Women of the Forest - Softcover

A book ahead of its time, Women of the Forest continues to be cited widely in anthropological literature dealing with issues as diverse as warfare; cultural ecology; kinship, marriage, and residence; culture and ideology; and, most especially, gender. Yolanda and Robert Murphy argue that Mundurucu men's braggadocio and their ritual enactments of gendered opposition and outright antagonism (such as narrations of myths about an earlier era of matriarchy, when anarchy and suffering prevailed), in fact reflect insecure male positions on the ground. Paradoxically, assertions of male superiority and actual maltreatment of women give rise to female solidarity and a certain amount of subversion. Also paradoxically, the spatial separation of the sexes, thought to be the root of Mundurucu women's subordination, turns out to be an important source of their cohesion and autonomy. In short, the Murphys make a case for Mundurucu performances of male dominance being an example of "methinks the lady doth protest too much" statements: the vehemence of their delivery falsifies what they're claiming. That the Murphys made such prescient arguments in 1974 puts the book in a class by itself. The humor alone is worth the read. In addition to gender studies, this 1974 book addresses several issues that subsequently engaged anthropology in major ways. Examples include: rapprochement with history; inclusion of the researcher in the ethnographic analysis/ethnographic write-up; fieldwork as hermeneutic practice; anthropology of the body; the relationship between structure and practice. A compelling new forward by R. Brian Ferguson contains commentaries by five lowland South Americanists. ColumbiaUniversity is to be commended for re-issuing this classic.

In the decades since it was first published, this study of Brazil's Mundurucu Indians has been widely read and has become regarded as a classic. Now, for the second edition, the authors have written a new chapter that describes their fieldwork during the year they spent living among the Mundurucu. "Women of the Forest" details an acute and intriguing battle of the sexes in which reality squarely contradicts ideology. The Murphy's full-scale analysis considers the historical, ecological, and cultural setting in which the Mundurucu live, the mythology concerning women, the woman's work and household life, marriage and child rearing, and the impact of social change on the female role. The authors give particular attention to sexual antagonism and the means by which women compensate, in actual practice, for their low public position. The new chapter gives the reader an idea of the nature of ethnographic fieldwork as both personal experience and scientific practice. It recounts how they coped with the language barrier, the practice of bartering rather than buying, and other day-to-day problems of living in a totally different culture. Thus, it provides an illuminating background to Mundurucu culture before the reader delves into the rich details of the study itself. At the same time the chapter helps the reader to learn about anthropological methods of data gathering.