Matriarchy

Matriarchy is a postulated gynocentric form of society, in which power is with the female and especially with the mothers of a community. There are many animal societies that are matriarchal, including some human societies. The word matriarchy is coined as the opposite of Patriarchy, from Greek matēr "mother" and archein "to rule". When related to humans, the term literally meaning "wife's rule", gynecocracy (γυναικοκρατία), is sometimes used synonymously.

The term "matri-archy" expresses its tough tie with family rule: its root is "matri" ("mother"). The main semantic load of the term is not only "power of female" but also "power of female as a mother". Woman's power is given to female only because of her motherhood and her maternal status in community. It means that primarily "matriarchy" is a family rule.

Matriarchy is distinct from matrilineality, which is expressed in Jewish tradition. Only a person born of a Jewish mother is considered complete Jewish. Hence Jewish descent is passed on from the mother to the child (see: Who is a Jew).

Matriarchy is also distinct from matrilocality, which some anthropologists use to describe societies where maternal authority is prominent in domestic relations, owing to the husband joining the wife's family, rather than the wife moving to the husband's village or tribe, such that she is supported by her extended family, and husbands tend to be more socially isolated.

While there are existing matrilinear and matrilocal societies, such as those of the Minangkabau or Mosuo, no matriarchal societies are known, and the historical reality is a disputed topic (see The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory). Strongly matrilocal societies are also known as matrifocal, and there is some controversy concerning the terminological delineation of matrifocality from "actual" matriarchy.

Matriarchal Animals

While there have been and are human societies that are matriarchal, there are also many non-human animals that are matriarchal. These include:

• Ants- The head of an ant colony is the queen. The worker ants are all female, including the ones that fight in war.
• Bees- The head of the bee colony is the queen.
• Bonobos
• Elephants
• Killer Whales
• Spiders
• some groups of Hyenas

Matriarchy vs. matrifocality

Due to a lack of any clear and consistent definition of the word 'matriarchy' the term 'matrifocality' has began to be preferred by several anthroplogists to refer to societies with focus on women and especially mothers though not necessarily dominated by women or mothers. Anthropologist R. L. Smith (2002) refers to 'matrifocality' as the kinship structure of a social system where the mother assumes structural prominence. The Nair community in Kerala in South India is a prime example of matrifocality.This can be atributed to the fact that the community being warriors by profession were bound to loose male members at a youth leading to a situation where the females took up the role of running the family.

The Wemale culture of western Seram, studied by A.E. Jensen during the Frobenius Institute expedition of 1938, is often indicated as an example of matriarchy. See: Karl Kerenyi noted in passing (introduction to Eleusis : Archetypal Image of Mother and Daughter 1967, p. xxxii). On the other hand, anthropologist Donald Brown's list of "human universals" (i.e. features shared by all current human societies) includes men being the "dominant element" in public political affairs (Brown 1991, p. 137). He refers the opinion of mainstream anthropology. Feminist Joan Bamberger notes that the historical record contains no reliable evidence of any society in which women dominated (Bamberger 1974), though there are many known matrilineal societies. The Trobriand Islands were considered a matriarchy by anthropologist Bronisław Malinowski; the dispute this view has engendered is discussed at that entry. Peter N. Stearns and other historians have speculated as to whether or not agricultural Japan was a matriarchy prior to contact with patriarchal China. (Stearns 2000, p. 51). On the other hand, anthropologist Peggy Reeves Sanday favors redefining and reintroducing the word matriarchy, especially in reference to modern, matrilineal societies like the Minangkabau. This group lives in West Sumatra and numbers about four million; it is considered the largest and most stable matrilineal society in the modern world. Sanday argues that this society is a modern matriarchy defined not in polar opposition to patriarchy, but on unique terms. A clear and consistent definition has been given by Heide Goettner-Abendroth, who did cross-cultural research on all of the still existing matriarchal societies of today (in her major work on matriarchy). Her viewpoint is close to that of Sanday. One of her examples are the Mosuo people of Southwestern China. Furthermore, the Minicoy islanders are also considered to be one of the living matrilineal societies today. Regardless, the existence of any true matriarchal societies (as opposed to matrilineal or matrifocal societies) remains controversial among scholars.

