Leigh Minturn
Biographic Data
| ID | 90240 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Leigh Minturn |
| GIVEN NAMES | Leigh |
| FAMILY NAME | Minturn |
| SIGNATURE | MINTURN L |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Colorado |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 41 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 265 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 41 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1956 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1996 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
The Economic Importance and Technological Complexity of Hand-Spinning and Hand-Weaving
In the article "Factors in the Division of Labor by Sex," Murdock says that when simple artifacts are replaced by more complex ones men take over the work. The only example given is the shift from hoe to plow agriculture. With hand-spinning and -weaving, one can document the opposite trend. Both crafts have been done primarily by women from their inception in Neolithic times to the present. Over the centuries, women learned to work with new innov…
Communes as Moralnets
Communes are a type of close-knit community with strong social norms that characterize moralnets (moral networks). A sample of contemporary communes operating during the 1970s was selected to test the predictive power of the commitment scales over time and assess their usefulness for describing 20th-century communes. The mechanisms tested are the presence of strong leaders, cultural homogeneity of members, joint investment, isolation, shared ideo…
Introduction
Communes are a type of close-knit community, with strong social norms that characterize moralnets. In her book Commitment and Community, Kanter (1972) analyzes historical data from 9 success ful and 21 unsuccessful communes in terms of a variety of customs. She identifies a number of customs that characterized successful nineteenth-century communes. Kanter's Commitment mechanisms are customs that would be expected to foster the traits of strong m…
Sita's Daughters
Socialization
its forehead at birth was one of the most frequently stated beliefs. Mothers of that time were very reluctant to express any long-term expectations for their children’s future, and, if they did answer questions concerning such expectations, such as how much schooling they wanted their children to have, they usually qualified their nervous answers with “if it is in his/her fate.” In 1975 no mother quoted this proverb, and they readily answered que…
Glossary
Subject Marriage and the Family Social Psychology Collection: Oxford Scholarship Online
The Pantheon
The Hindu religious tradition has its roots in the cultures of the tribal aboriginals, the Dravidians, who settled in the Indus valley, sometime before 2000 B.c., and the Aryans, who invaded and conquered North India about 1500 B.c. These traditions have become so inextricably blended that their historical origins are often difficult to determine. Religious beliefs and practices vary by locale and caste. In this chapter I will outline the main so…
Changing Times
The preceding statements, taken from our 1975 interviews, exemplify the attitudes of most older women about changes in the last generation. The bahus left the courtyard and visited other houses more frequently than they did in former times. New commercial products, unfamiliar to sasus, were purchased and used by young women, many of whom disregarded the customary confinement to the bughar and walked to village stores. Traditionally young Rajput w…
Title Pages
The Khalapur Rajputs, 1955 to 1975
It was on a hot September afternoon, 20 years to the week after my first field trip to Khalapur, that I found myself, with my new assistant, Swaran Kapoor, traveling once again from the railroad station in Bhudana to Khalapur. We still traveled in a horse-drawn cart, but the road was now paved, so the ride was considerably less bumpy. I was returning to a village that was larger and more prosperous than it had been during my 1955 visit. The Khala…
Health and Family Planning
Hindu beliefs about cleanliness are based on ritual pollution, as defined by caste rules, not on sanitary beliefs based on the germ theory of disease. Traditional Hindu medicine is based on proper diet and the use of medicinal herbs. Because of beliefs about blood pollution, surgery is not included. Minor surgery is done by village barbers, a low-caste group. The village women we interviewed had little knowledge of anatomy, including the anatomy …
Sita’s Daughters
It was a dreary winter morning, the skies were gray, and a cold drizzle turned the streets into slippery mud when Chand, a middle-aged, childless wife commenting on Radha’s suicide, described her drab existence as “the festival of the world.” Chand had been married over 20 years, so her hopes for children had long since passed. Her husband was still attached to a particularly dominating widowed mother. Once Chand said that she was waiting for her…
Marriage
Whyte’s cross-cultural study of the relative status of men and women in preindustrial societies finds several clusters of variables measuring components of status in different cultural realms-for example, economic, kinship, sexual behavior (Whyte, 1978). However, Whyte does not address status variation of women in their parental versus their marital homes. Women in exogamous societies marry out of their natal communities into the communities of t…
