Wikipedia



 

Note that in feminist literature, "matriarchy" may be used synonymously with matrilineality.

Matriarchy (also gynecocracy) refers to a gynecocentric form of society, in which leadership is by women, especially by the mothers of a community.¹

There are no records of historical societies that are unambiguously matriarchal,^2345678 although there are a number of attested historical matrilinear, matrilocal, and avuncular societies, especially among indigenous peoples of Asia, such as those of the Minangkabau or Mosuo. Ancient historians and writers describe societies and cultures with traditionally gynecocentric organization, some using information which may have been derived from legends and myths that cannot be verified.

Sometimes strongly matrilocal societies are referred to as, matrifocal, and there is some debate concerning the terminological delineation between matrifocality and matriarchy. Note that even in patriarchic systems of male-preference primogeniture there may be queen regnants, as in the case of Elizabeth I of England or Victoria of the United Kingdom and other European cultures. Even in historical times, women served as empress in China and as queens in many Pacific cultures. In Ancient Egypt the royal lineage was carried by its women and a ruler, either female or male, needed to trace family connections through their mother, sister, or aunt. Almost without exception, its rulers followed this pattern and when the throne was usurped by or fell to a male from outside of this royal family, the wife who became his queen was usually of the royal lineage. Records indicate that the matrilineal records of descent also were the tradition of all in the ancient culture. Although not typical, women ruled as pharaoh from the early dynasties to the last one.

In nineteenth century scholarship, the hypothesis of matriarchy representing an early stage of human development now mostly lost in prehistory with the exception of some "primitive" societies enjoyed popularity. The hypothesis survived into the twentieth century and notably was advanced in the context of feminism and especially second wave feminism, but it remains debated.⁹

Contents 1 Origins of terminology 2 Nineteenth century uses 3 Twentieth century uses 4 Matriarchy versus matrifocality 5 Matriarchies in ancient history 6 In popular contemporary fiction 7 See also 8 Notes 9 References 10 External links

Origins of terminology

Built on the ancient Greek word, γυναικοκρατία found in Aristotle, Strabo, and Plutarch, the term gynæcocracy, "rule of women", has been used since the seventeenth century in English. The word matriarchy was coined from Ancient Greek matēr "mother" and archein "to rule". According to the OED, the term "matriarchy" first appeared in 1885, building on an earlier term, matriarch, which was in use during the early seventeenth century.

The near-synonyms matrifocal and matricentric "having a mother as head of the family or household" are of more recent coinage, first used in the mid-twentieth century.

Also twentieth century formations are gynocentric, gynocentrism (simplified by using the reduced prefix gyno- for gynæco-) is defined as the "dominant or exclusive focus on women".

Marija Gimbutas used the term, matristic as "exhibiting influence or domination by the mother figure", for her notion of a "woman-centered" society surrounding goddess worship in Neolithic Europe.

A recent school of "Matriarchal Studies" led by Heide Göttner-Abendroth is calling for a more inclusive redefinition of the term. Göttner-Abendroth defines "Modern Matriarchal Studies" as the "investigation and presentation of non-patriarchal societies", effectively defining "matriarchy" as "non-patriarchy".¹⁰

Similarly, Peggy Reeves Sanday (2004) favors redefining and reintroducing the word matriarchy, especially in reference to contemporary matrilineal societies such as the Minangkabau.

Nineteenth century uses

Matriarchy was recognized by J. Bachofen ("Das Mutterrecht") and was deeply investigated by Lewis H. Morgan, LL. D. ¹¹ Many modern researchers studied the phenomenon of matriarchy afterward, but the basis was laid by the classics of sociology, an academic tradition which had its origins in, and whose name was coined in the nineteenth century by the French thinker Auguste Comte in 1838. In their works Bachofen and Morgan used such terms and expressions as mother-right, female rule, gyneocracy, and female authority. All these terms meant the same: the rule by women, be it by mother or wife.

The following excerpts from Morgan's "Ancient Society" explains the use of the terms:

"In a work of vast research, Bachofen has collected and discussed the evidence of female authority, mother-right, and of female rule, gyneocracy."

"Common lands and joint tillage would lead to joint-tenant houses and communism in living; so that gyneocracy seems to require for its creation, descent in the female line. Women thus entrenched in large households, supplied from common stores, in which their own gens so largely predominated in numbers, would produce the phenomena of mother right and gyneocracy, which Bachofen has detected and traced with the aid of fragments of history and of tradition."