Some traditional matrifocal societies have been presented by scholars and indigenous speakers at two World Congresses on Matriarchal Studies. The first one was held in 2003 in Luxembourg, Europe; it was sponsored by the Minister of Women's Affairs of Luxembourg, Marie-Josée Jacobs, and organized and guided by Heide Goettner-Abendroth. The second one took place in 2005 in San Marcos, Texas/USA, it was sponsored by Genevieve Vaughan and again led by Heide Goettner-Abendroth.

Existing matrifocal societies

• The traditional Nair community in Kerala, South India is matrifocal by their definition of 'matrifocality'. (Nowadays this system is rarely practiced. The members of the Nair community now live in nuclear families). A traditional Nair matrifocal family is called a Tarawad or Marumakkathayam family. A traditional Nair Tarawad consists of a mother and her children living together with their mother's surviving eldest brother or eldest surviving maternal uncle who is called Karanavan. The Karnavan exercises full powers over the affairs of the family. Till recently, the main significance of this system was that the heirs to the property were the women in the family and the men folk were only allowed to enjoy the benefits during their lifetime. The naming system of the Nair community had the prefix of their mother's 'family name' and they adopted the maternal uncle’s surname. The Marumakkathayam system of Kerala was a legal right which determined inheritance through the female line. Thus if a family property was to be partitioned all female members would receive one share and all male members who were direct offspring of the family name would receive one share. Thus a brother might receive only one share while his sister and her children (and grandchildren by her daughters) would each receive a share. This right was removed by the Kerala Joint Hindu Family System (Abolition) Act, 1975.
• Mosuo people - Lugu Lake, bordering between Yunnan & Sichuan province, China.
• The people of Western Sahara (the former Spanish Sahara), occupied by Morocco retain semi-matriarchal customs. [1]. See also Polisario Front.
• The people of the Bolama archipelago in Guinea-Bissau[2].
• Guajiro tribes - inhabiting the Guajira Department in Colombia and the adjacent region in the Caribbean coast in Venezuela, South America. Children are raised not by their father but by their mother's brother (avunculism).

History of the concept

The notion of prehistoric matriarchy and of its replacement by patriarchy can be linked to the historical "inevitabilities" which the nineteenth century's concept of progress through cultural evolution introduced into anthropology. Friedrich Engels, among others, formed the notion that some primitive peoples did not grasp the link between sexual intercourse and pregnancy. They therefore had no clear notion of paternity, according to this hypothesis; women produced children mysteriously, without necessary links to the man or men they had sex with. When men discovered paternity, according to the hypothesis, they acted to claim power to monopolize women and claim children as their own offspring.

This belief system was the result of errors in early ethnography, which in return was the result of unsophisticated methods of field work. When strangers arrive and start asking where babies come from, the urge to respond imaginatively is hard to resist, as Margaret Mead discovered in Samoa. In fact, while prior to the discovery of egg cells and genetics there have been many different explanations of the mechanics of pregnancy and the relative contributions of either sex, no human group, however primitive, is unaware of the link between intercourse and pregnancy. The fact that each child has a single father has come more recently, however; Greek and Roman writers thought that the seed of two men might both contribute to the character of the child. By the time these mistakes were corrected in anthropology, however, the idea that a matriarchy had once existed had been picked up on in comparative religion and archaeology, and was used as the basis of new hypotheses that were unrelated to the postulated ignorance of primitive people about paternity.

Archaeological hypotheses

Whether matriarchal societies might have existed at some time in the distant past is controversial. The controversy 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 in 1861. Several generations of ethnologists were inspired by his pseudo-evolutionary theory of archaic matriarchy. Following him and Jane Ellen Harrison, several generations of scholars, arguing usually from myths or oral traditions and Neolithic female cult-figures, suggested that many ancient societies were matriarchal, or even that there existed a wide-ranging matriarchal society prior to the ancient cultures of which we are aware (see for example The White Goddess by Robert Graves).

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

These ideas were taken up by second-wave feminism and, conflated with speculations of Margaret Murray and Robert Graves on "witchcraft", by the Goddess movement (feminist Wicca) from the 1970s (Elizabeth Gould Davis, Riane Eisler, Merlin Stone). From the 1970s also, the concept of a matriarchal "golden age" in the Neolithic has been denounced as feminist wishful thinking (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, by and large, never really bore any resemblance in character to the alleged universal matriarchality of Gimbutas and Graves. She demonstrates that in "actually documented primitive societies" paternity is never ignored and that the sacred status of feminine goddesses does not automatically increase female social status, affirming that utopian matriachy is simply an inversion of antifeminism.

