Just as the referential system of religion in the politics of indigenous peoples raises hackles with the sophisticated outside observer, so too does the self-referential language of motherhood and identification with the earth often used by women in these movements. In the postmodern, deconstructive mode now fashionable in anthropology, the very category of women is decried as essentialist.... We must go beyond deconstruction of the rhetoric to discover the incentives generating a common collective image among indigenous movements.
In: Foreword to Christine Eber,Christine Kovi (eds.), Women of Chiapas: Making History in Times of Struggle and Hope. (2003) p. xiv