Women Of The Praia

In this richly detailed, sensitive ethnographic work, Sally Cole takes as her starting point the firsthand accounts of five differently situated Portuguese women, who describe their lives in a rural fishing community on the north coast of Portugal. Skillfully combining these life stories with cultural and economic analysis, Cole radically departs from the picture of women as sexual beings that prevails in the anthropological literature on Europe and the Mediterranean. Her very different strategy--a focus on women as workers--reflects the Portuguese women's own definition of themselves and allows them the strong, resonant voice that is the goal of both the new ethnography and feminist scholarship. From this new perspective, Cole proposes an important critique of the dominant paradigm of southern European gender relations as being embedded in the code of honor and shame. Covering the Salazar years, as well as the period since the 1974 Revolution, Cole shows that fisherwomen of the past enjoyed greater autonomy in work and social relations than do their daughters and granddaughters, who live in a context of increasing commoditization and industrialization. Central to this account is an examination of the changing structure and role of the household as economic production moved to the factory.

For over the past two centuries Shetland, Scotland was a place where women dominated the family, economy, and the cultural imagination. Women constructed in their minds an identity of themselves as "liberated" long before organized feminism was invented. Reconstructing this "woman's world" from written and oral sources, this book will appeal to scholars in the fields of social and cultural history, social anthropology, gender and women's studies.

Ruth Landes (1908?91) is now recognized as a pioneer in the study of race and gender relations. Ahead of her time in many respects, Landes worked with issues that defined the central debates in the discipline at the dawn of the twenty-first century. In Ruth Landes, Sally Cole reconsiders Landes?s life, work, and career, and places her at the heart of anthropology. ø The daughter of Russian Jewish immigrants, Landes studied under the renowned anthropologist Franz Boas and was mentored by Ruth Benedict. Landes?s rejection of domestic life led to an early divorce. Her ideas regarding gender roles also shaped her 1930s fieldwork among the Ojibwa, where she worked closely with Maggie Wilson to produce a masterpiece study of gender relations, The Ojibwa Woman. Her growing prominence and subsequent work in Bahia, Brazil, was marked by outstanding fieldwork and another landmark study, The City of Women. This was a tumultuous time for Landes, who was accused of being a spy, and her remarkable work fed the envy of such prominent scholars as Melville Herskovits and Margaret Mead. Ultimately, however, the errors and excesses that her critics complained of long ago now point us to the innovations for which she is responsible and that give her work its lasting value and power.

The aim of this reference work is to make African human rights law accessible to all those involved in or interested in human rights law on the continent in order to strengthen its impact. Primary documents are introduced and reproduced and presented in a coherent framework. The main institutions - public and private - dealing with human rights in Africa are identified and discussed. Comprehensive overviews of the international human rights legal regimes applicable to Africa, as well as country reports are provided. This book tries to contribute towards documenting, systemising and anchoring the African human rights system. The print edition is available as a set of two volumes (9789004138810).

Since 1960 the fertility rate in Mexico has dropped to about 2.6 children per woman. Such changes are part of a transformation explored in this ethnographic study of generational and migration-related redefinitions of gender, marriage and sexuality in rural Mexico and among Mexicans in Atlanta.

For those interested in democratic transition and consolidation, social movements, and gender politics, this volume is the most comprehensive, up-to-date, and probing analysis available of how women's groups are helping to reshape Latin America. The contributors document and assess the remarkable wave of women's political participation in Latin America over the past two decades. The first five case studies, on Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, and Peru, examine the origins, evolution, and goals of women's organizations as they worked together to end authoritarian rule and elaborate how women's groups have adapted in the 1990s to the day-to-day realities of democratic politics. In the 1990s, the challenge has shifted from mobilizing opposition to the very different task of working with parties and government bureaucracies in order to maintain and implement their agendas. The chapters on Nicaragua and Mexico broaden our understanding of political transitions.Seven case studies vividly illustrate the variety of women's movements in the region, ranging from the communal-kitchens movements to human rights groups. Each author discusses the strategies and debates of the feminist movements in question and records their political successes and failures. Jaquette's introductory and concluding essays provide a comparative framework, highlighting the innovative ways in which Latin American women are making gender a political issue.

Through a collection of essays by leading scholars on women's history and gender history, Gender and Change: Agency, Chronology and Periodisation questions conventional chronologies while reassessing the relationship between gender, agency, continuity and change. Celebrates 20 years of the publication of the journal Gender & History Reflects the extent to which gender analysis suggests alternatives to conventional periodisation. For example, whether the European Renaissance can be classified as the same period of great cultural advance when viewed from the perspective of women Offers innovative historiographical and theoretical reflection on approaches to gender, agency, and change

Despite the port’s prominence in maritime history, its cultural significance has long been neglected in favour of its role within economic and imperial networks. Defined by their intersection of maritime and urban space, port towns were sites of complex cultural exchanges. This book, the product of international scholarship, offers innovative and challenging perspectives on the cultural histories of ports, ranging from eighteenth-century Africa to twentieth-century Australasia and Europe. The essays in this important collection explore two key themes; the nature and character of ‘sailortown’ culture and port-town life, and the representations of port towns that were forged both within and beyond urban-maritime communities. The book’s exploration of port town identities and cultures, and its use of a rich array of methodological approaches and cultural artefacts, will make it of great interest to both urban and maritime historians. It also represents a major contribution to the emerging, interdisciplinary field of coastal studies.