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Ruth Landes - The City of Women

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Book:
The City of Women
Author:
Ruth Landes
Publisher:
University of New Mexico Press
Genre:
Books / Politics
Year:
2006
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First published in 1947, the second edition of The City of Women was published in 1994 with a new Introduction by anthropologist Sally Cole. That second edition is now available again after being out of print for several years.[The City of Women] works on many levels: it is a study of candombl?, the Afro-Brazilian religion of Bahia, of the role of women in candombl?, and of race relations in Brazil. . . . The City of Women has much to offer anyone interested in Brazilian history, comparative race and gender relations, the history of anthropology, and the relationships between researcher and subject in anthropology and oral history. . . .Because of the importance of women in traditional candombl?, this Afro-Brazilian religion was incompatible with patriarchy. Possession by the gods, the central component of the religious practice, was the domain of women: men supported the candombl? temples financially, but did not run them. . . .The City of Women ought to be on the must read list of anyone preparing to do field research, especially in ethnography or oral history, in a culture different from his or her own.--H-Net, Mary Ann Mahony, Associate Professor of History at Central Connecticut State University.

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title The City of Women author Landes Ruth publisher - photo 1

title	:	The City of Women
author	:	Landes, Ruth.
publisher	:	University of New Mexico
isbn10 \| asin	:	0826315569
print isbn13	:	9780826315564
ebook isbn13	:	9780585202853
language	:	English
subject	Candombl (Cult)--Brazil--Salvador--Case studies, Salvador (Brazil)--Religious life and customs--Case studies, Brazil--Religious life and customs--Case studies.
publication date	:	1994
lcc	:	BL2592.C35L36 1994eb
ddc	:	299/.67
subject	:	Candombl (Cult)--Brazil--Salvador--Case studies, Salvador (Brazil)--Religious life and customs--Case studies, Brazil--Religious life and customs--Case studies.

Page iii

The City of Women

Ruth Landes

Introduction by Sally Cole

University of New Mexico Press
Albuquerque

Page iv

FirstpublishedbytheMacmillanCompany,1947
1947InstitutefortheStudyofMan,NewYork
Introduction1994InstitutefortheStudyofMan
Allrightsreserved.

FIRST UNIVERSITY OF NEW MEXICO PRESS EDITION

Allillustrationsarereproducedbycourtesyofthe
SmithsonianInstitution,Washington,D.C.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Landes, Ruth, 1908-1991.
The city of women / Ruth Landes; Introduction by Sally Cole.
1st University of New Mexico Press ed.
p. cm.
Originally published: New York: Macmillan, 1947.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0-8263-1555-0. ISBN 0-8263-1556-9 (pbk.)
1. Candombl (Cult) Brazil Salvador Case Studies.
2. Salvador (Brazil) Religious life and customs Case studies.
3. Brazil Religious life and customs Case studies. I. Title.
BL2592.C35L36 1994
299'.67dc20 94-18707
CIP

Page v

Contents

Introduction by Sally Cole

vii

Foreword

xxxv

The City of Women

Glossary: Terms of Portuguese And Yoruban Origin

249

Illustrations follow page

Page vii

Introduction
Ruth Landes in Brazil:
Writing, Race, and Gender in 1930s American Anthropology

Sally Cole

In the 1980s anthropologists challenged the scientific authority and objectification of their subjects in ethnographic writing (Clifford and Marcus 1986). More recently, scholars and writers have situated the debate in the context of postcolonial and feminist critiques of anthropology, condemning the discipline's effective erasure of critical theoretical writing about race and gender (Abu-Lughod 1991; Harrison 1991, 1992; hooks 1990; Lutz 1990; Mohanty 1991; Morgen 1989; Trinh 1989; Wolf 1992). Professional ethnography has typically been characterized by a style of writing that Jonathan Spencer calls "ethnographic naturalism," "the creation of a taken-for-granted representation of reality through the use of certain standard devices such as free indirect speech and the absence of any tangible point of view" (1989: 152).1 Increasingly, historians are recognizing that the emergence of scientific ethnography was not inevitable or natural but was the product of the hegemonic processes of canon making by influential individuals and powerful institutions. Scientific ethnography came to dominate the field by marginalizing other types of writing, theorizing, and anthropology. Rethinking ethnography has encouraged a fresh reading of the history of anthropology and especially of the development of the professional scientific monograph.

Ruth Landes' The City of Women, marginalized during the making of the disciplinary canon, warrants contemporary rereading as an early ethnography of race and gender. The book is a study of the women-led Afro-Brazilian spirit possession religion, candombl, in the ancient seaport city of Bahia in northeastern Brazil. Landes conducted field work in Brazil during 1938 and 1939 and published

Page viii

her study through the New York publisher, Macmillan, eight years later in 1947. Written in descriptive prose and dialogue, The City of Women is based on Landes' experiences with female and male ritual specialists and on her observation of cult rites and ceremonies. Landes' remarkable study is a testament to the vitality and dignity of the candombl practitioners, who helped give meaning to the lives of Afro-Brazilians living in the poverty and under the military repression of Brazil in the 1930s. Landes also wrote The City of Women as a personal memoir of her year in Brazil, making herself one of the main characters in the book. Favorably reviewed as a "very intelligent travel work" (Honigman 1948) and a "tourist account" (Mishnun 1948) on the one hand, The City of Women was rejected as unscientific by the anthropological profession (Herskovits 1948) on the other. When the book appeared in 1947, the field of anthropology was working to expand its institutional base in universities, professionalize its ranks of practitioners, and cultivate its respectability as the ''science of culture" (Gordon 1990; Yans-McLaughlin 1986). In the three decades between 1930 and 1960, 'culture' replaced 'race' as the discipline's central pqradigm. Within this new framework, anthropologists catalogued cultural traits and represented cultures in scientific monographs. In this professional context, The City of Women was problematic, for Ruth Landes' theoretical interests lay in questions of race, gender, and sexuality. She inserted her own experience and relationships into the text. She refused to produce an ethnographic portrait of candombl (and Afro-Brazilian culture) as homogeneous, integrated, and static, the then-standard appraoch among her professional peers. Instead, she described internal conflicts, dialogues, and contestations of meaning in a context of change and fluidity, and she situated Afro-Brazilian culture in the pastthe history of colonial and nineteenth-century slavery and of the urbanization and proletarianization of Brazil. These characteristics, which located the book on the margins of anthropology in its day, are the very reasons we have for turning to it again at the end of the twentieth century.

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