Women of the Forest

Yolanda Murphy · Robert F. Murphy

Dec 2004 · Columbia University Press

About this ebook

When it originally appeared, this groundbreaking ethnography was one of the first works to focus on gender in anthropology. The thirtieth anniversary edition of Women of the Forest reconfirms the book's importance for contemporary studies on gender and life in the Amazon. The book covers Yolanda and Robert Murphy's year of fieldwork among the Mundurucú people of Brazil in 1952. The Murphy's ethnographic analysis takes into account the historical, ecological, and cultural setting of the Mundurucú, including the mythology surrounding women, women's work and household life, marriage and child rearing, the effects of social change on the female role, sexual antagonism, and the means by which women compensate for their low social position.

The new foreword—written collectively by renowned anthropologists who were all students of the Murphys—is both a tribute to the Murphys and a critical reflection on the continued relevance of their work today.

About the author

Yolanda Murphy, previously on the faculty of Empire State College (SUNY), is retired. Robert F. Murphy was professor of anthropology at Columbia University. He was the author of many books and articles, including Headhunter's Heritage: Social and Economic Change Among the Mundurucú Indians and The Body Silent: The Different World of the Disabled, for which he won a Columbia University Lionel Trilling Award.R. Brian Ferguson, editor of the foreword, is professor of anthropology at Rutgers University—Newark. His books include The State, Identity, and Violence and Yanomami Warfare: A Political History.