Although Bachofen and Morgan confined the "mother right" inside households, it was the basis of female influence upon the whole society. These classics never expressed that gyneocracy meant "female government" in polity. They were aware of the fact that gender-based structure of government had no relation to domestic rule and to roles of both genders.

Friedrich Engels, among others studying historical groups, recorded the notion that some contemporary primitive peoples did not grasp the link between sexual intercourse and pregnancy.^{citation needed} Research indicated that sexual intercourse occurred from early ages among these people and pregnancy only occurred much later, seemingly, unrelated to the sexual activity. He proposed that these cultures had no clear notion of paternity. According to this hypothesis; women produced children mysteriously, without necessary links to the men with whom they had sexual intercourse. When realization of paternity occurred, according to the hypothesis, men acted to claim a power to monopolize women and claim their offspring as possessions, and patriarchy began.

The controversy surrounding prehistoric or "primal" matriarchy began in reaction to the book by Johann Jakob Bachofen Mother Right: An Investigation of the Religious and Juridical Character of Matriarchy in the Ancient World, which was published in 1861. Several generations of ethnologists were inspired by his progressive development theory of archaic matriarchy evolving into patrtiarchy. Following him and Jane Ellen Harrison, several generations of scholars, usually arguing from known myths or oral traditions and after examination of Neolithic female cult-figures, suggested that many ancient societies might have been matriarchal, or even, that there existed a wide-ranging matriarchal culture prior to the ancient cultures with historical documentation.

Twentieth century uses

Austrian writer Bertha Diener, also known by her American pseudonym, Helen Diner, wrote Mothers and Amazons (1930) which was the first work to focus on women's cultural history. She is regarded as a classic of feminist matriarchal study. ¹² Her hypothesis is that in the past all human cultures were matriarchal and had distinct advantages, then, at some point, most shifted to patriarchal and degenerated.

The controversy was reinforced further by the publication of The White Goddess by Robert Graves (1948). He also published a comprehensive translation of Ancient Greek mythology, The Greek Myths, that included many cross cultural comparisons and explications. He asserted that the remaining fragments of the earliest vestiges of Greek mythology led him to believe that the classical Greek mythology dating from 500 B.C. and later showed signs of having been rewritten after a profound change in the religion of Greek civilization that occurred within its very early historical times, or because of misinterpretations after knowledge of the original religious concepts was lost.

From the 1950s, Marija Gimbutas developed a theory of an Old European culture in neolithic Europe which had matriarchal traits, and was replaced by the patriarchal system of the Proto-Indo-Europeans with the spread of Indo-European languages beginning in the Bronze Age.

During the 1970s these academic ideas were taken up by popular writers of second-wave feminism and, expanded with the speculations of Margaret Murray on witchcraft, by the Goddess movement, feminist Wicca, as well as work by Elizabeth Gould Davis, Riane Eisler, and Merlin Stone. The concept of a matriarchal golden age in the Neolithic has been denounced as feminist wishful thinking in The Inevitability of Patriarchy, Why Men Rule, more recently by Philip G. Davis Goddess Unmasked, 1998, and Cynthia Eller, professor at Montclair State University The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory, 2000. According to Eller, Gimbutas had a large part in constructing a myth of historical matriarchy by examining Eastern Europe cultures that she asserts, by and large, never really bore any resemblance in character to the alleged universal matriarchal suggested by Gimbutas and Graves. She asserts that in "actually documented primitive societies" of recent (historical) times, paternity is never ignored and that the sacred status of goddesses does not automatically increase female social status, and believes that this affirms that utopian matriarchy is simply an inversion of antifeminism. The feminist scenarios of Neolithic matriarchy have been called into question and are not emphasized in third-wave feminism.

The original evidence recognized by Gimbutas, however, of Neolithic cultures being more egalitarian than the latter Bronze Age Indo-European and Semitic patriarchies remains valid. Notably, Gimbutas has not described these societies as "matriarchal", preferring the term "woman-centered" or "matristic".

Del Giorgio in The Oldest Europeans (2006) insists on a matrifocal, matrilocal, matrilineal, Paleolithic society. Kurt Derungs is an author advocating an "anthropology of landscape" based on alleged matriarchal traces in toponymy and folklore.

Feminist authors adhering to the Modern Matriarchal Studies school of thought ¹³ consider any non-patriarchic form of society as falling within their field, including all examples of matrilineality, matrilocality, and avunculism, regardless of discussions on the extent of "matrifocality".

