Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t8hqh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-03T19:03:59.611Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Essence of Culture and a Sense of History: A Feminist Critique of Cultural Essentialism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2020

Uma Narayan
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Drawing parallels between gender essentialism and cultural essentialism, I point to some common features of essentialist pictures of culture. 1 argue that cultural essentialism is detrimental to feminist agendas and suggest strategies for its avoidance, Contending that some forms of cultural relativism buy into essentialist notions of culture, I argue that postcolonial feminists need to be cautious about essentialist contrasts between “Western” and “Third World” cultures.

Type
Research Article
Information
Hypatia , Volume 13 , Issue 2: Special Issue: Border Crossings: Multiculturalism and Postcolonial Challenges, Part 1 , Spring 1998 , pp. 86 - 106
Copyright
Copyright © 1998 by Hypatia, Inc.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Anzaldúa, Gloria. 1987. Borderkds/La frontera: The new mestiza. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books.Google Scholar
Appiah, Kwame Anthony. 1992. In my father's house: Africa in the philosophy of culture. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Bloom, Allan 1987. The closing of the American mind. New York: Simon and Schuster.Google Scholar
Bunch, Charlotte 1994. Strengthening human rights of women. In World conference on human rigfits Vienna 1993: The contributions of NGOs reports and documents, ed. Nowak, Manfred. Vienna: Manzsche Verlags und Universitatsbuchhandlung.Google Scholar
Code, Lorraine 1998. How to think globally: Stretching the limits of imagination. Hypatia 13(2): 73–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Daly, Mary 1978. Indian suttee: The ultimate consummation of marriage. In Gyn/Ecology: The Meta Ethics of radical feminism. Boston: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Hasan, Zoya, ed. 1994. Forging Identities: gender, communities and the state in Indin. Boulder CO: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Hawley, John Stratton, ed. 1994. Sati, the blessing and the curse. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hooks, Bell 1981. Feminist theory: From margin to center. Boston: South End Press.Google Scholar
Howard, Rhoda 1993. Cultural Absolutism and the Nostalgia for Community. Humn Rights Quarterly 15: 315–38.Google Scholar
Jaggar, Alison 1998. Globalizing Feminist Ethics, Hypatia 13(2): 7–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kipling, Rudyard 1944. The Ballad of East and West. In Rudyard Kipling's verse, New York: Doubleday.Google Scholar
Kiss, Elizabeth 1997. Alchemy or fool's gold: Assessing feminist doubts about rights. In Reconstructing political theory: Feminist perspectives, ed. Shanley, Mary Lyndon and Narayan, Uma. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press.Google Scholar
Koso‐Thomas, Olayinka. 1987. The circumcision of women: A strategy fur eradication. London: Zed Books.Google Scholar
Kumar, Radha 1994. Identity politics and the contemporary Indian feminist movement. In Identity politics and women: Cultural reassertions and feminism in international perspective. ed. Moghadam, Valentine. Boulder CO: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Lange, Lynda N.d. Burnt offeringsto rationality: A feminist reading of the construction of indigenous peoples in Enrique Dussel's theory of modernity. Hypatia 13(3).Google Scholar
Lugones, Maria C., and Spelman, Elizabeth V. 1983. Have we got a theory for you! Feminist theory, cultural imperialism, and the demand for “The Woman's Voice” Women's Studies International Forum, 6(6): 573–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mani, Lata 1987. Contentious traditions: The debate on SAT1 in Colonial India. Cultural Critique Fall: 19–56.Google Scholar
Mayer, Ann Elizabeth. 1995. Islam and human rights: Tradition and politics. Boulder CO: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Mazumdar, Sucheta 1994. Moving away from a secular vision? Women, nation, and the cultural construction of Hindu India. In Identity politics and women: Cultural reassertions and feminism in international perspective, ed. Moghadam, Valentine. Boulder CO: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Mohanty, Chandra Talpade. 1991. Under Western eyes: Feminist scholarship and colonial discourses. In Third World women and the politics offeminh, ed. Mohanty, Chandra Talpade, Russo, Ann, and Torres, Lourdes. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Narayan, Uma 1993. What do rights have to do with it?: Reflections on what distinguishes “traditional non‐Western” frameworks from contemporary rights‐based systems. Journal of Social Philosophy 24(2): 186–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Narayan, Uma, 1995. Eating cultures: Incorporation, identity and “Indian food.” Social Identities 1(1): 63–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Narayan, Uma. 1997. Dislocating cultures: Identities, traditions and Third World feminism. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Nussbaum, Martha C. 1995. Human capabilities, Female human beings. In Women, Culture and Development, ed. Nussbaum, Martha and Glover, Jonathan. Oxford: Clarendon Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nussbaum Martha, C. and Glover, Jonathan, eds. 1995. Women, culture and development. Oxford: Clarendon Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Okin, Susan Moller. 1998. Feminism, women's human rights, and cultural differences. Hypatia 13(2): 32–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Oldenburg, VeenaTalwar 1994. The continuing invention of the Sati tradition. In Sati, the bkssing and the curse, ed. Hawley, John Stratton. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Pollis, Adamantia and Schwab, Peter. 1979. Human rights: cultural and ideological perspectives. New York: Praeger.Google Scholar
Schlesinger, Arthur M. J. 1992. The disuniting of America: Refictions on a multicultural society. New York: W.W. Norton.Google Scholar
Schutte, Ofelia 1998. Cultural alterity: Cross‐cultural communication and feminist thought in North‐South contexts. Hypatia 13(2): 53–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar