Themes in the Cross-Cultural Analysis of Women and Society

FAIN: FS-10846-78

Eleanor B. Leacock
CUNY Research Foundation, City College (New York, NY 10031-9101)

Seminar will first review major writings on women's roles cross-culturally and historically, discussing common themes that run through differing theories of "basis for female/male relations and roles in our society. Attention will then shift to detailed, historically oriented study of female/male roles and related attitudes in early North American Indian society (and in other areas or periods of interest to the participants). Special attention will be given to Levi-Strauss's assumption that the Western association of men with (superior) culture and women with (inferior) nature is universal, and to considering non-Western themes of female/male "complementarity."