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  • Essay / Review of Marilyn Strathern's book, Gender of The Gift

    Marilyn Strathern's book Gender of the Gift is a detailed assessment of the problems faced by women and society as a whole in Melanesia. The study focuses primarily on indigenous culture with the field report on Guinea mead as the center of interest. The report encompasses Mead's adolescence and sexual traits. The book also reviews several other anthropological reports throughout the region. The way in which the author reveals the state of the art is quite confusing although the method of revelation is satisfactory. This section of the book allows us to explain in detail the dynamics of the anthropological field since the departure of Margret Mead. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay The book was written as the field of anthropology was experiencing critical technological advances. It aims to reach generations who experience issues with self-identification, power and overly ambitious goals. This postmodern anthropology relays the Pompidou effect which insists on the fact that the exterior is important in the same way as the interior (Strathern 1988: 65). Foreign culture in the report was ignored due to a lack of authenticity and, instead, the ethnographic space on the front page was occupied by behind-the-scenes field workers and comments questioning themselves. The author of the book has two sets of contradictory ideas that she wishes to convey in her writing. She first communicates messages on consciousness but at the same time writes a post-modernized book on anthropology. The questions she attempts to address fall within the framework of the concerns of postmodernism. For the author to express her ideas well, she must come up with strategies that will bring the behind-the-scenes issues to the forefront. The author's primary idea, seen from context, is to understand the Melanesians' understanding of issues of action, gender and personal ideas. To emphasize this interesting point, the author critically examines the rich cultural content of Melanesia recorded since the start of World War II (Chodorow and Nancy 1992: 103). The ethnography includes three debates undertaken by high-ranking anthropologists. She critically examines the three debates to draw analogies that will lead to preferring one over the other. She describes the strategy she uses as “gentle deconstruction” of Melanesian cultural content. It invalidates one dialogue in relation to the other on the basis of criticism and vagueness. The strategy is a devastating critique that she doesn't write about, but she remains baffled by the high level of underhandedness. The three dialogues are distinct from each other, and each of them expresses a different idea of ​​the concept in question. Taking each one at a time, we start with the first. The dialogue is the ugliest of all the others. Anthropologists have argued that nature is universal for everyone, whether you live in a highly sophisticated economy or an average economy. The argument is based on the universalist error of interpretation of things. This assumption is lame and naive since different people have different perceptions and ideas regarding a society. The dialogue is therefore subject to criticism, if it is to be acceptable. The absence of criticism means that they adhere to relativism and thus dominate others. The other dialogue consists of two feminists concerned about the mistreatment of women. The two groups are feminist scholars and feminist anthropologists who have contrasting views on this issue (Gross 1990). The goal of the researcher is to change and.