Introduction: gendered economic relations

Abstract

The entries in this section demonstrate how gender is thoroughly integrated into economic anthropology. They reveal this through various theoretical and methodological approaches. Gendered economic relations take us to the circulation of digital money among women and their daughters in Kenya; based on fieldwork in Greece and Great Britain, they take us to inspiring debates about heteronormativity in economic anthropology; they lead us to rethink the classic distinction between paid and unpaid labour through fieldwork among multi-level marketeers in the United States; they offer insight into how men perceive their family businesses in Italy, through gendered discourses that influence economic decisions; gendered notions of responsibility legitimize and at the same time delegitimize the support that divorced women in Kenya receive from their family; they offer insight into the contestations over dignity and self-realization among migrants who do paid domestic work in Switzerland; and they offer important insights into the gendered dynamics of valuing care, suffering and body parts in Italy's insurance market. The entries to this section highlight very diverse approaches to gender and power, as well as the gendered discourses and practices in markets.