Author Description

Mascia-Lees’ outstanding ability to synthesize complex ideas rewards readers with a text that clearly conceptualizes how differences of gender, race, class, and sexuality structure today’s globalizing world. It exposes the strengths and weaknesses of different theoretical orientations used in anthropology to study gender, difference, power, and inequality including feminist anthropology; black feminist anthropology; lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgendered theory; practice, postcolonial, symbolic, and psychological anthropology; as well as social evolutionism, sociobiology, and evolutionary psychology, among others. Mascia-Lees combines core components of these perspectives with insightful analyses and ethnographic examples to illustrate how global events and transformations have molded and continue to shape gender identities, behaviors, and expectations and produce and sustain worldwide inequalities. This exemplary treatment provides a solid background to understand complex issues and to think critically about remedying uneven degrees of privilege and experiences of oppression both within and across nations. Useful pedagogical elements unfold and bring to life historical events, theoretical perspectives, and evolving ideas. “Global News” features topics and issues of timely and special interest; “Ethnography in Focus” presents excerpts of some of the ethnographic contexts within which gender is constructed; and “Close-Up” sections expand on chapter concepts. A “Word Portfolio” list of key terms to be mastered is at the end of each chapter. (Not-for-sale instructor resource material available to college and university faculty only; contact the publisher directly.)