While the feminist scenarios of neolithic matriarchy have been discredited, and are de-emphasized in third-wave feminism, at least in their extreme manifestations in authors like Gould Davis (who could go as far as claiming "the first males were mutants, freaks produced by some damage to the genes") or Stone (who concluded that Hebrew priests must have been Indo-Europeans, not Semites, because they were so patriarchal) the original evidence recognized by Gimbutas of neolithic society being more egalitarian than the Bronze Age Indo-European and Semitic patriarchies remains valid. Del Giorgio in The Oldest Europeans (2006) insists in on a matrifocal, matrilocal, matrilineal Paleolithic society.

Matriarchies in mythology

One area where written myths are available from an early period is the Aegean culture-zone, where the Minoan Great Goddess was worshipped in a society where women and men were allegedly equals.

A famous legendary gynecocracy on the edges of the Greek cultural horizon was Amazon society, which took shape in the imaginations of classical Greeks, based on reports of Scythian and Sarmatian female status and even female warriors.

Bamberger (1974) examines several matriarchal myths from South American cultures, and concludes that, by portraying the women from this period as evil, they often serve to keep women under control.

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 between the sexes, ostensibly in the Greek and Roman religion, where goddesses play an important role, but Hutton has also pointed out that in more recent European history, in 17th century Spain, there were many religious institutions staffed exclusively by women.

In popular culture

The idea of peaceful matriarchal civilizations being put to the torch by patriarchal, nomadic barbarian invaders has lived on as a powerful literary trope. The Nazi ideology of a master race of Aryan patriarchal conquerors was based in part on Müller's hypothesis about conquering Aryans being the founders of the European race.

More recent uses of the theme share essentially the same narrative. 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 hypothesis about dying and reviving gods. The patriarchal conquest of matriarchy motif is found in literally dozens of fantasy novels, from Marion Zimmer Bradley's historical revisions of Arthurian romance and the Trojan War to works of pure fantasy 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 (fantasy).

In the expanded universe of Star Wars, the women of Dathomir are portrayed as the ruling sex. Another matriarchy is the Hapan Consortium, a cluster of 63 planets, that are all ruled by the Queen Mother of Hapes.

In the fantasy world of Forgotten Realms, the evil Drow race is a highly matriarchial society. The females rule drow societies—a gynocracy; males are merely servants and are regarded as pets. The same goes for the aptly-named gynocracy of Telchos in the Lone Wolf setting.

The webcomic Sinfest sometimes parodies The Matrix as "The Matriarchy."

Dreamfall, a game by Funcom, features a Goddessiworshipping Matriarchal people, the Azadi. Men are described as having less freedom than women, but are in no way regarded as pets. The Azadi, though very religious with a very strict code of honor, have taken to conquering other races. Though their intentions are good, their "the cause justifies the means" attitude and their discrimination against Magicals make them responsible for many horrible crimes, as well as good deeds.

The Wicker Man, starring Nicolas Cage, takes place within a fictional matriarchy in the state of Washington. The society, Summersisle, is modeled after honeybee culture and behavior.

In the Warcraft Universe, the Night Elves lived in a highly matriarchial society, due to the fact that almost all men became druids and spent large amounts of their time in meditative slumber, leaving the women to protect them and serve their goddess. This has changed in the recent game World of Warcraft, with gender roles being abolished due to a dip in population.

References

• Bamberger, Joan. (1974). '"The Myth of Matriarchy: Why Men Rule in Primitive Society," in Women, 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)[3]
• 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
• 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.
• 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.

See also

• Abrahamic religion
• Patriarch
• Patriarchy
• Patriarchs (Bible)
• Matriarchs (Bible)
• The First Sex
• The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory
• Zygarchy

External links

• Female Supremacy
• www.hagia.de
• www.goettner-abendroth.de
• www.second-congress-matriarchal-studies.com
• Matriarchy.Info: ancient and contemporary matriarchal societies
• Cattle ownership makes it a man's world New Scientist (1. October 2003): A new study claims to demonstrate that early female-dominated societies lost their power to men when they started herding cattle.
• Radical Goddess Thealogy A blog discussing the Goddess and the ancient Matriarchy
• Matriarchy Planet (Science fiction trope on SF wiki)
• Matriarchy in USSR