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Gender and the Boundaries of Dress in Contemporary PeruPublisher:Austin, TX: University of Texas Press
Copyright:2005
Pages:xv + 368
Review:
The past 30 years have seen the publication of excellent ethnographies on gender in the Andes as well as a steady increase in books on textiles. Blenda Femenías has combined both topics in a carefully theorized, ethnographically grounded, and well-written volume focusing on women’s dress in the Colca canyon communities in Caylloma Province (near Arequipa).
Femeniacuteas’s purpose is to study identity formation (gender, local, and ethnic) through material culture, specifically the elaborately embroidered female clothing ensemble known as bordados (embroideries) or, metonymically, as polleras (gathered skirts). She considers bordados an ideal focal point for studying gender and ethnicity because women wear bordados (although men may cross-dress at fiestas), and both sexes make and sell them. A central theme is that “unequal power relations make, rather than reflect, gendered and ethnic difference” (p. 18). Her fieldwork alternated between the Colca canyon and Arequipa, where the use of bordados not only marks a woman as an Indian and country bumpkin but also alerts others from her region that she is one of them and indicates to potential customers that she may have Caylloma produce to sell. Bordados are ambiguous; their meaning is situational. The strengths of this work are many and had me carrying on a running conversation with the author in my head as well as occasionally wishing that I had made a particular observation myself. For example, the author analyzes how the term isolated is used politically to define a region and its people as unimportant (pp. 79–80). Femenías argues that the Colca canyon has long been highly articulated with the national and international economies, but because its inhabitants are considered indios (p. 85) and thereby deemed inferior to the dominant white–mestizo Peruvian elite, the Colca is “isolated.” In a nuanced discussion of racial and ethnic categories in Peru, the author observes that she has never met an Indian, although the literature reports that 50 percent of the population of Peru is indigenous. “No one admits to being an Indian.” Instead, the term is something people call others in an “infinite, elaborate chain of finger-pointing” (p. 86). This is unlike Ecuador and Bolivia, where strong self-identification as indigenous is common; Femenías provides the historical particulars for Peru that resulted in the avoidance of this identity. In chapter 5, Femenías analyzes the performance of gender by focusing on witites, men who cross-dress as women in bordados and dance during fiestas and folklore events. (This phenomenon is found elsewhere in the Andes, e.g., in Chinchero, Peru, and Otavalo, Ecuador.) Femenías notes that these dancers are not homosexuals but heterosexual men who assert male dominance by appropriating women’s clothes. In the past, witite dancing also involved ritual battles that symbolically reproduced the violence of the Spanish conquest and subordination of Indians. Another strong chapter concerns tourist-induced changes in bordados. Black is considered a mourning (luto) color in the Colca, so the makers and vendors of bordados are baffled by tourists who want clothing with a black background. Tourists, in turn, shy away from the neon colors that are beautiful to the embroiderers. The conflict between local aesthetics and market demands has led, as it often does, to accommodations between Caylloma art forms and the possibility of sales. Several stores in Caylloma now specifically cater to tourists, selling new items: backpacks, purses, bags, and Barbie and Ken dolls dressed in bordados (Ken as a witite). Overall, the author sees the wearing of bordados as a positive social practice, an expression of resistance, strategically deployed by Colca valley women to help them express their goals and values. Because the author conducted most of her research in 1991–1993 when Sendero Luminoso was active in Peru, I wish she had included a short epilogue clarifying the changing political situation and lessening of tensions in the countryside after the capture of Sendero’s leader Abimael Guzmán in 1992. I have two comments on language, directed more at the profession of anthropology than at this work, which is characterized by vivid and moving writing. Why do anthropologists use Other or Exotic Other (usually capitalized and in scare quotes)? If our point is that the subjects of our research are not lesser human beings, then we should abandon these terms, which reinforce what we intend to critique. My second comment concerns the redundant and awkward phrase lived experience (p. 187). Experience is generally defined as the actual observation of facts or events; the modifier is unnecessary. That said, Femenías’s excellent volume is informative and thought provoking; what better reasons to recommend a book? [maps, figures, photographs, notes, bibliography, index.]
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