Widows
Widows are unlucky, so unlucky that they are frequently underreported in census figures, because other family members are reluctant to admit that a widow, particularly a young widow, lives in the household. Hindus believe that misfortune is the result of bad karma earned by sins of previous lives, and widows may be blamed for their husbands’ deaths. They are an unwelcome burden on their husbands’ families, particularly if they do not have grown s…
Land and Dowry
Traditionally sons inherited land, while daughters’ inheritance was given in dowry goods and jewelry. Landholdings passed from father to son, and gold jewelry passed from mother to daughter. Traditionally, dowry goods and food supplies were controlled by sasus. Dowry goods came from bahus and were distributed to daughters and other household members by sasus. Although traditional law gave sons the right to claim their share of the family land whe…
Towards Equality
In this final chapter I will place the information of my study in regional, national, international, and theoretical context. I will also suggest some topics for future research. The International Decade of Women, sponsored by the United Nations, began in 1975. In connection with this effort to improve women’s status, all U.N. members were asked to prepare reports on the status of women in their countries. The Indian government’s report, prepared…
Purdah
This quotation, recorded in 1954, is typical of the descriptions of restrictions imposed by the complex customs of purdah on Rajput women of that time. Purdah is a severe form of cloistering women, observed by high-caste Hindus. This chapter describes these customs and their significance for the regulation of social interaction, the maintenance of traditional authority, and the solidarity of the extended family. I refer to purdah customs as a key…
Women’s Nature
The secluded wives of Khalapur are women who possess both sexuality and honor. The poetic epigraphs to this chapter embody their beliefs about virtue and sexuality. Virgins are sacred, and prepubescent girls are often called devi, or goddess, and given special food and gifts on some feast days. The reputations of their families and community are elevated or dishonored by the virtue of their women. Rajput women will defend their honor fiercely aga…
Education
In traditional societies, where children do not go to school, the primary method of socialization is usually apprenticeship. Whereas school teaches rote learning and the manipulation of abstract concepts, apprenticeship is on-the-job training that teaches skills. Fathers teach their sons farming skills, and mothers teach their daughters household skills by letting them help with simple tasks, gradually introducing them to more difficult chores. C…
Domestic Economy
Bughars are women’s workplaces as well as women’s quarters. Much of the grain is processed in the bughars. Traditionally sasus assigned work to bahus and exercised control over stored grain, unallocated dowry goods, money bahus brought from home, and income from spinning and loans. The control of bahus over the money and clothing they bring from home has increased in recent years, and some bahus have more autonomy over their work selection than w…
Appendix
Ritual and Recreation
Men and women are separated in their religious worship, as they are in their secular lives. When I arrived in Khalapur in 1955, I was immediately recruited by John Hitchcock, the project field director, who had found that many ceremonies are performed only by women, to record women’s religious ceremonies and interview women about them. Purdah restrictions prevented him or other men from entering the bughar courtyards to observe these ceremonies, …
Sita’s Daughters
Leigh Minturn in this work recounts the dramatic changes in the role and status of Indian women in the Rajput caste of Khalapur that have taken place between 1955 and 1975. She explains the relationship of these changes to the decline in the observance of a complex system of customs collectively called purdah, which include the veiling of women's faces and bodies, subservient posture when speaking to men, separation of husbands and wives and defe…
Sex-role differentiation in contemporary communes
Changes in the differential treatment of Rajput girls in Khalapur
This article reports on data collected during 2 field trips to Khalapur. The 1st, 1954-55, focused on child rearing. The 2nd, 1974-75, focused on changes in the status of Rajput women. In 1955, neglect of girls, particularly those suffering from longterm illness, resulted in sufficient female mortality to produce a striking preponderance of boys. In 1975, the number of children in the original families sampled had increased from 128 to 250, a ris…
My Brother's Keeper
Children often act as caretakers responsible for other children. Such child caretaking varies widely in its frequency, as well as in the degree of institutionalization, relationship to parental caretaking, degree of indulgence, and incidence at differing ages. Residence and household patterns, size of the family, and the subsistence economy, daily routines, and work load of the family are important in determining availability of child caretakers …
