Topic > Book Review Gender of The Gift by Marilyn Strathern

The book Gender of the Gift by Marilyn Strathern is a detailed assessment of the problems faced by women and society at large in Melanesia. The study focuses primarily on the culture of the native with the mead field report as the center of interest. The report includes Mead's adolescence and sexual traits. The book also examines several other anthropological reports throughout the area. The way the author reveals the state of the art is quite confusing although the manner of revelation is satisfactory. The section of the book helps explain in detail the dynamics of the anthropological field since Margret Mead left. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay The book was written when the field of anthropology was going through a critical technological advancement. It aims to reach generations who are experiencing issues of self-identification, power and overly ambitious goals. This postmodern anthropology conveys the Pompidou effect which insists that the outside is just as important as the inside (Strathern 1988:65). Foreign culture in the report was ignored due to a lack of adequate authenticity and instead the ethnographic space on the front page was occupied by backstage field workers and self-questioning comments. The author of the book has two sets of contrasting ideas that she wishes to convey in her writings. He initially communicates messages about consciousness but at the same time writes a postmodernized book about anthropology. The issues it attempts to address run counter to the scope of postmodernism. For the author to be able to express his ideas well, he must develop strategies that bring the expression of behind-the-scenes issues to the fore. The author's main idea, seen from context, is to understand Melanesians' understanding of issues of agency, gender, and personal ideas. To hit the point of interest, the author critically examines the rich cultural content of Melanesia recorded since the outbreak of the Second World War (Chodorow & Nancy 1992: 103). The ethnography involves three debates undertaken by high-ranking anthropologists. He then critically examines the three debates to draw analogies that will lead to the preference of one over the other. She characterizes the strategy she uses as "a gentle deconstruction" of the cultural content of Melanesia. It invalidates one dialogue over the other on the basis of criticism and vagueness. The strategy is a devastating criticism that he doesn't write about, I remain confused by the high level of underhandedness. The three dialogues are distinct from each other and each of them expresses a different idea of ​​the concept in question. Taking them each in turn, let's start with the first. The dialogue is worse than all the others. Anthropologists argued that nature is universal to everyone, whether one lives in a highly sophisticated economy or a medium economy. The argument is based on the universalist fallacy of the interpretation of things. This assumption is lame and naive as different people have different perceptions and ideas about a society. Dialogue is, therefore, subject to criticism if it is to be acceptable. The absence of criticism means that they embrace relativism and therefore dominate the rest. The other dialogue consists of two feminists concerned about the abuse of women. The two groups are feminist scholars and feminist anthropologists who have contrasting views on this topic (Gross 1990). The scholar's goal is to change and improve the situation of perception of women. Their main concern is the oppressive rule over women and now they want equality in opinions. The.