Matriarchy versus matrifocality

Further information: list of matrilineal or matrilocal societies

Due to a lack of any clear and consistent definition of the word matriarchy several anthropologists have begun to use the term matrifocality to refer to societies in which women, especially mothers, occupy a central position in the culture and the term does necessarily imply domination by women or mothers.¹⁴ Anthropologist R. L. Smith (2002) refers to 'matrifocality' as the kinship structure of a social system where the mothers assume structural prominence.¹⁴ The Nair community in Kerala in South India is a prime example of matrifocality using this definition because it is argued that being warriors by profession, the community was bound to lose male members at youth, leading to a situation where the females assumed the role of running the family. Some consider the use of the term a euphemism, lacking a parallel to patriarchy, which is not redefined in the same fashion.

While the existence of numerous matrilineal or avuncular societies is undisputed, the universal absence of matriarchal societies in historical records has been recognized since the 1970s. No judgment can be conclusive regarding cultures about which we have no historical records. Joan Bamberger in her 1974 The Myth of Matriarchy argued that the historical record contains no reliable evidence of any society in which women dominated. Anthropologist Donald Brown's list of "human cultural universals" (i.e. features shared by all current human societies) includes men being the "dominant element" in public political affairs (Brown 1991, p. 137), which he asserts is the contemporary opinion of mainstream anthropology.

Matriarchies in ancient history

A famous gynecocracy related by classical Greek writers in myth and legend, was the Amazon society. The ancient historian, Herodotus, reported that the Sarmatians were descendants of Amazons and Scythians, and that their women observed their ancient maternal customs, "frequently hunting on horseback with their husbands; in war taking the field; and wearing the very same dress as the men". Moreover, said Herodotus, "No girl shall wed till she has killed a man in battle". Herodotus related that a group of Amazons was blown across the Maeotian Lake (the Sea of Azov) into Scythia near its cliff region (today's southeastern Crimea). After learning the Scythian language, they agreed to marry Scythian men, on the condition that they not be required to follow the customs of Scythian women. According to Herodotus, this new band moved toward the northeast, settling beyond the Tanais (Don) river, and became the ancestors of the Sauromatians.

Amazons came to play a role in Roman historiography. Strabo related that Caesar reminded the Senate of the conquest of large parts of Asia by Semiramis and the Amazons. Successful Amazon raids against Lycia and Cilicia contrasted with effective resistance by Lydian cavalry against the invaders.¹⁵

Diodorus relates the that Hercules defeated the Amazons at Themiscyre. Philostratus places the Amazons in the Taurus mountains. Ammianus places them east of Tanais, as neighbouring the Alans. Procopius places them in the Caucasus. Although Strabo shows scepticism about them, the Amazons in general continue to be taken as historical throughout late antiquity. Several Church Fathers speak of the Amazons as of a real people. Solinus embraces the account of Plinius. Under Aurelianus, captured Gothic women were identified as Amazons.¹⁶ An account by Justinus was influential and was used as a source by Orosius, who continued to be read during the European Middle Ages. Medieval authors thus continued the tradition of locating the Amazons in the North, Adam of Bremen placing them at the Baltic Sea and Paulus Diaconus in the heart of Germania.¹⁷

Historian Ronald Hutton has argued that there is no necessary correlation between the worship of female deities and relative levels of social or legal egalitarianism, noting the late classical Greek and Roman religions, where goddesses played an important role, however the parallel is not consistent, given the secondary roles of these goddesses in classical religious concepts. The changes from the earlier mythology are not considered in her analysis, however, and the late classical myths were dominated by male deities. Hutton also has pointed out that in more recent European history, in seventeenth century Spain, there were many religious institutions staffed exclusively by women. There also is no evidence that the position of women changed in the indigenous dynasties of Ancient Egypt even when the roles of goddesses were superseded by gods, although the goddesses were never subjugated, per se, retaining all of their powers.

In classical Greek mythology, Zeus is said to have swallowed a pregnant goddess, Metis, who was carrying her parthenogenetic daughter, Athene, and that when her child was born to her, the mother and child created havoc inside Zeus. He had swallowed the goddess to prevent her offspring from overthrowing him as predicted to him by an oracle. After suffering great discomfort and terrible headaches, Athene reportedly burst forth through his forehead, thereafter being described as "being 'born' of Zeus" and therefore subjected to him in myths of later origin. Robert Graves suggested that this myth displaced earlier myths in which Athene and her mother existed in established religious beliefs that had to change when a major cultural change introduced a patriarchy to replace a matriarchy, interpreting it symbolically.

