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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... economic tensions had strained the nation for more than a decade. These were years of civil war. Power struggles between the state and insurgent groups, including the Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso, SL), were enacted daily on the bodies ...
... economy”: examining the material dimensions of objects to discover how they communicate abstract ideas and affect cultural and economic values. Once in Peru, I found that the harsh realities of war made questions of meaning even more ...
... economy” mean? Beyond the doubts that bedevil every large project, my doubts were honed by the war that surrounded me and affected the lives of people with whom I worked and lived. Sally Ness, an anthropologist studying a popular dance ...
... economic contexts, both contemporary and historical. Bordados were an important subject because gendered ideologies ... economy. Rethinking “economy” preceded understanding the workshop organization.
Blenda Femenías. dimensions of economy. Rethinking “economy” preceded understanding the workshop organization of bordado production, which does not set neatly within any single economic system. While the men, women, and sometimes ...
Contents
Traveling | |
Identity in a Region at | |
Visual Domain and Cultural Process | |
Representation and the Embodiment | |
Transvestism and Festivals as Performance | |
Ethnic Symbols and Gendered | |
Gender and Production in a Workshop | |
Exchange Identity and the Commoditization | |
Conclusion Why Women Wear Polleras | |
Bibliography | |
Index | |