“With a Fine-Toothed Comb”: Nicole-Claude Mathieu and the Work of French Feminist Materialist Anthropology

Abstract

French anthropologist, Nicole-Claude Mathieu (1937–2014), devoted her career to theorising the institution of marriage; the relations between material conditions and “consent”; and the cross-cultural coexistence of gender diversity and subordination of women. This article traces Mathieu's thinking to her theoretical ties to Claude Lévi-Strauss and Simone de Beauvoir. I read Mathieu's anthropology as part of the long tradition of engaged anthropology and as continuing to offer analytical tools for critical feminist public anthropology. This reading contrasts with views that there are “waves” and opposing “generations” in feminist scholarship.