INTERPRETING WOMEN IN NEW-CALEDONIA

During anthropological field research in 1995 and 1996, New Caledonian women spoke to me about the transformations that processes of globali zation and modernization have Drought to their country, their intersec tion with such processes and their strategies to adapt to, and compose new ways of being, as 'women.' The article situates excerpts from Kan ak informants' life histories within the context of international femi nism's important debate about the politics of representation and the p roblematization of 'experience,' 'knowledge,' and 'gender' relations, as variable historically and culturally contingent practices, yet shap ed within imperial, neocolonial, and international relations of power.