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- Convenors:
-
Marie-Françoise Guédon
(University of Ottawa)
Anne-Marie Gaston (Cultural Horizons)
- Stream:
- Relational movements: Kin and Gender/Mouvements relationnels: Parenté et genre
- Location:
- VNR 1075
- Start time:
- 3 May, 2017 at
Time zone: America/New_York
- Session slots:
- 2
Short Abstract:
Theory of matrilineal societies is more relevant today than ever but relies too often on nineteenth century views. Nicole Mathieu challenged these narrow ideas by introducing person, ritual, myth, and even worldview into a field that was centred on kinship. This panel will explore these new vistas.
Long Abstract:
Since Nicole Mathieu edited 'Une maison sans fille est une maison morte. La personne et le genre en sociétés matrilinéaires et/ou uxorilocales' (2007), the first noteworthy anthropological comparative study in matrilineal studies in a quarter of a century, the scholars with whom she collaborated continued to explore a field that had been for too long neglected. It became obvious that, worldwide, the theoretical framework of such exploration was suffering from major gaps and discontinuities, and was entangled in unexamined biases and ideological positions. Mathieu's unexpected death (2014) interrupted a global collaborative project intended to unite scholars and to demonstrate the theoretical potential of matrilineal studies and the breadth of needed ethnographic data. Most ethnographic studies produced in the past forty years have explored the effect of challenging economic, political and religious conditions on matrilineality, but without questioning the theoretical foundations of the field.
Today, we are faced with an array of issues that are complex and exciting. The panel will include presentations defining terminology, such as matrilineality, matricentricity, gynocracy, matriarchy, and, most recently, matriculture, together with ethnographic studies of their lived manifestation (past and present). Among others, we are interested in matrilocality, enculturation and transmission of indigenous knowledge, the shift from husband and wife to brother and sister as the primordial couple, even critical review of the notion of domesticity. We are less interested in the definition and measurement of female power, than in modes of participation of the different genders in their community as a whole.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Paper short abstract:
This paper introduces the term ‘matriculture’ to designate cultures where identity is derived through the mother or the mother’s kinship group, where matrilineal kinship systems flourish, and where varieties of social empowerment for women may arise.
Paper long abstract:
As recently summarized by Peggy Reeves Sanday, the term 'matrilineal' is conceptually linked with lineages, clans, and descent: with kinship systems. In contrast, the controversial but increasingly popular term 'matriarchy' has in fact nothing to do with kinship but, rather, refers to social and political organization.
Such diverse societies as the Northern Athapaskan, Navajo, Tsimshian, Tlingit, and Iroquoian nations in North America, the Batwa and Ashante in Africa, and the Asian Mosuo and Khasi, among others, are identified as matrilineal in the classical sense of the term. However, when working directly with these societies and taking into account the local discourse about matrilineality, the ways in which both women and men discuss their kinship systems, and their socio-political organization, it becomes clear that they start neither from matrilineality nor from a definition of women's role and capacities, but instead derive both from a larger cultural dimension. In previous discussions, I began to refer to that dimension as a cultural system, from a Geertzian perspective.
My Indigenous partners, my colleagues, and I have tested this approach in various cultural contexts and now concretize the results by proposing the term 'matricultural' to designate the particular worldview which allows matrilineal kinship systems to flourish and which may also give rise to various modes of empowering women. The term matriculture draws attention to several oft-neglected dimensions of the cultural contexts, dimensions that I wish to recall while presenting views expressed by members of matrilineal societies about the "matri"-cultural dimensions of their society.
Paper short abstract:
The historical view of matrilineal societies reveals more about the conceptual frames and worldviews of male writers than about the matricultures themselves. This paper will survey influential writings on matrilineal societies from the perspective of Guédon's concept of matriculture.
Paper long abstract:
Societies where women play a central role are present in Western historical accounts mostly through words written by men who are not members of the culture they describe, with the result that many analyses and descriptions reveal more about the authors' basic assumptions than provide an emic view of matricultural communities. From the Amazon warrior women to peace-loving matriarchs, scholars from dominant societies have projected both fears and hopes onto such cultures.
This paper will introduce and explore influential historical developments in European and Western views of matricultures, summarizing developments in the concept of women-centred societies from the perspective of outsiders - some visiting observers, some theorists, some hostile and others admiring. An analysis will be offered from the perspective of Marie-Françoise Guèdon's concept of matriculture, where matrilineal kinship is only one expression of a larger cultural system.
Paper short abstract:
Building on my l981 cross-cultural study of female power and on long term ethnographic research among the matrilineal Minangkabau of West Sumatra, along with the 2007 work of Nicole Mathieu, this presentation discusses the psychodynamic and cultural/biological bases for female power and authority.
Paper long abstract:
Citing Nicole-Claude Mathieu's 2007 comparative analysis of marriage in selected
matrilineal societies, Une maison sans fille est une maison morte, Sally Cole (2016)
cites an important conclusion reached by Mathieu. According to Cole, in these
societies, "Mathieu finds that women as mothers of daughters have a social value and
structural importance in the continuity of the group that together define a sense of
both individual autonomy and collective identity among women." I found the same to
be the case in the Minangkabau villages where I worked off and on from l981 to 2007.
