Wayward women : sexuality and agency in a New Guinea society / Holly Wardlow.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Wardlow, Holly.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Women, Huli--Sexual behavior--Papua New Guinea--Tari District.

Women, Huli.

Women, Huli--Papua New Guinea--Tari District--Social conditions.

Women, Huli--Papua New Guinea--Tari District--Economic conditions.

Bride price--Papua New Guinea--Tari District.

Bride price.

Courtship--Papua New Guinea--Tari District.

Courtship.

Tari District (Papua New Guinea)--Social conditions.

Tari District (Papua New Guinea).

Tari District (Papua New Guinea)--Economic conditions.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (297 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Berkeley : University of California Press, c2006.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Written with uncommon grace and clarity, this extremely engaging ethnography analyzes female agency, gendered violence, and transactional sex in contemporary Papua New Guinea. Focusing on Huli "passenger women," (women who accept money for sex) Wayward Women explores the socio-economic factors that push women into the practice of transactional sex, and asks how these transactions might be an expression of resistance, or even revenge. Challenging conventional understandings of "prostitution" and "sex work," Holly Wardlow contextualizes the actions and intentions of passenger women in a rich analysis of kinship, bridewealth, marriage, and exchange, revealing the ways in which these robust social institutions are transformed by an encompassing capitalist economy. Many passenger women assert that they have been treated "olsem maket" (like market goods) by their husbands and natal kin, and they respond by fleeing home and defiantly appropriating their sexuality for their own purposes. Experiences of rape, violence, and the failure of kin to redress such wrongs figure prominently in their own stories about becoming "wayward." Drawing on village court cases, hospital records, and women's own raw, caustic , and darkly funny narratives, Wayward Women provides a riveting portrait of the way modernity engages with gender to produce new and contested subjectivities.

Contents:

Front matter

Contents

Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. "Tari is a jelas place": The Fieldwork Setting

2. "To finish my anger": Body and Agency among Huli Women

3. "I am not the daughter of a pig!": The Changing Dynamics of Bridewealth

4. "You, I don't even count you": Becoming a Pasinja Meri

5. "Eating her own vagina": Passenger Women and Sexuality

6. "When the pig and the bamboo knife are ready": The Huli Dawe Anda

Conclusion

Notes

References

Index

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based upon print version of record.

ISBN:

9786612771903

9781423755524

1423755529

9781282771901

1282771906

9780520938977

0520938976

9781598759433

1598759434

OCLC:

475969706