Making Gender: The Politics and Erotics of Culture by Sherry B.

Ortner
Review by: Jana Fortier
Anthropological Quarterly, Vol. 70, No. 3 (Jul., 1997), pp. 153-154
Published by: The George Washington University Institute for Ethnographic Research
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 BOOK REVIEWS
ies as best used by Victor Turner, an important
source of his analysis. His discussion of the "nu-
clear family," although plausible in light of contem-
porary theory, relies on quite meager data. Nuclear
rites is a virtuoso deployment of anthropological
theory with a questionableempirical foundation.
I look forward to incorporating Gusterson's
book into courses on science and technology. Stu-
Making Gender: The Politics and Erotics of Culture. SHERRY B. ORTNER. Boston MA:
Beacon Press, 1996. 255 pp.
Sherry Ortner's essays, written over a span of
twenty-five years, rekindled memories of graduate
school debates. The collection brings her earlier
writings together with her more distinguishedcontri-
butions as well as two previously unpublished es-
says. Well known for her discussions of male and
female social status differences,Ortner'searly essays
reflect this meditation. "The Virgin and the State,"
written while she was still a graduatestudent at the
University of Chicago, explores why notions of fe-
male sexual purity and protectionare structurallyin-
significant in non-state societies but are highly sig-
nificant in state societies. "Rank and Gender"
explores how men and women in Polynesian socie-
ties manipulatesexual and kinship rules in their pur-
suit of power and status. "The Problem of 'Women'
as an Analytic Category" uses the story of the
building of a Sherpa Buddhist nunnery to explore
how female agents' authority,power, and intention-
ality are similar and distinct from their male
counterparts.
These essays, all published prior to 1983, pro-
vide a useful summary of the major debates from
that era, and of the ways the theories were shaped
by emphasis on structuresand categories. It is a lit-
tle like looking back at feminist theory's disciplinary
adolescence and reflecting on how Ortner'scontribu-
tions helped shape the personalityof feminist anthro-
pology in the currentera.
Perhaps her most memorableessay, "Is Female
to Male as Nature Is to Culture?"continues to give
the reader much intellectual fodder concerning
whether superior male social status is universal. In
this essay, which is paired with an autocritiqueenti-
tled "So, Is Female to Male as Nature Is to Cul-
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153
dents should eagerly read the book, discuss its cen-
tral issues, and follow its many provocative leads us-
ing other sources or their own investigations. By
drawing many threads of contemporary theory into
the analysis of a North American science laboratory,
Gusterson demonstratesthe relevance and power of
anthropologyfor understandingcontemporaryissues.
Nuclear rites warrantsa wide audience.
Reviewed by JANA FORTIER
Southwest State University
ture?," Ortner dissects three aspects of the gender
relations controversy, notably differences in
gendered social status, dominance, and relations of
power as levels of analysis. For us to be able to in-
terpret differences of status, power, and dominance
is an importantfurtherstep in elucidating the nature
of gender relations, though I question whether it re-
solves the questions of what causes male dominance
or the nearly ubiquitous superior social status of
males. Similarly, in the autocritique Ortner puts
aside the question of universalityof the gender dom-
inance and instead focuses on societies in which pat-
terns of gender equity have been documented. Un-
willing to play apologist for theories of universal
male dominance, Ortner instead demonstrates that
androcentric biases in ethnographic fieldwork and
theory-making have blinded us to the realities of
matricentric (gynocentric) social institutions and
practices. Citing examples from small-scale societies
in Southeast Asia and South Asia, Ortner concludes
that gendered egalitarianism has been documented
and deserves greaterattention by anthropologists.
There have been numerous theoretical tropes
throughoutthis century. Practice theory, in its fash-
ion, has enabled us to "grasp and render," as one of
Ortner's mentors aptly put it, the inchoateness of
culture. Ortner hooks together the essays using her
brand of practice theory, a unique blend of feminist
insight and post-structuralobservations of cultural
habit(us). In this set of essays Ortneruses the notion
of "making" culture as a trope which both con-
structs meaning and enables agents to perform the
construction.Ortner'srevised practice theory contin-
ues to have explanatory power and to provide a
much needed trope for the difficulties of grasping
154 ANTHROPOLOGICAL
QUARTERLY
nuances of cultural life. In addition, this new form
of practice theory is receptive to cultural anomalies,
marginalities,and exceptional circumstances.As Ort-
ner describes it,
Onecando practice analysisas a loop,in which"struc-
tures"constructsubjectsandpractices, butsubjectsand
practicesreproduce"structures."