Looking cross-culturally, this finding raises important questions to be addressed
by ethnographers. From where do women get their confidence; how is this confidence
reflected in cultural forms in matrilineal-uxorilocal societies?
In raising such questions I turn to the work of philosopher, psychoanalyst, and
artist Bracha Ettinger who is an Israeli born and well known French intellectual.
In the late 20th century she coined the term "matrixial" to represent a stage in
male and female psychic development emanating from the womb experience. The concept
of the matrixial, now widely discussed in other fields, has yet to be widely
discussed in the social sciences, including anthropology. Because of
anthropology's interest in biology, along with personality and culture, it is
relevant to consider. This is not an easy construct to grasp as will be evident
from the examples of matrixial-based cultural practices described in this
presentation. However, it raises some interesting questions about the relations
connecting biology, society, and culture.
Paper short abstract:
Since the 1950's many anthropologists have labelled matrilineality and polyandry as "historical accidents" and matriarchy as impossible. To have a clear picture we must listen to new voices and study how humans actually live through a transdisciplinary analysis of the ethnographic data.
Paper long abstract:
"Anthropology: the study of what it means to be human; to answer this, we cannot rely on philosophical arguments but must study how humans actually live" (C. Knight). Although about 50% of humans are female and only about 18% of the world population is "white", many of the views currently held about worldwide gender relations are those of white androcentric anthropologists: since the 1950's all the "unconventional" cases deviating from the Nuclear Family Theory were discarded as "historical accidents". This attitude does not resist a careful examination of the ethnographic data: as demonstrated by Gough, Mathieu, Starkweather & Hames, Amadiume, and Hrdy among others, matrilineality and polyandry (and/or partible paternity) are still found in every continent and occur within a variety of cultural, religious, economic and political frames and an assortment of ecological settings.
Many societies do have a rather strict gender division of labor, however this division is not always related to biological differences, there are many cases of fluidity between the biological and social, and the Amazonian Zoe tribe and some societies of the Sino-Tibetan Marches do not even have marriage.
After briefly recalling the theoretical debate, this paper will, in a cross-cultural awareness and transdisciplinary approach, analyze new -or overlooked- evidences from historical and ethnographic records -including my own fieldwork-, as well as new data from linguistics, archeology, genetics, neuroscience, biology and zoology.
Listening to new voices will allow us to deepen our understanding of humankind and eventually enable every human to reach his or her potential.
Paper short abstract:
In modern Matriarchal Studies a scientific definition of matriarchy has been given. An outline of this definition (economical, social, political, cultural) will be presented which has been gained from cross-cultural research on indigenous matriarchal societies.
Paper long abstract:
Non-patriarchal societies are called "matriarchal" in the new field of modern Matriarchal Studies. A clear, scientific definition of "matriarchy" has been missing until now. This has led to the misunderstanding that matriarhy refers to "rule by women" and has conceived a longlasting, ideologically distorting prejudice towards it.
This situation has been changed by modern Matriarchal Studies, which have been developing during the last decades and were presented by many scholars and indigenous speakers at two recent World Congresses on Matriarchal Studies in Europe and the USA.
In this lecture, an outline of the deep structure of matriarchal societies (economical, social, political, cultural) will be given which has been gained from cross-cultural research on still existing indigenous matriarcjal societies all over the world. Matriarchies will be shown to be gender egalitarian and consensus based societies, creating actively peace and sustainability by different intelligent guidelines. Some concrete societies of this type will be presented in short.
Paper short abstract:
If ever there was a natural and original way of organising family life and childcare, it involved matrilocal residence and matrilineal kinship. This paper will survey contemporary debates on early human kinship and the evidence in our distinctive anatomy and psychology supporting a matricultural origin.
Paper long abstract:
Early human kinship was matrilineal
by Chris Knight (chris.knight@live.com Senior Research Fellow, University College London, Anthropology Dept., UK)
If ever there was a natural and original way of organising family life and childcare, it involved matrilocal residence and matrilineal kinship. In the nineteenth century, this was agreed almost universally among anthropologists (e.g. Morgan, Engels, Frazer, Rivers). From the first half of the twentieth century, this consensus was savagely attacked by theorists who advocated the primacy of patriarchal marriage, privatised childcare and the patrilocal, patrilineal band (e.g. Malinowksi, Radcliffe-Brown, Lowie, Steward). But today's mainstream models of human evolution are validating much of the original matrilineal priority paradigm. These include Sarah Hrdy's theory of cooperative childcare as the matrix of emotional modernity; Kristen Hawkes' grandmother hypothesis; Steve Beckerman and Paul Valentine's partible paternity model; Chris Knight's sex-strike theory of hunter-gatherer brideservice; and Camilla Power and Ian Watts' female cosmetic coalitions theory for the emergence of human symbolic culture. These approaches have recently been vindicated thanks to advances in palaeogenetics, which confirm matrilocal residence as a deep-time pattern among hunter-gatherers in Africa. This paper will survey contemporary debates on early human kinship and the evidence in our distinctive anatomy and psychology supporting a matricultural origin.