Description
Book SynopsisThis innovative volume studies women traders as economic, political, and cultural mediators of space, gender, value, and language in ten diverse locales—Bolivia, Ghana, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Morocco, Nicaragua, Peru, and the Philippines. Its focus is on how these women move between and knit together household and marketplace activities.
Trade Review"This book is a diverse yet surprisingly comprehensive examinationof women's experiences as traders indifferent anthropological settings. The analytic traditions used vary, but what unites the essays is that the authors' overall concernis to show how gender ideologies and women's market participationinteract in ways that wehave scarcely understood until now." -- Susan Russell * northern Illinois University *
"A compilation which delves into new areas of ethnographic research and makes significant contributions to the anthropology of work . . . .It also opens up an interesting branch of research regarding identity creation in a globalized world where metaphoric borders are slowly fading away in previously unimaginable ways." --
Anthropology of Work ReviewTable of ContentsIntroduction: mediating identities and marketing wares Linda J. Seligmann Part I. Gender Ideologies, Household Models and Market Dynamics: 1. Nineteenth-century views of women's participation in Mexico's markets Judith Marti 2. Markets as gendered domains: the Javanese Pasar Jennifer Alexander and Paul Alexander Part II. Fields of Power: 3. Inside, outside, and selling on the road: women's markets trading in South India Johanna lessinger 4. 'Nursing-mother work' in Ghana: power and frustration in Akan market women's lives Gracia Clark Part III. Identity, Economy, and Survival in the Marketplace: 5. Situating handicraft market women in Ifugao, Upland Philippines: a case for multiplicity B. Lynne Milgram 6. Gender on the market in Moroccan women's verbal art: performative spheres of feminine authority Deborah A. Kapchan 7. Hungarian village women in the marketplace during the late socialist period Eva V. Huseby-Darvas 8. Traditional medicines in the marketplace: identity and ethnicity among female vendors Lynn Sikkink Part IV. Research Agendas: 9. Market/places as gendered spaces: market/women's studies over two decades Florence E. Babb Conclusion: future research directions Linda J. Seligmann Notes References Index.
