Black
Feminist Anthropology
Price: $22.95
Subtitle: Theory, Politics, Prxis,
and Poetics
Editor: Irma McClaurin
Subject: African American
Studies/Literary Studies
Paper ISBN 978-0-8135-2926-4
Pages: 272 pp.
Publication Date: September 2001
Praise:
"[A] refreshing and
inspiring collection of nine articles and a superb introduction. . . .
Each author brings personal experiences of racism, sexism, and other
challenges to bear on what are without exception successful examples of
what C. Wright Mills called ‘the sociological imagination,’ where
biography, intellectual activity, and activism are presented as a
seamless whole. This book succeeds in going beyond Mills’s vision in
unparalleled ways. . . . All levels and collections."-Choice
"Anthropologists . . . disclose how
their experiences as Black women have influenced their anthropological
practices in Africa, the Caribbean and the U.S., and how anthropology
has influenced their development as Black feminists. . . . The authors
write eloquently on the complex mix of personal and professional that
dominate their lives."-Advocate
Description:
In the discipline's early days, anthropologists by definition were
assumed to be white and male. Women and black scholars were relegated
to the field's periphery. From this marginal place, white feminist
anthropologists have successfully carved out an acknowledged
intellectual space, identified as feminist anthropology. Unfortunately,
the works of black and non-western feminist anthropologists are rarely
cited, and they have yet to be respected as significant shapers of the
direction and transformation of feminist anthropology.
In this volume, Irma McClaurin has collected-for the
first time-essays that explore the role and contributions of black
feminist anthropologists. She has asked her contributors to disclose
how their experiences as black women have influenced their
anthropological practice in Africa, the Caribbean, and the United
States, and how anthropology has influenced their development as black
feminists. Every chapter is a unique journey that enables the reader to
see how scholars are made. The writers present material from their own
fieldwork to demonstrate how these experiences were shaped by their
identities. Finally, each essay suggests how the author's field
experiences have influenced the theoretical and methodological choices
she has made throughout her career.
Not since Diane Wolf's Feminist Dilemmas in the
Field or Hortense Powdermaker's Stranger and Friend have we had such a
breadth of women anthropologists discussing the critical (and personal)
issues that emerge when doing ethnographic research.
About the Author:
Irma McClaurin is an associate professor of anthropology at the
University of Florida. She is the author of Women of Belize (Rutgers
University Press) and the editor for the journal of the Association of
Black Anthropologists, Transforming Anthropology.
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Price: $22.95
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