In Women’s Place in the Andes Florence E. Babb draws on four decades of anthropological research to reexamine the complex interworkings of gender, race, and indigeneity in Peru and beyond. She deftly interweaves five new analytical chapters with six of her previously published works that exemplify currents in feminist anthropology and activism. Babb argues that decolonizing feminism and engaging more fully with interlocutors from the South will lead to a deeper understanding of the iconic Andean women who are subjects of both national pride and everyday scorn. This book’s novel approach goes on to set forth a collaborative methodology for rethinking gender and race in the Americas.
Florence E. Babb is the Anthony Harrington Distinguished Professor in Anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is the author of The Tourism Encounter: Fashioning Latin American Nations and Histories.
"I know of no other similar book. It is engaging, accessible, critically insightful, and from beginning to end, touches on multiple key research areas of great interest to interdisciplinary feminist scholars, anthropologists, and Latin Americanists. It was a pleasure to read." —M. Cristina Alcalde, author of Peruvian Lives across Borders: Power, Exclusion, and Home
"What is of particular interest is Florence Babb’s engagement with feminist debates from almost the earliest years of what can be described as a feminist anthropology right through to current debates about decolonial feminism. The scholarship presented here has a unique perspective. I don’t think there is anyone else who has been as involved politically and academically in feminist debates in the Andes from an anthropological perspective and who can write so authoritatively about them."—Andrew Canessa author of Intimate Indigeneities: Race, Sex and History in the Small Spaces of Andean Life
"From an honest and self-critical perspective, Florence Babb shares her epistemological and political searches throughout forty years of scholarly work and construction of alliances with Peruvian women. A fundamental contribution to the decolonialization of feminist anthropology in the Andean region."—R. Aída Hernández Castillo, author of Multiple InJustices: Indigenous Women, Law, and Political Struggle
"In this invaluable contribution to feminist anthropology and Latin American studies, Florence Babb skillfully weaves together new writings in decolonial thinking with her own foundational work in gender analysis and economic anthropology in the Andes. The benefits go both ways: Babb shows how feminist ethnography, with its long, deep, personal and highly ethical relationships with marginalized, non-white and non-gender-conforming individuals, can bring to life the theoretical concerns of decolonial Latin American philosophers; and at the same time, she updates the long tradition of feminist ethnography by bringing it into conversation with newer theoretical and political trends. The links she makes between decoloniality and political economy are especially welcome in the current moment, as she shows us a feminist path towards linking concerns about precarity, gender, and race."—Mary Weismantel, author of Cholas and Pishtacos: Tales of Sex and Race in the Andes
304 pp.6 x 9Illus: 22 b/w, 1 map
9780520298163$95.00|£80.00Hardcover
May 2018