405 Lecture Notes 1

ANT 405 Dr. Dorothy Wills

The Anthropological Perspective on Gender Studies

The anthropological study of men and women (and boys and girls) is:

- about both nature and nurture

- about relations between people and their material conditions

- about their view of themselves as well as others' views of them.

The approach is cross-cultural and comparative, drawing from post-colonial theory, with an evolutionary perspective.

Problems include: essentialism, subjectivity, notions of 'normal' and 'natural'.

- other isms: sexism, heterosexism, ethnocentrism, etc.

Problem of honesty and 'political correctness',

the vastness and diversity of the subject, the plasticity of both biology and behavior

Evolutionary perspective - what is it? (mammals, primates, and humans)

1. sexual dimorphism

2. primate past and living relatives

3. fossil record

4. developmental sequence (maturation, senescence)

5. ethnographic, demographic and historical data (numbers and polytypic factors)

6. explanatory framework including survival, adaptation, and function

7. seasonality and the concept of cortical control of sexuality

8. mating and reproduction

9. status and sex

10. socialization of offspring