“Chopsticks Only Work in Pairs”: Gender Unity and Gender Equality among the Lahu of Southwest China. By Shanshan Du. [New York: Columbia University Press, 2002. 237 pp. $24.50. ISBN 0-231-11957-7.]

Extract

In Chopsticks Only Work in Pairs, Shanshan Du argues that feminists and academics problematically assert that gender-egalitarian societies do not exist. Du argues that the Lancang Lahu, a Tibeto-Burman speaking ethnic group living in Yunnan Province, present a case of gender-egalitarianism that disproves this claim. Du's book is an extensive ethnographic description of the Lancang Lahu case, providing a welcome addition to the growing literature on the ethnic groups of South-western China. However, her depiction of feminists and academics within the discipline of anthropology is highly anachronistic. The assertion that feminists and academics claim gender-egalitarian societies do not exist refers to a debate (at least among anthropologists) that took place in the 1970s and is now settled. The debate began with Ortner's now canonical Is Female to Male as Nature is to Culture? (Stanford, 1974), which assumed universal female subordination, and ended with Marilyn Strathern's No Nature, No Culture: the Hagen Case (Cambridge, 1980). Ortner conceded Strathern's point and, while the debate may rage on among the political scientists and philosophers Du cites, most anthropological and feminist anthropological work done since the 1980s is informed neither by the utopian ideals nor the Eurocentric biases to which Du refers.