• DOI:10.1086/493727
• Corpus ID: 143721154

The Use and Abuse of Anthropology: Reflections on Feminism and Cross-Cultural Understanding

@article{Rosaldo1980TheUA,
  title={The Use and Abuse of Anthropology: Reflections on Feminism and Cross-Cultural Understanding},
  author={Michelle Zimbalist Rosaldo},
  journal={Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society},
  year={1980},
  volume={5},
  pages={389 - 417}
}

• M. Rosaldo
• Published 1 April 1980
• Sociology
• Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society

This is an article about questions. Feminists have managed, in recent years, to impress a matter of undeniable importance on both academic and popular audiences alike. Previously blinded by bias, we have begun a "discovery" of women and have reported a good deal of data on women's lives, needs, and interests that earlier scholars ignored. Sexist traditions have, of course, made our records uneven. Now more than ever we see just how little is known about women. And the urgency experienced by current researchers is fueled by a recognition that invaluable records of women's arts, work, and politics are irretrievably lost. Our theories are-the saying goes-only as good as our data. As was suggested in a recent review of anthropological writings on sex roles, "What is clearest in the literature reviewed is the need for further investigation.... What is most impressive about this literature is the overwhelming number of specific researchable questions it has produced. Hopefully the social force which inspired anthropological interest in women's status will sustain this interest through the long second stage of research fashioned to explore these hypotheses."1 But whatever we do or do not know, my sense is that feminist thinking-in anthropology at least-faces yet a more serious problem. Many a fieldworker has spent her months in the hills with predominantly