Performing Kinship: Narrative, Gender, and the Intimacies of Power in the AndesIn the highland region of Sullk'ata, located in the rural Bolivian Andes, habitual activities such as sharing food, work, and stories create a sense of relatedness among people. Through these day-to-day interactions—as well as more unusual events—individuals negotiate the affective bonds and hierarchies of their relationships. In Performing Kinship, Krista E. Van Vleet reveals the ways in which relatedness is evoked, performed, and recast among the women of Sullk'ata. Portraying relationships of camaraderie and conflict, Van Vleet argues that narrative illuminates power relationships, which structure differences among women as well as between women and men. She also contends that in the Andes gender cannot be understood without attention to kinship. Stories such as that of the young woman who migrates to the city to do domestic work and later returns to the highlands voicing a deep ambivalence about the traditional authority of her in-laws provide enlightening examples of the ways in which storytelling enables residents of Sullk'ata to make sense of events and link themselves to one another in a variety of relationships. A vibrant ethnography, Performing Kinship offers a rare glimpse into an compelling world. |
From inside the book
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... hierarchies of kinship and gender among Que- chua speakers who live in the rural region of sullk'ata, Bolivia, is the heart of the book. my own negotiation of relationships with sullk'atas is a secondary but analytically significant ...
... hierarchies of relatedness and examining the construction of reality through everyday interactions. Drawn from my ... hierarchy within a marriage. The series of events also indicates a woman's active attempts to contest public opinion ...
... hierarchies as well. noting that “few analysts probe the various contents of familial bonds or ask how varying relationships within the home might influ- ence relationships outside it,” she urged us to acknowledge the ways in which our ...
... hierarchies has been to explore how kinship and gender, as well as other domains such as race, are normalized (e.g., Yanagisako and Delany 1995). The “naturalness” of certain categories or identities or actions seems to emerge from an ...
... hierarchy and ambiguity with other women, especially their mothers-in-law and sisters- in-law, as much as with their husbands. marriage produces both affective bonds and arenas of contestation that are crucial to understanding the daily ...
Contents
1 | |
27 | |
Circulation of Care A Primer on Sullkata Relatedness | 55 |
Narrating Sorrow Performing Relatedness A Story Told in Conversation | 79 |
Storied Silences Adolescent Desires Gendered Agency and the Practice of Stealing Women | 99 |
Reframing the Married Couple Affect and Exchange in Three Parts | 129 |
Now My Daughter Is Alone Violence and the Ambiguities of Affinity | 161 |
Conclusion Reflections on the Dialogical Production of Relatedness | 183 |
Chapter 5 Narrative Transcriptions in Quechua and in English | 197 |
Chapter 6 Interview Transcriptions in Quechua | 205 |
Notes | 209 |
Glossary | 225 |
Bibliography | 229 |
Index | 257 |