Bamberger (1974) examines several matriarchal myths from South American cultures and concludes that portraying the women from this matriarchal period as evil, often serves as a tool to restrain contemporary women.

In popular contemporary fiction

Further information: Amazons in popular culture

Among popular writers, the idea of peaceful matriarchal civilizations being destroyed by patriarchal, nomadic barbarian invaders has lived on as a powerful literary trope.

Mary Renault's historical novels about Greek mythology and history such as The King Must Die combine motifs of political conflict between goddess and god worshippers with The Golden Bough's academic hypothesis about dying and reviving gods. The patriarchal conquest of matriarchy motif is found in dozens of fantasy novels, from Marion Zimmer Bradley's historical revisions of Arthurian romance and the Trojan War to works such as Guy Gavriel Kay's A Song for Arbonne. Gender roles and the conflict of patriarch vs. matriarchy is a major theme in the Wheel of Time books by Robert Jordan.

The remake version (not the original) of The Wicker Man, starring Nicolas Cage, takes place within a fictional matriarchy in the state of Washington. The society, Summersisle, is modeled after a biological precedent, honeybee culture and behavior.

See also

• Gender role
• Goddess movement
• Feminist anthropology
• History of feminism
• Amazons
• Amazon feminism
• The First Sex
• When God Was a Woman
• The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory
• Patriarchy
• Marianismo

Notes

References

• Bamberger, Joan. (1974). '"The Myth of Matriarchy: Why Men Rule in Primitive Society," in Woman, Culture, and Society, edited by Michelle Zimbalist Rosaldo and Louise Lamphere, pp. 263-280. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press.
• Brown, Donald. (1991). Human Universals. Philadelphia: Temple University Press
• Czaplicka, Marie Antoinette. (1914). Aboriginal Siberia, a study in social anthropology. Oxford. Clarendon press.
• Davis, Philip, Goddess Unmasked, Spence Publishing, New York, 1998. ISBN 0-9653208-9-8; review: R. Sheaffer, Skeptical Inquirer (1999)[1]
• del Giorgio, J.F. (2006). The Oldest Europeans. A.J.Place, ISBN 978-9806898004.
• Eller, Cynthia (2001). The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory: Why an Invented Past Won't Give Women a Future. ISBN 0-8070-6793-8
• Finley, M.I. (1962). The World of Odysseus. London. Pelican Books.
• Gimbutas, Marija (1991). "The Language of the Goddess".
• Goldberg, Steven (1993) Why Men Rule: A Theory of Male Dominance, rev. ed. ISBN 0-8126-9237-3
• Hutton, Ronald (1993). The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles ISBN 0-631-18946-7
• Lapatin, Kenneth (2002). Mysteries of the Snake Goddess: Art, Desire, and the Forging of History. ISBN 0-306-81328-9
• Sanday, Peggy Reeves. (2004). Woman at the Center: Life in a Modern Matriarchy. Cornell University Press. ISBN 0-8014-8906-7
• Shorrocks, Bryan. (2007). The Biology of African Savannahs. Oxford University Press. ISBN 019857066X
• Stearns, Peter N. (2000). Gender in World History. New York Routledge. ISBN 0-415-22310-5
• Smith R.T. (2002) Matrifocality, in International encyclopedia of the social and behavioral sciences (eds) Smelser & Baltes, vol 14, pp 9416.
• Sukumar Raman, (2006). "A brief review of the status, distribution and biology of wild Asian elephants Elephas maximus." International Zoo Yearbook. (40)1; 1-8.
• Yoshamya, Mitjel & Yoshamya, Zyelimer (2005). Gan-Veyan: Neo-Liburnic glossary, grammar, culture, genom. Old-Croatian Archidioms, Monograph I, p. 1 - 1224, Scientific society for Ethnogenesis studies, Zagreb.

External links

• Cattle ownership makes it a man's world New Scientist (1. October 2003): A study claims to demonstrate that early female-dominated societies lost their power to men when they started herding cattle.
• Matriarchy in USSR

v • d • e Forms and styles of leadership Anarchy · Democracy · Epistemocracy · Geniocracy · Gerontocracy · Meritocracy · Noocracy · Ochlocracy · Panarchism · Plutocracy · Theocracy · Technocracy See also Forms of government