'' Woman, Culture, and Society'', first published in 1974 (

Stanford University Press Stanford University Press (SUP) is the publishing house of Stanford University. It is one of the oldest academic presses in the United States and the first university press to be established on the West Coast. It was among the presses officially ...

), is a book consisting of 16 papers contributed by female authors and an introduction by the editors

Michelle Zimbalist Rosaldo Michelle "Shelly" Zimbalist Rosaldo (1944 in New York City – 1981 in Philippines) was a social, linguistic, and psychological anthropologist famous for her studies of the Ilongot people in the Philippines and for her pioneering role in women's ...

and

Louise Lamphere Louise Lamphere (born 1940) is an American anthropologist who has been distinguished professor of anthropology at the University of New Mexico since 2001. She was a faculty member at UNM from 1976–1979 and again from 1986–2009, when she becam ...

. On the heels of the 1960s

feminist movement The feminist movement (also known as the women's movement, or feminism) refers to a series of social movements and political campaigns for Radical politics, radical and Liberalism, liberal reforms on women's issues created by the inequality b ...

, this book challenged

anthropology Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including past human species. Social anthropology studies patterns of behavi ...

's status quo of viewing studied

culture Culture () is an umbrella term which encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities, and habits of the individuals in these groups.Tyl ...

s from a male perspective while diminishing female perspectives, even considering women as comparatively imperceptible. It is considered to be a pioneering work. Alternate title on Wiley-Blackwell website (click DOI): General, Applied and Theoretical: Woman, Culture, and Society. Michelle Zimbalist Rosaldo and Louise Lamphere, eds The book features a number of widely cited essays including: * In "Family Structure and Feminine Personality,"

Nancy Chodorow Nancy Julia Chodorow (born January 20, 1944) is an American sociologist and professor. She began her career as a professor of Women's studies at Wellesley College in 1973, and from 1974 on taught at the University of California, Santa Cruz, unti ...

offers a psychoanalytic explanations for gender differences in personality, based on mother's primary role in raising small children and socializing girls into their gendered roles. * In "Is female to male as nature is to culture?," first published in ''Feminist Studies'',

Sherry Ortner Sherry Beth Ortner (born September 19, 1941) is an American cultural anthropologist and has been a Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at UCLA since 2004. Biography Ortner grew up in a Jewish family in Newark, New Jersey, and attended Weequa ...

argues that the universal (or near universal) subordination of women across cultures is explained in part by a common conception of women as "closer to nature than men" (73). The title describes a structuralist analogy between deep cultural structures, in the sense theorized by

Claude Lévi-Strauss Claude Lévi-Strauss (, ; 28 November 1908 – 30 October 2009) was a French anthropologist and ethnologist whose work was key in the development of the theories of structuralism and structural anthropology. He held the chair of Social Anthro ...

. It described cultural oppositions including culture/nature, man/woman, mind/body, public/private, civilized/primitive, and active/passive. In 1996, Ortner remembered it as "my first piece of feminist writing and my second professional publication." The title of the book alludes to the gendered nature of a prior anthropological text, ''Man, Culture, and Society''.

References

{{reflist Anthropology books Feminist literature American non-fiction books Cultural anthropology Women's studies Feminist theory Ethnographic literature

See also

References