The Gender of the Gift

In the most original and ambitious synthesis yet undertaken in Melanesian scholarship, Marilyn Strathern argues that gender relations have been a particular casualty of unexamined assumptions held by Western anthropologists and feminist scholars alike. The book treats with equal seriousness—and with equal good humor—the insights of Western social science, feminist politics, and ethnographic reporting, in order to rethink the representation of Melanesian social and cultural life. This makes The Gender of the Gift one of the most sustained critiques of cross-cultural comparison that anthropology has seen, and one of its most spirited vindications.

Preface
Acknowledgments

INTRODUCTION
1. Anthropological Strategies
2. A Place in the Feminist Debate

PART ONE
3. Groups: Sexual Antagonism in the
New Guinea Highlands
4. Domains: Male and Female Models
5. Power: Claims and Counterclaims
6. Work: Exploitation at Issue

PART TWO
7. Some Definitions
8. Relations which Separate
9. Forms which Propagate
10. Cause and Effect

CONCLUSION
11. Domination
12. Comparison

Notes
Bibliography
Author Index
Subject Index