ABSTRACT
The search for alternative modes of being in the exotic other is often propelled by an internal critique. This is what inspired women after the Libération Movement to look outside their own society in the early 1970s for resolutions and utopian answers to their questions. Women’s subordination, gender divisions, the sexed body and women’s bodily experiences became the subject of intense popular interest to the general woman reader. Examples from other cultures could possibly indicate the provisional nature of Western gendered culture. Given the undergraduate demand for courses which addressed these issues, they were also of interest to women and some men anthropology students. At the time, these concerns remained or had become largely peripheral to academic social anthropology. The vacuum was filled by a few popularist books which were addressed to a non-specialist readership and made use of cross-cultural examples. They were written from the margins or outside the anthropological academy.
