Shapiro, Janet

English

Scholarship;  Research;  and Creative Work at Bryn Mawr College

Bryn Mawr College
Scholarship, Research, and Creative Work at Bryn Mawr
College
Graduate School of Social Work and Social
Research Faculty Research and Scholarship
Graduate School of Social Work and Social
Research
1976
Review of Women of the Forest, by Yolanda Murphy
and Robert F. Murphy
Janet Shapiro
Bryn Mawr College, jshapiro@brynmawr.edu
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Custom Citation
Shapiro, Judith. Review of Women of the Forest, by Yolanda Murphy and Robert F. Murphy. American Journal of Sociology 81 (1976):
981-983.
Book Reviews 
own country before they go off to earn their stripes. Then, much of 
what happens would not be such a shock to them, and economic and 
rationalistic explanations might be given for behavior. A vision of the 
peasant family as a reflection of the holy family is not an explanation. 
Women of the Forest. By Yolanda Murphy and Robert F. Murphy. New 
York: Columbia University Press, 1974. Pp. xii+236. $10.00 (cloth); 
$3.45 (paper). 
Judith Shapiro 
Bryn Mawr College 
Women of the Forest is a study of sex roles and sex identity in a tropical 
forest society of central Brazil, based on field research carried out in the 
early 1950s among the Mundurucui Indians of the upper Tapajos River 
region. The authors first analyze the patterns that still prevailed in the few 
surviving traditional Mundurucui villages and then go on to consider the 
effects of the colonial situation. 
The central theme of the Murphys' book is the disparity between the 
Mundurucui ideology of male dominance and the actual social positions of 
women and men. According to the Murphys, what is most essential about 
the relationship between the sexes is their independence from one another. 
In traditional Mundurucui villages, men and women work separately, eat 
separately, and even sleep separately. Groups of related women and their 
children reside in extended family dwellings; adolescent and adult men 
live together in a men's house. The major subsistence activities are carried 
out by groups composed of members of the same sex. The men of the 
village hunt together and women cooperate in the processing of manioc 
flour, the most important and time consuming of female tasks. Each village 
has a shed where much of the work of manioc processing is done. This 
serves as a social gathering place for women, a counterpart o the men's 
house. 
This pattern of sexual separation in Mundurucu' society is such that men 
exercise little influence over the activities of women in the course of daily 
life. Marriage for the Mundurucui woman means neither isolation within a 
nuclear family nor a particularly close bond with an individual man; her 
life continues to revolve primarily around the other women with whom 
she lives and works. The sexes relate to one another less in terms of dyadic 
bonds than as collectivities. 
In the light of this form of social organization, the emphasis on male 
control over women in Mundurucui ideology is seen by the Murphys as a 
kind of just-so story with which men beguile themselves into feeling 
superior. The Murphys claim that women do not share men's ideas about 
the relative position of the sexes and are generally unimpressed with the 
paraphernalia of male ritual activity. This approach, while perhaps over- 
simplifying the situation, is nonetheless a refreshing departure from the 
common anthropological tendency to refer collective representations toone 
kind of collectivity: the society as a whole. 
981 
American Journal of Sociology 
The image of the Mundurucu' man that emerges from this book is one 
that Sigmund Freud and Erving Goffman might have worked out together: 
a figure conflicted and insecure about his own sexual identity, struggling to 
manage impressions for an audience that can easily see backstage. Women, 
on the other hand, are represented as truly strong. They are, as the 
Murphys put it, "firmly grounded in social reality-they are masters of 
the practical" (p. 112). Their relationships with each other, though nar- 
rower in scope than those of the men, appear to be more cohesive and 
enduring. Above all, like women in any society, they play the major role 
in the only human activity that the Murphys see as having intrinsic 
meaning-the creation of new life. 
In their attempt to correct a stereotype of male dominance and female 
subordination, the Murphys go rather too far in the other direction. The 
result is, at times, too close for comfort o our own culture's ideologies of 
abject males and all-powerful females. I sympathize with the authors' 
interest in seeing whether a comparative consideration of two very different 
societies our own and the Mundurucui can shed light on universal 
dimensions of male and female experience. I also appreciate their willing- 
ness to go out on a limb and say the kinds of things that anthropologists 
will express informally but are unwilling to commit hemselves to in print. 
