Gender and the Boundaries of Dress in Contemporary Peru

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University of Texas Press, Jan 1, 2010 - Social Science - 384 pages

Set 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.

From inside the book

Contents

Acknowledgments
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
Copyright

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About the author (2010)

Blenda B. Femenías is a Research Associate at the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.

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