'I am gold money' (I pass through all hands, but I do not lose my value): The construction of selves, gender and sexualities in a female, working class, Afro-Surinamese setting.

摘要

Afro-Surinamese working-class culture is quite unique in displaying a public and varied repertoire of sexual behaviors and styles. Thus, for example, many women engage in sexual relationships with men and with women, either simultaneously or consecutively. This pervasive institution, the mati work, has been described from the beginning of this century and has its own characteristic rituals, rules and regulations. In its own behavioral environment no significant stigma is attached to the mati work.;The mere existence of the institution of the mati work, in which women as actors so openly and joyously celebrate their love and passion for other women, raises important questions for (psychological, feminist and African-American) anthropology. Some of these questions concern the nature of the self and the gender arrangements implied by the mati work, the nature of women's sexualities, the consciousness of and the behavorial latitude claimed by oppressed groups, and finally the situatedness of the institution in the Afro-Surinamese working class.;This study centrally and emically explores the construction of selves and the gender arrangements which underpin and support the diversity of Creole sexual styles and behaviors. Creole selves and gender arrangements are brought into focus from the vantage point of the Afro-Surinamese Winti folk religion and the cosmology that is embedded within its folds. Multiplicitous, contextually salient selves and an essentially egalitarian gender system, which operates as a set of possibilities, not constraints, inscribe the construction of sexualities. In contradistinction to hegemonic, Western approaches, it makes sense not to conceptualize selves and sexualities as static, "identity", but as malleable, "behavior" in an environment that is poor in chances for fulfilment.;Main methods of research were participant observation, (semi-structured) interviews, "folk seminars", collection and analysis of popular song lyrics, both in the secular and the cultural-religious domain, and ethnosemantic analysis.