Hello All:
This was forwarded to me, and I thought it might be of interest to
some list members. This message should not be read as a
"commercial"--and I have not read teh book myself, so I can't provide
any further feedback.
Cheers,
Stefanie
------- Forwarded Message Follows -------
Forthcoming Book:
The Two-Headed Household: Gender and Rural Development in the
Ecuadorean Andes
Sarah Hamilton
Pitt Latin American Series
The Two-Headed Household is an ethnographic account of gender
relations and intrahousehold decisionmaking as well as a
policy-oriented study of gender and development in the indigenous
Andean community of Chanchalo, Ecuador. Hamilton's main argument is
that the households in these farming communities are "two-headed."
Men and women participate equally in agricultural production and
management, in household decision making, and share in the
reproductive tasks of child care, food preparation, and other chores.
In case studies of five women and their families, the author
continually encounters joint decision making and shared household
and agricultural responsibilities. In fact, it often seems that
women have the final say in many decisions. There is the belief
that a dynamic balance of power between male and female heads
provides an impetus toward mutually desired economic and social
goals. Despite the strong influence of tile patriarchal power of
the hacienda system, Andean gender ideology accords women and men
equal measures of physical, mental, and emotional fortitude. The
belief that maintaining traditional forms of economic collaboration
helped them survive on the hacienda was reinforced under the
economic and political domination of the patriarchal systems of the
landed elite, church, and state.
Today, these people are proud of their strong women, strong
families, and community solidarity which they believe distinguishes
them from Ecuadorean and American societies. Hamilton suggests that
women in developing countries should not be viewed as simply, or
even inevitably, victims of gender-biased structural or cultural
institutions. They may resist male bias, perhaps even with the
support of local-level institutions. The Two-Headed Household
demonstrates that analysis of gender relations should focus on
forms of cooperation among women and men, as well as on forms of
conflict, and will be of interest to scholars and students in
anthropology, gender and development, and Latin American Studies.
Sarah Hamilton is a sociocultural anthropologist specializing in
the study of economic development in Latin America and the
Caribbean. She is director of the Women in International
Development Program at Virginia Tech and an advocate of gender
equity on the international development projects managed by
Virginia Tech's Office of International Research and Development.
She is now involved in interdisciplinary gender and development
research in Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Ecuador, Jamaica, the
Philippines, Bangladesh, Senegal, Mali, and Uganda.
"(Hamilton] also does an excellent job of locating her results in
the relevant literature and in exploring the factors that have
maintained gender equality in this region. The book's strength lies
in the excellent use of ethnographic data to explore household
decision-making processes:'
- Carmen Diana Deere, University of Massachusetts at Amherst
"The Two-Headed Household presents a thorough analysis of the
theoretical and country--specific literature. The research is
original and well documented and is unique in combining
quantitative and qualitative approaches. It excels as an ethnography:'
- Peggy A. Lovell, University of Pittsburgh
332 pp., illustrated
Cloth
0-8229-4072-8
$50.00s
Paper
0-8229-S677-2
$22.95s
Available in November from:
University of Pittsburgh Press
CUP Services, Box 6525, Ithaca, NY 14851 USA
Tel: 607-277-2211
Fax: 607-277-6292
E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Web: http://www.pitt.edu/~press/forthcoming/hamilton.html
************************************
Dr. Stefanie S. Rixecker
Division of Environmental Management & Design
Lincoln University, Canterbury
PO Box 56
Aotearoa New Zealand
E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Fax: 64-03-325-3841
************************************
