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- Convenors:
-
Linnéa Rowlatt
(University of Ottawa)
Martin Kalulambi (University of Ottawa)
- Chair:
-
Georges Sioui
(University of Ottawa)
- Stream:
- Relational movements: Kin and Gender/Mouvements relationnels: Parenté et genre
- Location:
- LPR 154
- Start time:
- 5 May, 2017 at
Time zone: America/New_York
- Session slots:
- 3
Short Abstract:
It is time to assess what is happening with matrilineal societies, and to critically review how they are treated in the literature. This panel revisits their present situation in a world in motion, through the sharing of data, the search for useful approaches, and the urgency of critical questions.
Long Abstract:
Scholars define a matrilineal society as a lineage society where one belongs to one's mother's kin group, with many variations on that theme. The study of matrilineal societies, all Indigenous peoples, used to be a mainstay of anthropological studies but the past forty years have seen a marked decline in interest, perhaps because states which exert authority over these societies consider matrilines a thing of the past, or perhaps because of the poor quality of available data. In rewriting Malinowski on the Tropbriand Islanders by including women in her ethnographic description (1976), Annette Weiner challenged anthropologists to critically re-examine the ethnographic material pertaining to matrilineages and their articulation in the rest of their socio-cultural context. At least fifteen percent of world societies, about eighty distinct societies (see Murdock's Human Research Area Files (1967) and Aberle (1961)), are or have been matrilineal. The field today is being re-opened on three fronts: by the matrilineal communities themselves and their awareness that matrilineality is central to their cultural survival, by ethnographers such as Peggy Reeves Sanday dissatisfied with old approaches, and by Indigenous policy makers. To answer Annette Weiner's challenge and the call to action from the field, this panel will share fresh data on matrilineal societies from around the world, their history and their contemporary situations.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Pi-chen Liu (Academia Sinica)
Paper short abstract:
The main subject of empirical fieldwork in this study is the Amis of A’tolan village in Taiwan, whose matrilineal and uxorilocal society has, in recent years, suffered from the severe impact of government tourism policy and development by financial groups.
Paper long abstract:
The aim is to investigate what kind of mutual responses are produced by existing internal male-guided mechanisms such as the mi'edaw (bamboo divination) when massive changes are imposed from outside? What is the correlation of these responses and the transformation of their traditional matrilineal social logic? (Amis females inherit land and houses, while a man is on the logic of personal merit).
This study compiles the motivation for cases of divination during 2011-2013 and their problem-solving results to build an interpretation system. The social process arising from divination brings all anxiety, disputes and adjustment associated with transmission of matrilineality to light. Divination is a mechanism that patternizes behavior and is also a social law practice that has become an important institution. Through the symbol system, mi'edaw deals with structural gender relations. Divination can even be described as an opportunity for the forming of concensus in the matrileneal order. It plays the role of regenerative mechanism for matrilineal logic in the contemprary.
The Amis mi'edaw interpretation system tend to blame the cause of illness on another individual and this "perpetrator" is often a faki (mother's brother) or mikadafo (son in law). Through divination, it can be seen how the people of the village stereotype, and fix some destructive, cheating or bad-intentioned behavior and link it to certain male relatives. In the process, the positioning and suspicion of matrilineal society with regards to men is displayed and, at the same time, the social subjects that men/women are expected to be are established.
Yasuko Sato (Lamar University)
Paper short abstract:
A society with matrilocal residence is a world apart, allowing women to live like goddesses. In stark contrast, women are objectified and treated like whores in societies where patrilineal-patrilocal practices prevail. Matrilocality, therefore, throws valuable light on gender egalitarianism.
Paper long abstract:
Matrilocal marriage customs are the indispensable basis of matrilineal societies. What difference does matrilocal residence make in women's lives? Why does patrilocality lead to the downgrading of their status and perpetuate their subordination?
This paper compares these two residence types through the pathbreaking work of Takamure Itsue (1894-1964), the most distinguished pioneer of feminist historiography in Japan. Drawing upon Bronislaw Malinowski and other anthropologists, she inquired into the matrilocal nature of ancient and early medieval Japanese society. Her privileging of Japan's "backwardness" resembled the anthropological search for egalitarian gender relations on the most extreme fringes of civilization.
Takamure's point of departure was the stunning heights of women's intelligence and beauty in the ancient classics of Japan, including mythology and poetry. From them she derived inspiration for a historical investigation of their material conditions. Tracing the transformation of marital customs from matrilocal to patrilocal systems, she examines the historical process by which women became subjugated to men. Duolocal and matrilocal households ensured women's social, sexual, and financial autonomy, the collective care of children, and female bonding and solidarity. Uxorilocal residence enabled women to participate fully in public life and embody goddess-like qualities. On the other hand, virilocality secluded and objectified women. Under patriarchal authority, women were exploited, whether they were wives (vessels for procreation) or prostitutes.
In matrilocal cultures, Takamure finds a vision of the future. Through the principles that govern uxorilocal institutions (love, trust, cooperation, and community), she envisions one world family in opposition to competing, patriarchal, and hierarchical nation-states.
Wilhelmina Donkoh (Garden City University Colege)
Paper short abstract:
A key characteristic of matrilineal societies is inheritance through the mother’s lineage. This paper combines primary and secondary sources in considering this thesis in relation to the Akans of Ghana, using the case of the Asante in the pre-colonial, colonial and the post-colonial eras.
