Women, Sex, Role and culture Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Women, Sex, Role and market-gardening - Essay ExampleAmong the dedicated writers allow in Brettell and Sargent, who are inclining their get going towards modern topics in anthropology. Most of their works are designed in a manner that deems appropriate for scholars at various levels of their studies. In this essay, we will appraise one epochal topic at bottom the field of anthropology, and subsequently relate Brettell and Sargents work to ideologies contained within the underlying topics. Fortunately, the writers work takes an accessible and open-ended approach in covering a subject matter. Therefore, we will have to turn out an objective link between theses contained in the primary readings and that of selected essay from the two writers mentioned above. Primary Reading pagan Solidarity of Maasai Women In the first primary ethnographic reading, we will explore the role of gender among Maasai women in Kenya. at bottom the reading, the writer Llewlyn Melissa analyses two cont exts of cultural solidarity observed among women in the Maasai fellowship. The underlying thesis statement within this reading is that Maasai women have over the past decades stood in solidarity to defend their gender roles within their societies. Despite infiltration of western ideologies into Kenyan tribes, Maasai have managed to preserve their traditions to date. They are nomadic pastoralists which mean that they move from one empower to a nonher in search of water and pasture for their domestic animals, especially cattle. Fortunately, their unique culture and propinquity to wildlife reserves attracts tourists and anthropologists. Currently, a small number of Maasai men and moderate women have been absorbed into white tierce jobs in the tourism sector (Llewlyn 209). However, majority of Maasai women and men are still subscribing to conventional roles as contained in their cultural norms. At this juncture, it is worth acknowledging the fact that Maasai culture is a patriarchal community dominated by men. Women within the Maasai tribe enjoy minimum opportunities, and faces numerous challenges form decisions made by their communities. As a battle array of solidarity to their patriarchal cultures, Maasai women still believes in early and forced marriages (Llewlyn 212). Parents show little interest in education of their girl child because these girls will be married immediately after elementary school. In fact older women in the Maasai community participate joyfully in preparing their daughters for forced marriages. This shows that women in this community are in solidarity with the cultural norm of early and forced marriages of their girls. As if forced marriage was not enough, Maasai women still demonstrate cultural solidarity through female genital mutilation. This context relates to women sexual practice in the society. In an effort to curb free expression of womans sexual desires, the Maasai community chooses to perform this rude(a) act of mutilating their girls. Unfortunately, older women are the ones at the forefront in organizing for these initiation ceremonies as a show of love for their culture (Llewlyn 230). In this regard, one can appreciate the fact that culture plays a significant role in influencing norms of men and women in different social settings. In this case, a strict solidarity to their culture influences Maasai women into perpetrating primitive and harmful cultural practices. Brettell and Sargent Culture, Sexuality and the Body The excerpt on Maasai women fits with Brettell and Sargents essay on culture, sexuality and the body in inter-cultural perspective. Based on the primary reading, we acknowledged the fact that Maasai community controls sexuality of women in their societies. The aspect of early and forc