Sita’s Daughters
Leigh Minturn in this work recounts the dramatic changes in the role and status of Indian women in the Rajput caste of Khalapur that have taken place between 1955 and 1975. She explains the relationship of these changes to the decline in the observance of a complex system of customs collectively called purdah, which include the veiling of women's faces and bodies, subservient posture when speaking to men, separation of husbands and wives and defe…
Cultural Patterning of Sexual Beliefs and Behavior
The amount of variation in types of sexual behavior in humans is greater than that surrounding any other biological drive. This is true not only of frequency of sexual behavior (Kinsey 1948), but of the kinds of behavior which are permitted or condemned by various societies. Ford and Beach (1951) have documented the cultural variation of a number of sex practices, but they offer no explanation for the observed cultural differences. This study is …
Mothers of Six Cultures
Mothers of Six Cultures
Birth in Four Cultures
The Economic Importance and Technological Complexity of Hand-Spinning and Hand-Weaving
In the article "Factors in the Division of Labor by Sex," Murdock says that when simple artifacts are replaced by more complex ones men take over the work. The only example given is the shift from hoe to plow agriculture. With hand-spinning and -weaving, one can document the opposite trend. Both crafts have been done primarily by women from their inception in Neolithic times to the present. Over the centuries, women learned to work with new innov…
Changes in the differential treatment of Rajput girls in Khalapur
This article reports on data collected during 2 field trips to Khalapur. The 1st, 1954-55, focused on child rearing. The 2nd, 1974-75, focused on changes in the status of Rajput women. In 1955, neglect of girls, particularly those suffering from longterm illness, resulted in sufficient female mortality to produce a striking preponderance of boys. In 1975, the number of children in the original families sampled had increased from 128 to 250, a ris…
The influence of diet on morning sickness
(1984). The influence of diet on morning sickness: A cross‐cultural study. Medical Anthropology: Vol. 8, No. 1, pp. 71-75
Sex-role differentiation in contemporary communes
Sita's Daughters
Infanticide as a Terminal Abortion Procedure
In this investigation we examine the proposition that infanticide is a terminal abortion procedure, practiced when abortion attempts fail or when the decision to kill an infant is based on characteristics of the baby that can be observed only after birth. Three hypotheses were deivsed to test this assumption: (1) infanticide takes place before the infant's birth ceremony; (2) birth ceremonies are more prevalent in societies practicing infanticide…
Increased Maternal Power Status
The changes in reported socialization practices of Rajput mothers of Khalapur, India from 1955 to 1975 are presented. A modified version of the socialization interview given to 24 mothers in 1955 was given to 38 mothers from the same families in 1975. During the intervening 20 years, improved grains have resulted in greatly increased prosperity in Khalapur, houses have been expanded to include private rooms for most couples, daughters-in-law are …
A Comparative and Longitudinal Study of the Behavior of Communally Raised Children
A Cross-Cultural Linguistic Analysis of Freudian Symbols
Latent Learning after Drive Shift and Solution Shift in Human Discrimination Learning
A Cross-Cultural Linguistic Analysis of Freudian Symbols
Mothers of Six Cultures
Mothers of Six Cultures
Age Differences in Peer Ratings of Socially Desirable and Socially Undesirable Behavior
Walder's peer nomination inventory was given to elementary school children and college students and the data analyzed for age differences. The first two factors are essentially the same as Walder's factors and are unaffected by Ss age. The third child factor is similar to Walder's third factor of socially undesirable non-aggressive traits but is better differentiated and more general, including several items measuring rebelliousness. Two addition…
Cultural Patterning of Sexual Beliefs and Behavior
The amount of variation in types of sexual behavior in humans is greater than that surrounding any other biological drive. This is true not only of frequency of sexual behavior (Kinsey 1948), but of the kinds of behavior which are permitted or condemned by various societies. Ford and Beach (1951) have documented the cultural variation of a number of sex practices, but they offer no explanation for the observed cultural differences. This study is …
A Comparative and Longitudinal Study of the Behavior of Communally Raised Children
My Brother's Keeper
Children often act as caretakers responsible for other children. Such child caretaking varies widely in its frequency, as well as in the degree of institutionalization, relationship to parental caretaking, degree of indulgence, and incidence at differing ages. Residence and household patterns, size of the family, and the subsistence economy, daily routines, and work load of the family are important in determining availability of child caretakers …
