Methods and Bias

The Pre-Feminist Era

Before 1970 very little attention was given to women by anthropologists.

Structural Conditions in the Pre-Feminist Era

Most anthropology was written as though the perspective of male elders was the most correct and “authoritative” account of a society and its culture

Ethnographers tended to be men, and therefore had little or no access to the activities, perspectives and beliefs of women

Senior academicians, publishers and administrators of granting agencies were virtually all men.

Some Areas Where Women’s Lives Were Not Adequately Represented

• Participation in general activities and rituals

• Activities and rituals exclusive to women

• Control over economic resources

• Decision-making

• Power and influence vs. authority

Examples from the Pre-Feminist Era

C. W. M. Hart & Arnold PillingThe Tiwi North Australia published 1960 (fieldwork 1928-20, 1953-54)

From the publisher’s introduction: “This is a case study of a system of influence and power

which is based on a strange currency. The currency is woman. Newborn females, nubile marriageable females, toothless old hags – all are valuable in Tiwi terms. Because men compete for prestige and influence through their control over women, women have the value of a scarce commodity. Under this system, there are no illegitimate children, unmarried females of any age, and wives are either very much older or very much younger than their husbands.”

Hart/Piling con’t “Space permits only the barest mention of

initiation, which was, along with mourning, the chief vehicle of Tiwi ritual. For females, there were no initiation ceremonies, but for males, it was a long, drawn-out and elaborate affair, marked by successive stages or grades which began with he status of Marukumarni, which a boy entered when he was about fourteen, and did not end finally until he was around twenty-four.” pg. 93

Hart/Piling con’tTaboo/pukimani…when a man found himself in a state of

pukimani, his behavior was automatically prescribed for him and for the duration of his pukimani condition he observed his avoidances and his abstentions just as automatically as he dropped them when his pukimani period expired. …Big men simply did not dare to be casual about the requirements lest their reputations suffer and they lose face and influence. Less successful men were occasionally explained as probably being secret violators. pg. 89

Examples from thePre-Feminist Era

Mountford [her thesis advisor] suggested that I concentrate on the role of women in the culture, since . . . Almost nothing was known about this aspect of aboriginal life. Most of the field work had been done by male investigators using male informants. In many of these cultures studied, the males played a dominant economic and ceremonial role, often to the exclusion of the women.

Jane C. GoodaleTiwi Wives: A Study of the Women of Melville Island, North Australia

Goodale, con’t

• I was extraordinarily lucky to find a superb informant, without whose help much would still remain in misty confusion. This informant was a young girl I had known well in 1954, having made my first excursion into the bush with her and her parents. At the age of eleven, Happy had stood out as one of my chief informants of her age group . . . (1954)

Goodale, con’t

• During the intervening years Happy had completed the schooling offered at Snake bay, had finished additional teacher’s training in Darwin . . . And was now in charge of kindergarten training at Snakebay School. . . . Happy and I cross-checked extensive basic and essential data . . . 1962

Goodale con;t “ Not long after our arrival we witnessed our first

Tiwi ceremony, and abbreviated kulama, one of the most two most important rituals in Tiwi culture. Although the women played special women’s roles during the three-day event, they were not excluded entirely. Nor were they prevented from seeing all that was going on, even though this is the initiation ceremony for Tiwi males. Even more significantly, Tiwi women were initiated by this same ceremony and at the same time as the males, according to my informants. Shortly after the kulama, a pukamani (funeral) gave me the opportunity to observe the important role that women played in this, the second of the two most important of Tiwi ceremonies.

It was thus clear that women were directly and importantly involved in most Tiwi ceremonies. It also became apparent that Tiwi women played a dominant economic role. . . . I concentrated on using women informants.” pg. xxii

Goodale, con’t

“For the women, their puberty ceremony, the murinaleta, is the most significant. I learned about the murinaleta when I introduced the subject of marriage rules to a group of women. At first I thought they had not understood my question, because they began by telling me what happens when a girl has her first menses. Fortunately I let them continue, and it soon became apparent why they had begun the subject of marriage in this way. It is during this ceremony that the complex marriage system of the Tiwi has its beginning and, I believe, its explanation in structural terms.” pg. xxiii

Goodale, con’t

“Thus the idea of using the life cycle of women as a framework for discussing Melville Island culture occurred to me I the field, as a result of my growing realization that analyses of the two most important rites of passage for the women – the murinaleta and the pukamani – might provide clues for clarifying the picture of the entire social organization.” pg. xxiii

The Feminist Critique

1. Bias inherent in the anthropologists’ own cultural filters that caused them to miss whole aspects of a culture or of specific traditions

2. Bias inherent in the culture being studied, eg. In the accounts of male informants

3. Bias in the anthropologists’ unavoidable ethnocentrism

In the early 1970’s female anthropologists began to realize that the women’s point of view was missing in most ethnographic accounts. The occurred because of a “triple bias.”

Pre-Feminist Exceptions

Margaret MeadBeverly ChinasHortense PowermakerOscar Lewis

Margaret Mead

Worked in Samoa in the 1920’s

Did the first ethnographic study that focused on women by studying adolescent girls

Hortense Powdermaker

Worked in Australia in 1929 and then in American Black communities in the 1930’s

Discussed the fact that she could do fieldwork in places that men couldn’t because she was a woman and therefore non-threatening

Oscar Lewis Included female perspectives in his family

portraits from Mexico City and Puerto Rico during the 1950’s and early 1960’s

Argued that the female perspective was essential

Had credibility because he was a male anthropologist

Examples of Resulting Women-Focused Studies

Melissa Llewelyn-Davies

Masai Women Video/DVD

Marjorie Shostak

Nisa: Kung Woman Video/DVD