Oronecan... avoidthe
loop,... lookfor the slippagesin reproduction,
the ero-
sionsof longstanding the momentsof disorder
patterns,
and of outright"resistance"(p. 17).
Given the narrowness of many current anthro-
pological discourses, we need a feminist scholar
with such a "macro" outlook, with an ability to pro-
duce powerful and dynamic statements about the
human condition. For example, in trying to "lay
bare ... a dialectic of sex" (p. 183) concerning fe-
male mountain climbers in Nepal, Ortnerclaims that
"Encounters between Western women and Sherpa
men are shaped not only by Western and Sherpa
gender categories ... but by Western and Sherpa
gender politics..." (p. 184; emphasis in original).
This statement provides a clear example of Ortner's
emphasis on political praxis; moreover it demon-
strates that she is unafraid to make generalizing
statements. We live in a world that now recognizes
intricate global connections and breathtakingdiver-
sity such that broad statements about cultural iden-
tity are often remonstrated as essentialist or
inaccurate.
Because of current gender and cultural identity
politics in Nepal, I found it difficult to accept
wholly Ortner's portrayals of foreign women and
Sherpa men and women in her final essay entitled
"BorderlandPolitics and Erotics: Gender and Sexu-
ality in Himalayan Mountaineering."While the es-
say reads like the best suspense novella, it failed to
reverberatewith my own or other acquaintances'ex-
periences of the dialectics of sex in Nepal, though
this could be due to differences in time and particu-
lar circumstances. Broadly, she writes that women
from Western societies have experienced a post-'60s
sexual revolution and are thus more willing to en-
gage in sex with Sherpa or other Nepali men in gen-
eral. Ortnerpaints a picture of Sherpa men as origi-
nally unmarkedby Western forms of machismo and
patriarchy, and thus timorous of sexually liberated
Western women's advances. The dialectics of sex
evolves over time so that Western women continue
their "liberated" sexual casualness, while Sherpa
men cultivate Westernmachismo and thus spoil their
egalitarian relations with both Western women and
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Sherpa women, who form a third angle to the triad
of erotic politics.
Ortner's generalizations about "Western" wo-
men and Sherpa men do not seem accurate for a
numberof reasons. First, the foreign women who in-
volve themselves in mountain climbing and tourism
in Nepal bring diverse experiences with them. Some
are from East Asian countries and others from clas-
sic "Western" societies, some from celibate back-
grounds, homosexual backgrounds, sexually con-
servative backgrounds. If the sexual revolution has
taught us anything, it is that women develop their
individual sense of sexual identity rather than con-
forming to a role model. A second problem with the
"liberated Western woman-meets-shy Sherpa man"
model is that in egalitarian Sherpa gender models,
Sherpa women (stereotypically)are not overly shy or
concerned about occasional pre-maritalsex. Coming
from a fairly sexually egalitarian society, Sherpa
men are more used to pre-marital love trysts with
Sherpa women than Ortnergives them credit for, at
least as is reportedin other literature.But the aspect
of Ortner's essay which does not fit with my own
and other foreign women's experiences is that for-
eign women are routinely subjected to sexual ad-
vances by Nepali men, including Sherpa men. Put-
ting these experiences in broader perspective, I
would suggest that Sherpa men learn male domi-
nance by a dialectic of their own culturalpatternsin
a mildly male dominated cultural landscape com-
bined through time and experience with Hindu and
Eurocentric models of male dominant hegemonies.
Perhaps, to the Sherpa male gaze, foreign women
became the exotic "Other," setting foreign women
up for sexual advances and aggression, but with the
twist of interculturalsexual politics which Ortnerso
aptly identified.
Overall, the book is wonderfully "good to
think," to borrow a phrase from L6vi-Strauss, as it
cements earlier gender controversies with current
gender debates about the intersectionsof power, he-
gemony, and resistance. The book features Ortner's
distinctive perspective which combines historicized
storytelling, individual agency, and the notion of
practice as a trope to transformreality into theoreti-
cal insight. This collection of essays is recom-
mended general reading for upper division under-
graduates, graduates, and faculty. It is highly
recommended for specialists in gender issues, wo-
men's studies, kinship and family studies, and
power/politics studies.