Abstract
This paper is based on the just completed, HRC-funded research
project, Tuite ma Matafaioi a nisi Tane Samoa i le Faiga o
Aiga: The roles and responsibilities of some Samoan men
in reproduction. This paper focuses on a comparison between
older (over 40) and younger (17 to 40) men and woman living in Auckland.
Risk enters the frame through the sensitivity of the topic, which
incurs risk for the community and the researchers, and through the
multiple risks embedded in the expression of sexuality. This paper
is work in progress.
Nearly twenty years ago an anthropologist of island Samoa, Bradd
Shore (1981), summed up his own and other scholars’ perceptions
of the Samoan sex/gender matrix by contrasting the relative lack
of social attention to male sexuality compared with great attention
to female sexuality, and the relative focus of attention on male
gender behaviour compared with the lack of attention to female gender.
His analysis, which is consistent with the work of other scholars,
e.g., Schoeffel (1979), is summarised in the following table.
| |
sexuality |
gender performance |
| male |
less attention |
much attention |
| female |
much attention |
less attention |
Our paper today will:
- briefly expand on the notion of sex/gender and Shore's model
- outline the empirical base for our remarks, namely the The
roles and responsibilities of some Samoan men in reproduction
study, by Melani Anae, Nite Fuamatu, Ieti Lima, Kirk Mariner,
Julie Park and Sailau Suaalii-Sauni.
- present and discuss a few key findings arising from this work,
comparing the two age groups and the two genders
- make some remarks about "risk".
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