the British social anthropological tradition, anthropologists have attempted across-cultural comparisons between and among cultures at similar stages of sociocultural integration in order to formulate general laws of society. In the 1970s, when American anthropologists began to work in urban contexts, they often referred to research of different ethic/racial groups in the same context as well as the same ethnic/racial groups in different context. Having abandoned ahistoricism, they began to consider the period during which their research was conducted. 

Here I have chosen to compare two groups of women on the basis of their place in the world-system. Both groups occupy peripheral areas, engage in sheep- and goat-herding and in tapestry weaving. In examining the history of incorporation of each society, have have discerned parallels and divergences. Of primary concern is how these societies compare contemporaneously. 

In comparative research, the issue of perspective is important. Native Americanists draw occasional comparisons with African ethnographic data, but the opposite rarely occurs. As an Africanist, I have decided to take the opposite approach. Such a comparison should illuminate the Navajo Reservation’s status as a peripheral area within a core country and, in turn, pose certain questions about the autonomy of peripheral nation-states like Lesotho.

Adopting such a comparative approach represents a transcendence of the core/periphery relationship on which world-system analysis rests in order to explore interperipheral economic relationships. In other words, instead of looking at those relationships as reflected through the North American core and the South African semiperiphery, we will view them as isolates that represent the end-products of the incorporation process. Insofar as indigenous women in peripheral arenas are concerned, this should clarify a number of issues related to their economic status in their respective reserve armies of labor and their reliance on subsistence production and/or social welfare system. Moreover, we will consider strategies, such as cooperative formation employed to counter core expansion.