Gender's Place integrates key theoretical issues and rich ethnographic cases in the feminist anthropology of Latin America around the concept of "desalambrar" (to tear down fences). This collection explores ways in which the interrelationship of gender and "place" can serve as a lens for analyzing the cultural, social, and historical specificity of gender and other social inequalities. By "tearing down" theoretical and analytic fences prevalent in research on gender in Latin America in order to construct ethnographically specific alternatives, the book demonstrates the unique contribution that anthropology can make to gender and area studies.

Rosario Montoya is Faculty Affiliate in the Anthropology Department at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

Lessie Jo Frazier is Assistant Professor History and Women’s Studies, and Latin American Studies Faculty Affiliate at the University of South Carolina.

Janise Hurtig is Research Specialist in the Humanities at the Center for Research on Women and Gender, University of Illinois at Chicago.

Preface: On Feminist Ethnography of Latin America--Ruth Behar * A Desalambrar: Unfencing Gender’s Place in Research on Latin America--Janise Hurtig, Rosario Montoya & Lessie Jo Frazier * Part I: Languages and Practices of Gendered Knowledge in Particular Places * Debating Women: Gendered Lessons in a Venezuelan Classroom--Janise Hurtig * "To Act Like a Man": Masculinity, Resistance, and Authority in the Ecuadorian Andes--Barry Lyons * Women’s Sexuality, Knowledge, and Agency in Rural Nicaragua--Rosario Montoya * Part II: Gender's Place in Challenging and Reproducing Institutions and Ideologies * Forging Democracy and Locality: Democratization, Mental Health, and Reparations in Iquique, Chile--Lessie Jo Frazier * "What the strong owe to the weak": Rationality, Domestic Violence, and Governmentality in Nineteenth Century Mexico--Ana Alonso * The Racial-Moral Politics of Place: Mestizas and Intellectuals in Turn-of-the-Century Peru--Marisol de la Cadena * Placing Gender and Ethnicity on the Bodies of Indigenous Women and in the Work of Bolivian Intellectuals--Susan Paulson * Part III: Gender in Movement(s) * "Engendering Leadership: Indigenous Women Leaders in the Ecuadorian Andes--Emma Cervone (Translated by Emma Cervone and Deborah Cohen) * Latinas at the Border: the Common Ground of Economic Displacements and Breakthroughs--Victor M. Ortiz * "Making a Scene": Travestis and the Gendered Politics of Space in Porto Alegre, Brazil--Charles H. Klein * By Night, a Street Rite: "Public" Women of the Night in the Streets of Mexico City (An Ethnographic Essay)--Marta Lamas (Translated by Lessie Jo Frazier) * Critical Commentaries * Against Marianismo--Marysa Navarro * Understanding Gender in Latin America--Sonia Montesino (Translated by Deborah Cohen & Lessie Jo Frazier) * Local/Global: A View from Geography--Altha Cravey * Postscript * Postscript: Gender in Place and Culture--June Nash