Description
Book SynopsisThis new book draws on anthropology, feminism and psychoanalysis to develop an original and provocative theory of gender and of how we become sexed beings. Written not just for professional scholars and for students but for anyone with a serious interest in how gender and sexuality are conceptualised, experienced and imagined.
Trade Review"An excellent and compelling book that, among the many aspects worth discussing, invites the forging of new alliances between anthropology and psychoanalysis in their common concerns for culture, representation and the nature of symbols."
LSE Review of Books "A very well written book on an important topic by one of the most gifted anthropologists of her generation ... that is bound to become a classic text in the emergent cross-road between psychoanalysis, anthropology and feminist studies."
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute "Provides a stimulating challenge to social theorists of subjectivity to apply its arguments to other sets of ethnographic data, and to take up and extend the debate that Moore initiates in this innovative book."
British Journal of Sociology
"This book is invaluable – there is nothing else like it. Well-organized and beautifully written, it is also clear as a bell, which is no mean feat when dealing with these complex and abstruse issues."
Emily Martin, New York University
"This is a major intellectual achievement by one of the pioneers of feminist anthropology. Henrietta Moore sets a new agenda for transnational gender and sexuality research while debating some of the cutting-edge theoretical issues in feminist psychoanalysis and post-structuralism. She urges us to acknowledge the complex and dynamic relationship between bodies and the variant cultural meanings attached to femininity and masculinity, but also to consider the enduring hold of the social imaginary upon the constitution of the subject. A major contribution to the political economy of sexuality in the global era."
Rosi Braidotti, Utrecht University
"Henrietta Moore seeks to build a theory of gendered subjectivity by articulating the insights of psychoanalysis, anthropology and feminism. The extended readings of psychoanalytic theory through anthropological and feminist eyes are clear and illuminating. This is a rich and thought-provoking book."
Sherry B. Ortner, University of California-Los Angeles
Table of ContentsAcknowledgements viii
1 Body, Mind and World 1
2 A Genealogy of the Anthropological Subject 23
3 Culture, Power and Desire 43
4 Objects and Relations with (M)others 63
5 The Problem of the Phallus 95
6 Being and Having 115
7 Kinship and Sexuality 137
8 Mothers and Men 165
9 Social Transformations 193
Notes 212
References 235
Index 259