But some of their generalizations-those concerning women's reproductive 
role, for example are open to question. Evaluating the relative "meaning- 
fulness" of various human activities is not an easy task. Meaningful to 
whom? and within what kind of perspective? We are told that Mundurucu' 
women themselves "are resentful of the continued cycle of pregnancy and 
birth, regarding it as an encumbrance and physical handicap" (p. 161). 
It is important o keep in mind that the type of status a woman gains 
by virtue of being a mother and the personal experience that motherhood 
represents vary considerably from one society to another. 
I would agree with the Murphys that there are certain universal prob- 
lems in the establishment of male identity that can be related to the fact 
that women both bear children and generally play the predominant role 
in their early socialization. I am, however, uncomfortable on the path that 
leads from this point to the notion that culture is "a sort of collective 
fetishism" (p. 232) required primarily by men, since it is they who are 
justified by symbols alone. I do not think that differences in world view 
between men and women should be put in terms of an opposition between 
culture and practical reason. 
The Murphys present an interesting and sensitive account of how 
Mundurucui involvement in rubber tapping has affected the relative posi- 
tions of the sexes. They show that women, far from being passive and 
conservative, as they are often described in studies of culture change, have 
played a crucial and very active role in the coming of the new order. This 
new order, based on a highly individualized pattern of labor and of 
patron-client relationships, involves a closer bond between husband and 
wife and the emergence of the nuclear family as the central residential 
982 
Book Reviews 
and economic unit. Traditional patterns of intrasexual cooperation have 
dissolved and the men's house has disappeared. 
Is it possible to determine in which system the Mundurucu' woman is 
better off? The problem here, as the Murphys note, is that "we really do 
not possess the criteria for evaluating the relative status of the sexes" 
(p. 201). One solution is to let the people spoken about speak for them- 
selves. "Instead of asking ourselves who has it best, we should be asking 
Mundurucu' women" (p. 201). The answer here is that Mundurucui women 
prefer the new way they like having access to trade goods; they like 
having their husbands around to help them in domestic tasks. 
The Murphys do not, however, find the actors' own perspectives a
satisfactory stopping place and in this I fully agree with them. They 
are concerned with aspects of the acculturated Mundurucui woman's posi- 
tion of which she may as yet-be unaware-for example, the consequences 
of her increasing dependence on her husband. 
Though the Murphys note the difficulties ofspeaking about the relative 
status of men and women objectively, pointing out quite rightly that 
subordination and dominance are far more intricate issues in regard to 
sex than in regard to class, they do make use of certain objective variables 
as indicators of status. Thus, given a situation in which the roles of the 
sexes are strongly differentiated, women are better off when they exercise 
control over an important sector of production (in the Mundurucui case, 
manioc processing) and participate in solidary relationships with members 
of their own sex. An additional factor that should be considered in this 
context is control over extradomestic exchange, which one anthropologist 
has recently judged to be the most important single indicator of status 
in hunting-gathering and horticultural societies (Ernestine Friedl, Women 
and Men: An Anthropologist's View [New York: Holt, Rinehart & 
Winston, 1975]). 
There are several other interesting issues touched upon by the Murphys 
-for example, how hunting and warfare relate to male dominance-which 
cannot be discussed here. Suffice it to say, in conclusion, that Women of 
the Forest is a valuable and thought-provoking contribution to the com- 
parative study of sex roles. It is also written by social scientists who do 
not leave behind their sense of style, humor, and irony when they go about 
their professional business. 
Uses of the Sociology of Education: The Seventy-third Yearbook of the 
National Society for the Study of Education, Part II. Edited by C. Wayne 
Gordon. Chicago: National Society for the Study of Education, 1974. 
Pp. xviii+5 18. $10.00. 
Leo Rigsby 
Temple University 
We are told in the preface that the board of directors of the National 
Society for the Study of Education made the decision to prepare a volume 
983 


Review of \u3ci\u3eWomen of the Forest\u3c/i\u3e, by Yolanda Murphy and Robert F. Murphy

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Review of \u3ci\u3eWomen of the Forest\u3c/i\u3e, by Yolanda Murphy and Robert F. Murphy

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Scholarship; Research; and Creative Work at Bryn Mawr College