An awkward relationship: the case of feminism and anthropology

• Main Author: Marilyn Strathern
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Universidade Estadual de Londrina 2009-12-01
• Series: Mediações: Revista de Ciências Sociais
• Subjects: Feminismo; Antropologia; Paradigmas.
• Online Access: http://www.uel.br/revistas/uel/index.php/mediacoes/article/view/4508

This article explores some of the problems - and reactions - that arise in the dialogue between disciplinary practices and feminist theory. Certainly anthropology has interests parallel to those of feminist scholarship, but the proximity makes anthropologists’ resistance more poignant. That dissonance is actually a product of feminists’ and anthropologists’ intellectual proximity – as neighbors in tension. Practitioners of both imagine they might be overthrowing existing paradigms, and one might, in turn, expect “radical” anthropology to draw on its feminist counterpart, what does not seem to have happened. Their resistance to one another will throw light on the difference between “feminism” and “anthropology” as such.