Power and Difference: Gender in Island Southeast A

Although the societies of island Southeast Asia(Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines, plus Brunei and Singapore) are known for their egalitarian relations between men and women, subtle differences in power and status do exist. These differences are often difficult to conceptualize, and, consequently, the theoretical issues posed by such relatively egalitarian gender systems have been largely unexamined in Western scholarship, even thought these issues are of great importance to feminists and others interested in culture and power. This book is about difference and power as they relate to men and women in island Southeast Asia. It examines how differences between 'male' and 'female' (as gendered concepts of the person) and between men and women (as living beings engaged in activities) are constituted there in assumptions and through practices, and how power is envisioned and distributed among men and women. The book begins with a substantial theoretical essay on gender, power, and the body, which is followed by eleven studies of aspects of gender in various parts of island Southeast Asia.

'The essays exhibit imaginative analyses of ethnographic materials in a coherent and altogether intellectually exciting manner. The excellence of the scholarship is reflected not only in the elegant analyses of the ethnographic materials but also in the careful attention to matters of theory, demonstrating a subtle interweaving of theory and data in the best traditions of anthropological interpretation. No serious study of the socio-cultural character of gender can afford to ignore it.' Fitz John Porter Poole, University of California, San Diego