Ethnographer Oversight in Reporting of Sex Differences in Aggression Training
This study measures sex differences in reward for aggressive behavior in children, punishment for aggressive behavior in children, and frequency of aggressive behavior in children. We used ethnographic reports from the Human Relations Area Files as a basis for measuring these variables. The results indicate that ethnographers report sex differences in reward and punishment for aggression and in frequency of aggression when the amount of these beh…
Increased Maternal Power Status
The changes in reported socialization practices of Rajput mothers of Khalapur, India from 1955 to 1975 are presented. A modified version of the socialization interview given to 24 mothers in 1955 was given to 38 mothers from the same families in 1975. During the intervening 20 years, improved grains have resulted in greatly increased prosperity in Khalapur, houses have been expanded to include private rooms for most couples, daughters-in-law are …
The Children of Prosperity
Infanticide as a Terminal Abortion Procedure
In this investigation we examine the proposition that infanticide is a terminal abortion procedure, practiced when abortion attempts fail or when the decision to kill an infant is based on characteristics of the baby that can be observed only after birth. Three hypotheses were deivsed to test this assumption: (1) infanticide takes place before the infant's birth ceremony; (2) birth ceremonies are more prevalent in societies practicing infanticide…
Women in Ritual and Symbolic Roles
Birth in Four Cultures
Ethnocentrism in Cross- Cultural Research; and What to do about it
Sex-role differentiation in contemporary communes
Changes in the differential treatment of Rajput girls in Khalapur
This article reports on data collected during 2 field trips to Khalapur. The 1st, 1954-55, focused on child rearing. The 2nd, 1974-75, focused on changes in the status of Rajput women. In 1955, neglect of girls, particularly those suffering from longterm illness, resulted in sufficient female mortality to produce a striking preponderance of boys. In 1975, the number of children in the original families sampled had increased from 128 to 250, a ris…
The influence of diet on morning sickness
(1984). The influence of diet on morning sickness: A cross‐cultural study. Medical Anthropology: Vol. 8, No. 1, pp. 71-75
Socialization
its forehead at birth was one of the most frequently stated beliefs. Mothers of that time were very reluctant to express any long-term expectations for their children’s future, and, if they did answer questions concerning such expectations, such as how much schooling they wanted their children to have, they usually qualified their nervous answers with “if it is in his/her fate.” In 1975 no mother quoted this proverb, and they readily answered que…
Glossary
Subject Marriage and the Family Social Psychology Collection: Oxford Scholarship Online
The Pantheon
The Hindu religious tradition has its roots in the cultures of the tribal aboriginals, the Dravidians, who settled in the Indus valley, sometime before 2000 B.c., and the Aryans, who invaded and conquered North India about 1500 B.c. These traditions have become so inextricably blended that their historical origins are often difficult to determine. Religious beliefs and practices vary by locale and caste. In this chapter I will outline the main so…
Changing Times
The preceding statements, taken from our 1975 interviews, exemplify the attitudes of most older women about changes in the last generation. The bahus left the courtyard and visited other houses more frequently than they did in former times. New commercial products, unfamiliar to sasus, were purchased and used by young women, many of whom disregarded the customary confinement to the bughar and walked to village stores. Traditionally young Rajput w…
Title Pages
The Khalapur Rajputs, 1955 to 1975
It was on a hot September afternoon, 20 years to the week after my first field trip to Khalapur, that I found myself, with my new assistant, Swaran Kapoor, traveling once again from the railroad station in Bhudana to Khalapur. We still traveled in a horse-drawn cart, but the road was now paved, so the ride was considerably less bumpy. I was returning to a village that was larger and more prosperous than it had been during my 1955 visit. The Khala…
Health and Family Planning
Hindu beliefs about cleanliness are based on ritual pollution, as defined by caste rules, not on sanitary beliefs based on the germ theory of disease. Traditional Hindu medicine is based on proper diet and the use of medicinal herbs. Because of beliefs about blood pollution, surgery is not included. Minor surgery is done by village barbers, a low-caste group. The village women we interviewed had little knowledge of anatomy, including the anatomy …
Sociology (27 works) · Psychology (25 works) · Political science (22 works) · Law (18 works) · Social Psychology (14 works) · Demography (13 works) · History (13 works) · Developmental psychology (10 works) · Gender Studies (10 works) · Geography (8 works)