Reviewing of Marilyn Strathern's Book Gender of The Gift

The book Gender of the Gift by the Marilyn Strathern is a detailed evaluation of the problems faced by women and the society at large in Melanesia. The study mainly focuses on the native’s culture with the guinea mead’s field report as the center of interest. The report encompasses mead’s adolescence and sexual traits. The book also reviews several other anthropological reports all around the area. The way in which the author reveals the state of the art is quite confusing although the method of revelation is satisfying. The section of the book helps to explain into details the dynamics of the anthropological field since Margret Mead left.

The book has been written when the anthropology field is undergoing critical technological advancement. It is aimed at reaching generations that are experiencing problems with self-identification, power and over-ambitious objectives. This post-modern anthropology relays the Pompidou effect that insists that the outside is of importance just like the inside (Strathern 1988:65). The foreign culture in the report has been disregarded due to lack of proper authenticity and instead the ethnography front page space has been taken over by the backstage field workers and self-questioning commentary.

The author of the book has two conflicting set of ideas that she wishes to relay in her writing. She at first communicates messages on consciousness but at the same time writes a post modernized book about anthropology. The issues she attempts to address are against the postmodernism scope of concern. For the author to be able to express he r ideas well she needs to come up with strategies that will put the express the backstage issues upfront. The primary idea of the author, as seen from the context, is to understand the Melanesians comprehension on matters of agency, gender and personal ideas. To hit point of interest, the author examines critically the rich culture content of Melanesia that been on record since the occurrence of the World War II (Chodorow & Nancy 1992:103). The ethnography entails three debates undertaken by high-rank anthropologists. She the critically scrutinizes the three debates to draw from them analogies that will lead to the preference of one over the other. She terms the strategy she uses as ‘a gentle deconstruction’ of the Melanesia culture content. She invalidates one dialogue over the other on the basis of criticism and vagueness. The strategy is devastating criticism that she does not write about, am left confounded by the high level of sneakiness.

The three dialogues are distinct from each other, and each one of them expresses a different idea of the concept in question. Taking each at a time, we start with the first one. The dialogue is the ugliest of all the others. The anthropologists argued that nature is universal to everybody whether you are living in highly sophisticated economy or an average economy. The argument is based on Universalist fallacy of interpretation of things. This assumption is lame and naïve since different people have a different perception and ideas concerning a society. The dialogue is, therefore, subject to criticism if at all it has to be acceptable. Absentia of criticism means that the embracing relativism and hence dominate over the rest.

The other dialogue is made up of two feminist who are concerned about the abuse of women. The two groups are feminist scholars and feminist anthropologist who have contrasting views on this matter (Gross 1990). The scholar's aim is to change and improve the situation of women perception. Their primary concern is the oppressive dominion over women and now wants equality in opinions. On the other hand, the anthropologists have a contrasting opinion. Their argument is based on priority and judgment. Both construe in diverse ways the relativism issue of universality of the predetermined nature of women. Melanesian men are the theme in the debate and the two groups differ on the question whether the men cause affliction to the Melanesian women or not. The scholars are of the opinion that women are oppressed while the anthropologists argue that men domination over women is universal all over the globe. The anthropologist use denial that women are dominated by men all over the world is a relativistic attack. Much extrication needs to be done for them to have grounds for debating on domination.

The last dialogue is about the gift economy and the economic relations that exist beyond the economy market limits. Agency, person, society and gender are worked out in debate one to eliminate the effect of universality; therefore, the feminist scholar argument on unpaid domestic workers is out of scope. The gift economy here applies to the different relationship exploitation as compared to the misuse in the market economy (Filer & Colin 1995). The three dialogues forms the first bit of the book. The primary concept of labor is a term that has diverse interpretation according to the point of reference. In the case where one appreciates the returns, that cannot be said to be an oppression in the commodity economy. Marilyn Strathern ends up supporting the first dialogue by opposing the fact that the Melanesian women are being oppressed. She argues that the men are just using their wives productive capacity and that later writes on the theories of cause and agency in the book. The author needs to do much unfold what I would say is intricate bit of the three debates. The arguments seem as an awning of the debate between the dumb capitalists and critics. The many assumptions cause deviation from the main course of rebuking distortion of the anthropologists approach.

It is wrong to take the issue of gender as just about the male and female aspect. To the Melanesians, gender is the way of structuring social events and the prestige that comes with it after. Both the men and women who are entirely involved in the process take pride in it. The whole criticism of whether there is exploitation of women or not, is due to the inclusion of the West thoughts. The author is not firm on what is her opinion for she at times picks one side and comes with theories to counter the other. In doing so the deconstruction thing does not apply. Melanesians’ need to have a change in the norms of doing things, they need to do comparative studies based on the experiences and categories of the western. The author does not consider these facts and defers with the suggestion that other people’s civilizations study would help us solve our current challenges. This is a misconception of ideas. However her story has given a green light to the debating intellectuals and anthropologists. Development of her narrative can now be done to reach new depths.