Paper long abstract:
ABSTRACT: A key characteristic of matrilineal societies the world over is inheritance through the mother's lineage. This paper will use a combination of primary and secondary sources to consider this thesis in relation to the Akan-speaking people of Ghana, first using the case of the people of Asante in the pre-colonial period, through the colonial and then the post-colonial eras. It will be argued that the thesis is partly justified, but overlooks a number of significant contributions made by modern institutions in transforming the social and cultural environment while at the same time retaining the kennel of historic beliefs and practices of the affected people. Besides examining the policies and their outcomes, the paper will also explore the extent to which western institutions such as Christianity, education and policies emanating from the modern governance system have impacted the time-honoured inheritance system of the Asante and other matrilineal Akan groups.
José Maria Masanga Ndungi
Paper short abstract:
Nous voudrons faire un état de lieu du système matrilinéaire tel que vécu aujourd’hui chez le peuple les yombe en ce temps où la modernité et le christianisme servent des repères culturels. Il s’agit de cerner tous les champs culturels en rapport avec la matrilinéarité dans le passé et aujourd’hui.
Paper long abstract:
Dans notre exposé, nous allons abord les points classifiant le peuple yombe dans la catégorie de société matrilinéaire. Il s'agit de l'appartenance généalogique transmise par la mère. Il y a aussi la transmission de la propriété, de l'héritage et des titres par la mère. Nous constatons néanmoins que, la résidence maritale est patrilocale.
Deux autres points particuliers nous intéressent. La patrilocalité et la transmission du nom. A l'époque précoloniale, l'enfant recevait un nom symbolique selon les attentes ou les circonstances. Les hommes perdaient ce nom au sortir de l'initiation qui ne vient ni du père, ni de la mère. Ce nom est caractéristique des prouesses et compétences de la personne.
Ensuite, nous aborderons aussi la notion du genre et la distribution du travail. En fait, le yombe est le peuple des hommes-mères et de femmes-pères. C'est dans cet angle que nous développerons la place de l'Oncle maternelle et aussi celle de la tante paternelle.
Enfin, nous allons nous atteler sur ce qui reste de ce système de filiation qui est entrain de se dissoudre dans la modernité et le christianisme. Le code de famille en vigueur est inspiré du droit romain et il préconise le pouvoir des parents biologiques sur leurs enfants.
Dans un autre angle, la prolifération des églises pentecôtistes, vient avec un nouveau message : celui de privilégier la relation parents-enfants biologiques. Ce message évangélique appelle aussi les personnes à se dissocier de la coutume ancestrale car elle est d'inspiration païenne, donc satanique.
Kah Henry Kam (University of Buea)
Paper short abstract:
Many studies on matrilineal societies in the world almost exclusively examine membership of people to their mother’s kin group giving the impression that such societies do not have a place for fatherhood in their histories and cultural practices.
Paper long abstract:
Many studies on matrilineal societies in the world almost exclusively examine membership of people to their mother's kin group giving the impression that such societies do not have a place for fatherhood in their histories and cultural practices. This paper challenges this lopsided discussion and deviates from it to examine the important and symbolic role of paternity in the history and culture of the Laimbwe matrilineal group of the North West Region of Cameroon. A father like the sister or mother has the power and full right to deny his son or daughter from taking up responsibilities in his/her mother's kin group. Traditional secrets of masquerade societies are in the hands of sons than sister's sons or brothers and a man has authority to bury his wife although she belongs to her mother's kin group. These and other issues shall be examined through field work, participant observation and existing secondary works to show the powerful role of paternity in the history and culture of the Laimbwe of Cameroon.
Barbara Alice Mann (University of Toledo)
Paper short abstract:
Although suppressed in the Western historical record, the active matriarchies of the Eastern Woodlands of North America included active War Women. This presentation will glimpse long-ignored records of War Women in action, including Iroquois, Choctaw, and Cherokee examples.
Paper long abstract:
Should the topic of "war women" among Indigenous Americans come up, if they attend to the issue at all, Western scholars default to the Pretty Woman, Nayehi, the Tsalagi war woman of Chota, as though she were the one such example extant, when she was really just one of the few recorded with any respect. This was primarily because Nanyehi mollified the Euro-settlers with, and was widely lauded in their chronicles for expressing, hopes for peace. However, other War Women existed and were recorded as active across Indigenous America, particularly including the Iroquoian war woman of Sheshequin, whose only recorded name is "Queen Esther." Less fondly recalled by settler chronicles than Nanyehi, along with her mother and sisters, Esther was a fierce opponent of the invading Europeans, renowned for personally tomahawking various of its attackers when they invaded Iroquoia in general, and her town, Sheshequin, in particular. Similarly, a horrified settler recorded seeing armed Choctaw women striding forth in pursuit of the "invading armies" of the Europeans in 1771, even as the Oneida woman, Tyonajanegen, stepped into battle in 1777. Although typically presented as "helping" her husband, she was as engaged in battle as he was. Indeed, War Women such as Nonhelema of the Shawnee abounded throughout the eastern Woodlands, and it is only intensive Euro-patriarchy of scholarship that either toned down their existence to one "Cherokee princess," Nanyehi, or wiped their openly fierce sisters from the common historical record, but Indigenous scholars today are restoring their existence to memory.