Gender and the Boundaries of Dress in Contemporary PeruSet in Arequipa during Peru's recent years of crisis, this ethnography reveals how dress creates gendered bodies. It explores why people wear clothes, why people make art, and why those things matter in a war-torn land. Blenda Femenías argues that women's clothes are key symbols of gender identity and resistance to racism. Moving between metropolitan Arequipa and rural Caylloma Province, the central characters are the Quechua- and Spanish-speaking maize farmers and alpaca herders of the Colca Valley. Their identification as Indians, whites, and mestizos emerges through locally produced garments called bordados. Because the artists who create these beautiful objects are also producers who carve an economic foothold, family workshops are vital in a nation where jobs are as scarce as peace. But ambiguity permeates all practices shaping bordados' significance. Femenías traces contemporary political and ritual applications, not only Caylloma's long-standing and violent ethnic conflicts, to the historical importance of cloth since Inca times. This is the only book about expressive culture in an Andean nation that centers on gender. In this feminist contribution to ethnography, based on twenty years' experience with Peru, including two years of intensive fieldwork, Femenías reflects on the ways gender shapes relationships among subjects, research, and representation. |
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... dance , the money she earned as a maid in Lima helped support Carnival . After dancing with a local man during Carni ... dance , only a few men portray the character . As Witite's costume and manner of self - presentation shape his role ...
... dance compel attention , as the bombo ( drum ) keeps a deep , even beat . Much of the power derives from sheer numbers of participants . In vast collective motion , hundreds of dancing bodies move in sync . Everyone does the same thing ...
... Dancers sometimes blinded , or even killed , their oppo- nents . State authorities used those deaths as a reason to intervene . They reviewed dancers ' ammunition before each dance began ( Bernal 1983 : 201 ) and ejected individuals who ...
Contents
Introduction False Borders Embroidered Lives | xvii |
the Crossroads | 78 |
Process | 103 |
Copyright | |
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