Marriage And Inequality In Classless Societies

This study presents three ideal-typic models for analyzing inequality in kin-based, non-stratified societies that are commonly described as bands, tribes or ranked societies (but not chiefdoms). Each model discusses the organization of inequality associated with a particular way of validating marriages. The book is a serious and complex attempt to understand the bases and dynamics of inequality in classless societies. It offers a sophisticated argument for the position that there is a culturally-structured basis for women's universal subordination. An important strength of Collier's theoretical interpretation is that it makes the case for universality of subordination without slipping into biological reductionism.

In the 1980s, Jane Collier revisited a village in Andalusia, where she and others had conducted fieldwork twenty years earlier, to investigate changes in family relationships and to explore the larger question of the development of a "modern subjectivity" among the people. Whereas the villagers she met in the sixties stressed the importance of meeting social obligations, the people she interviewed more recently emphasized the need to think for oneself: status concerns in choosing a spouse had apparently been replaced by romantic love, patriarchal authority by partnership marriages, parental demands for obedience by hopes of earning children's affection, mourners' respect for the dead by personal expressions of grief. In each of these areas, the author detected a modern concern for "producing oneself," which emerged with changes in how villagers experienced social inequality. Collier notes that when inheritance appeared to determine social status, villagers protected family reputations and properties by demonstrating concern for "what others might say." Once villagers began participating in the national job market, where individual achievement appeared to determine a worker's income, they focused on realizing their inner abilities and productive capacities. Sensitivity to one's feelings, thoughts, and aptitudes, along with "rational" assessments of the costs and benefits entailed in "choosing" how to use them, testified to a person's unceasing efforts to realize inner potentials. The author also traces shifts in the meaning of "tradition," suggesting that although "modern" people cannot "be" traditional, they must have traditions in order to produce themselves.

When this book was originally published in 1980, sociologists had long held the view that the middle-class marriage in contemporary Britain was characterised by role desegregation and marital equality. Middle-Class Couples reported on research which provided a critical re-analysis of this orthodoxy. The book is a theoretically informed, empirical study which largely debunks many of the myths associated with this alleged movement towards ‘equal marriage’ among professional couples. The author analysed the sexual division of labour among a group of professional workers and their wives at the child-rearing stage of their family cycle. The research paid special attention to the notion of marital equality and the power dimension of marriage, the household division of labour and the patterning of leisure between husbands and wives. A radical critique of the existing social theories of the family and society incorporated in the classic studies of Parsons, Watson, Young and Willmott, Ann Oakley and Elizabeth Bott.

This book offers an up-to-the-moment assessment of the condition of the American family in an era of growing inequality.

'Honor' crimes target women and girls for transgressions against the moral code of the community, punishing female sexual autonomy in particular. This book argues that 'honor' represents women's conformity to culturally-enforced standards of marriageability and underpins family and marital connections which form a primary method of organization within the community.

Consisting of a series of stories, events, and episodes, the book highlights shifting patterns, attitudes, and perspectives toward women in the Prairies. One of Carter's overarching themes is that women are seldom in a position to invent or project their own images, identities, or ideas of themselves, nor are they free to fully author their own texts. Focusing on captivity narratives, a popular genre in the United States that has received little attention in Canada, Carter looks at depictions of white women as victims of Aboriginal aggressors and explores the veracity of a number of accounts, including those of Fanny Kelly and Big Bear captives Theresa Delaney and Theresa Gowanlock, Canada's most famous captives. Carter also examines depictions of Aboriginal women as sinister and dangerous that appeared in the press as well as in government and some missionary publications. These representations of women, and the race and gender hierarchies created by them, endured in the Canadian West long after the last decades of the nineteenth century. Capturing Women fits into a growing body of literature on the question of women, race, and imperialism. Carter adopts a colonial framework, arguing that while the Prairies do not readily conjure up the powerful images of Empire, fundamental features of colonialism are clearly present in the extension of the power of the Canadian state and the maintenance of sharp social, economic, and spatial distinctions between the dominant and subordinate populations. She highlights similarities between images of women on the Prairies and symbols of women in other colonial cultures, such as the memsahib in Britain and the Indian captive in the United States.

Social and cultural anthropology and archaeology are rich subjects with deep connections in the social and physical sciences. Over the past 150 years, the subject matter and different theoretical perspectives have expanded so greatly that no single individual can command all of it. Consequently, both advanced students and professionals may be confronted with theoretical positions and names of theorists with whom they are only partially familiar, if they have heard of them at all. Students, in particular, are likely to turn to the web to find quick background information on theorists and theories. However, most web-based information is inaccurate and/or lacks depth. Students and professionals need a source to provide a quick overview of a particular theory and theorist with just the basics—the "who, what, where, how, and why," if you will. In response, SAGE Reference plans to publish the two-volume Theory in Social and Cultural Anthropology: An Encyclopedia. Features & Benefits: Two volumes containing approximately 335 signed entries provide users with the most authoritative and thorough reference resource available on anthropology theory, both in terms of breadth and depth of coverage. To ease navigation between and among related entries, a Reader's Guide groups entries thematically and each entry is followed by Cross-References. In the electronic version, the Reader's Guide combines with the Cross-References and a detailed Index to provide robust search-and-browse capabilities. An appendix with a Chronology of Anthropology Theory allows students to easily chart directions and trends in thought and theory from early times to the present. Suggestions for Further Reading at the end of each entry and a Master Bibliography at the end guide readers to sources for more detailed research and discussion.

The author wrote this book primarily for his archaeology students, to show them how dangerous anthropological analogy is and how variable the actual practices of foragers of the recent past and today are. His survey of anthropological literature points to differences in foraging societies' patterns of diet, mobility, sharing, land tenure, exchange, gender relations, division of labour, marriage, descent and political organisation. By considering the actual, not imagined, reasons behind diverse behaviour this book argues for a revision of many archaeological models of prehistory. From the reviews "[A]n excellent overview of key issues in hunter-gatherer studies." Alan Barnard in American Ethnologist "Not since Man the Hunter has there been such a synthesis and such a mix of stimulating ideas. This will be the authoritative work on hunter/gatherers for a good number of years." Brian Hayden in Canadian Journal of Archaeology "[A]uthoritative, comprehensive, and highly readable. . . . A well-worn and heavily annotated copy should be the companion of anyone claiming an interest or expertise in present or past hunter-gatherers." Bruce Winterhalder in American Antiquity Prepublication praise "The Foraging Spectrum [is] a well-written, scrupulously researched synthesis of modern approaches to foraging behavior, both past and present." David Hurst Thomas, American Museum of Natural History "A tour de force of scholarship in behavioral ecology." Mathias Guenther, Wilfred Laurier University

A Stanford University Press classic.