Anthropology: Feminist methodologies for the science of man?

In the 1920s, while teaching anthropology in London, Bronislaw Malinowski, one of the truly great figures in modern Anglo-American anthropology, was asked for a definition of the field. A group of feminist physical anthropologists and primatologists joined Sally Slocum in exploring the social implications of maternal-infant bonding; protolanguage acquisition through protokinship; and the relative lateness and minor significance of large-scale game hunting in the evolutionary record. Sexuality has also assumed increasing importance in the work of feminist anthropologists and anthropologically minded historians. Donna Haraway’s “Manifesto for Cyborgs” reproaches both Marxists and feminists for taking the objects of nineteenth-century classical social theory-production and reproduction-as eternal verities. New technologies may have the capacity to transform the image of woman from a longsuffering madonna to a more self-centered agent of quality control on the assembly line of reproduction. And many groups of women have access to a technology that simultaneously offers progress and social control.