How Feminist is Gendered Anthropology? : Feminism and Anthropology Revisited(<Special Theme>Gender Studies in Anthropology : Some Possibilities through/with Difficulties)

Abstract

This paper aims to explore the complex relationship between feminism as both a theoretical position and social movement on one hand, and anthropological inquires into gender on the other. In English-speaking countries, these two seem to go hand in hand, in most cases, as indicated in the widespread use of the term, "feminist anthropology". In Japanese academia, however, feminist anthropology has never gained a wide usage despite a relatively large concern with gender-related issues. In this context, "gender" tends to be deemed a topic, rather than a perspective through which to approach certain topics. This paper thus raises the following question: can there be anthropology of gender without a feminist perspective? In other words, can we separate gender as a subject from gender as a research perspective? To answer these questions, the paper first looks briefly at the development of anthropological inquires into gender issues and examines the impact of feminism upon such academic endeavors. Next, it summarizes the examples of ethnographic studies on the societies of Java and Bali in Indonesia, contrasting those with a clear gender perspective and those without. It then presents the author's personal views on the problems and possibilities of practising anthropology of gender in Japan. Undoubtedly, anthropological studies of gender have produced a large number of theoretical writings, collected volumes and monographs over the last three decades. In the West, the development of so-called feminist anthropology has been closely related to the development of feminist theories since the early 1970s. Anthropology became "gendered" in the sense that fragmented concerns with sex roles, women's positions in families, as well as marriage systems, have come to constitute a solid, integrated area of research. At the same time, the universalist approach to women's subordination was clearly based on simplistic and Eurocentric assumptions that women's problems, as exemplified in the situations in the West, are essentially the same everywhere. In this vein, anthropological knowledge was expected to provide useful ethnographic examples for consolidating the constructed nature of gender. For anthropology, however, a problem arises from the fact that we study and discuss "other" people's gender, rather than our own. We are thus required to negotiate "for whom" the aimed social reform, embedded in feminist practices, is meant to be. In this light, the warnings against the "use and abuse" of anthropology have been voiced by some feminist anthropologists themselves, such as Michelle Rosaldo and Marilyn Strathern. There is also severe criticism from "Third World feminists" concerning an uncritical view of "women" as a homogeneous category. Consequently, anthropology of gender has renewed its theoretical concerns by looking at gender as a dynamic process, rather than as a given, fixed difference; and by paying more attention to the intersection of gender with other differences such as those based on race, ethnicity, religion and social class. In the body of anthropological literature on the societies of Java and Bali in Indonesia, an emphasis on the relative equality of male-female relationships was pronounced. Gender difference, it has been argued, is considerably downplayed in these societies; even when such difference is clearly recognized, complementarity rather than inequality was said to come to the fore. Such an "unproblematic" status of gender issues is also the norm in other societies in Southeast Asia; hence, the studies of gender in this region remained undeveloped until the 1980s. However, more recent research efforts incorporating gender as a perspective have cast light on the historical process in which socio-economic changes have enhanced or modified the foregoing gender

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