Reviews for New reproductive technologies, women's health and autonomy

The average rating for New reproductive technologies, women's health and autonomy based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2009-07-28 00:00:00 Gretchen Denum Make no mistake: Myths of Male Dominance is a classic college textbook. The writing is less than engaging; the many diagrams are somewhat difficult to read (especially for an un-acclimated reader like myself), and there is a lot of information packed into very little space. It is, essentially, a dissertation in published form. Eleanor Burke Leacock writes: I realized I had already written a book, for my papers fell naturally into three categories. The first consists of my work on the Montagnais-Naskapi and their recent history, as an egalitarian society coping with the exigencies of colonization. The second pertains to social evolution and the hypothesis put forth by [Friedrich:] Engels that women’s oppression developed as an historical process in conjunction with the emergence of class inequalities. The third includes rebuttals to contemporary arguments that male dominance is universal and perhaps inevitable to human society. I was especially excited about the third section: rebuttals for modern arguments that "male dominance is universal," but I was barely able to get that far. Leacock’s writing is not for a reader who has just come upon anthropology in the bookstore and has a few minutes a day to read. She references basic concepts and theories as though the reader already knows what she’s talking about, and she is not writing for an Anthropology 101 class. The book’s basic idea is this: Dynamics of power are not in a person’s supposed inherited and expected gender roles, but based on access and ability to create a means of survival. Regrettably, this concept does not come across easily. I had to reread constantly just to make sure I understood correctly. I can only recommend Myths of Male Dominance to the very committed reader. I was excited to read it, and even I was yawning before page 100. (The book is more than 300 pages long, not including the bibliography and index.) As Leacock noted in her own introduction, however, the book is a collection of her essays, so it may be that they are more digestible in smaller doses. Review by Viannah Duncan

Review # 2 was written on 2012-09-12 00:00:00 Andrew Lauder A useful review of some anthropological research into the question male dominance. The author spent some years studying the Montaigne-Naskapi people of Canada, where she develops her central argument (following Engels) that male dominance is culturally contrived and not a part of human nature. There are some fascinating insights into the egalitarian nature and gender equality that apparently existed amongst the Montaigne-Naskapi people before the arrival of European colonialism. Leacock also brilliantly charts the transformation of the Montaigne-Naskapi into a hierarchical class society with gender-based exploitation as the fur trade between colonists and the Indians developed. Leacock argues for a historical approach to anthropology; that is, we can't merely look at "pre-modern" or "primitive" societies as they exist today and hypothesize general traits, because all of these societies have changed dramatically over the last few hundred years with the development of capitalism and colonialism. She writes (albeit disappointingly briefly) about the Australian Aborigonals, Nigerian tribes and the Iroquois, all of which may have exhibited gender equity at some point in the past. There seem to be only a few other books like this, and for that alone Leacock's work is valuable. But the book is a disparate collection of mostly academic papers (with the exception being a piece from the Daily worker, which sticks out like a sore thumb!) and one wishes that she had actually written a coherent book for a general audience, as she says in the preface she planned to do. The various chapters are hit or miss: there are quite excellent pieces such as that on the Montaigne-Naskapi and the fur trade (mentioned above), but there are also quite tedious and seemingly pointless expositions on Lewis Henry Morgan, for example.