Woman's Evolution: From Matriarchal Clan to Patriarchal Family is a 1975 book by the American revolutionary socialist Evelyn Reed. The book gives a Marxist view on the history of women and is considered to be a pioneer work of Marxist feminism. It has been translated into many languages.
In Woman's Evolution, Reed asks what anthropology can tell us about social evolution.[1] She concludes that social organization was created out of the mother-child relationship – initially as a matrilineal clan system, long before patriarchal families became the norm (p. xiii).
She focuses particularly on the earliest records of 'primitive' communities (with economies based on hunter-gathering or simple agriculture) (pp. 468, xviii). These communities used to be quite widespread up to the nineteenth century. They did not have any written language and Reed notes that within a very few years following contact with Europeans their social structure often changed substantially (p. 162). So she relies on the earliest anthropological records, drawing particularly on a review of such work by Robert Briffault published in 1927 (p. xv).
Her basic observation is that such communities were organised around a group of women together with their children. When the boys reached a certain age, usually in the range 6 to 10, they would be transferred to an associated group of men (p. 82). The men therefore would be the brothers of the women and maternal uncles of the children, but they would not be the biological fathers because of strict rules of exogamy enforced by traditions based on totem and taboo.
Reed notes there was a double taboo (pp. 23, 204). Sexual relations were not permitted within associated kin groups. But also men were not permitted to kill anyone within the same defined kin groups. Typically there was also a strong prohibition against men eating women's food and vice versa (pp. 71, 83, 91).
The systems of totem and taboo prevented cannibalism only within defined groups. However they did usually require men not to kill any woman, or often even any female animal (p. 280). Reed argues this was enforced by belief in women having superior magic – demonstrated by their ability to produce children (p. 108).
From a feminist perspective, the most important point to be drawn is that early human society was almost certainly organised along matrilineal lines with people tracing their kin ties through their mothers. Men were typically kept well away from child birth and may not even have known where babies come from (p. 340).
These communities could be described as matriarchal at least as far as children were concerned. Women did not control men so much other than excluding them from family life. Reed argues this was probably to protect women and children from male hunters, i.e. from cannibalism which she notes is found in fossil records throughout the paleolithic era, though it died out with Homo sapiens (pp. 27–28).
Also important from a feminist perspective, in hunter-gatherer communities women gathered food for themselves and their children; men hunted food for themselves. Studies quoted by Reed show that in most areas the most reliable sources of food were not animal but vegetable (p. 106). In other words, the typical patriarchal claims that human society was founded on the skills of hunting are not credible.
The gendered division of food consumption as well as food gathering meant that men were relying on a completely different food source to that of women and children. It may be that the evolutionary advantage of the social organization of Homo sapiens was not that male hunting contributed to the family's food but rather that it allowed men not to compete for the family's food.
Reed argues there are no credible examples of communities moving from patriarchal to matrilineal, but many examples in history and mythology of moving from matrilineal to patriarchal – though the process is not well understood (p. 166).
Many of the matrilineal communities studied by early anthropologists changed very rapidly, allowing later anthropologists to believe that patriarchal or patrilineal relations were the norm. Thus was evidence of the original matriarchy written out of history almost before it was written in.
As Reed says, we should not see this matriarchy as a "lost paradise" (p. xviii). One obvious flaw with the early social structure based on totem and taboo was that it always required some people to be outside the favoured kin groups in order to provide sexual partners (pp. 319, 355, 381). When men started to cohabit with women as husbands they were divided between their responsibility in their own lineage for their sisters' sons and their responsibility for their wives' children. Reed speculates that this may have been the cause of widespread child sacrifices in many communities at the dawn of 'civilization' (pp. 403–4).
The transition from matrilineal to patriarchal is perhaps best shown in the Greek myth of Orestes (who killed his mother Clytemnestra in revenge for her killing his father Agamemnon, which was in revenge for Agamemnon sacrificing their daughter) (pp. 460–4). When Orestes is put on trial the key question, as related by Reed, is whether he is the flesh and blood of his mother, as in matrilineal custom, or the product of his father's seed as asserted in patriarchal custom. Luckily for Orestes, the judge is Athena, the goddess of wisdom, who has to accept that she herself was born without a mother (she was plucked out of Zeus's head) – thus proving the patriarchal assertion that a mother is not necessary. So Orestes was his father's flesh and blood and it was OK to kill his mother. On such impeccable logic was the patriarchal rule of law founded in Ancient Greece.
Notes
↑ Reed, Evelyn. Woman's Evolution: From Matriarchal Clan to Patriarchal Family, Pathfinder Press 1975. Page references in the text are to this edition.
Related Research Articles
Matriarchy is a social system in which positions of dominance without violence and privilege are held by women. In a broader sense it can also extend to moral authority, social privilege, and control of property. While those definitions apply in general English, definitions specific to anthropology and feminism differ in some respects.
Matrilineality is the tracing of kinship through the female line. It may also correlate with a social system in which each person is identified with their matriline, their mother's lineage, and which can involve the inheritance of property and titles. A matriline is a line of descent from a female ancestor to a descendant of either gender in which the individuals in all intervening generations are mothers. In a matrilineal descent system, an individual is considered to belong to the same descent group as their mother. This ancient matrilineal descent pattern is in contrast to the currently more popular pattern of patrilineal descent from which a family name is usually derived. The matriline of historical nobility was also called their enatic or uterine ancestry, corresponding to the patrilineal or "agnatic" ancestry.
The Oresteia is a trilogy of Greek tragedies written by Aeschylus in the 5th century BCE, concerning the murder of Agamemnon by Clytemnestra, the murder of Clytemnestra by Orestes, the trial of Orestes, the end of the curse on the House of Atreus and the pacification of the Furies.
The Mosuo, often incorrectly referred to as the Naxi, are a small ethnic group living in China's Yunnan and Sichuan Provinces. Consisting of a population of approximately 50,000, many of them live in the Yongning region, around Lugu Lake, in Labai, in Muli, and in Yanyuan.
Exogamy is the social norm of mating or marrying outside one's social group. The group defines the scope and extent of exogamy, and the rules and enforcement mechanisms that ensure its continuity. One form of exogamy is dual exogamy, in which two groups continually intermarry with each other.
In anthropology, kinship is the web of social relationships that form an important part of the lives of all humans in all societies, although its exact meanings even within this discipline are often debated. Anthropologist Robin Fox says that the study of kinship is the study of what humans do with these basic facts of life – mating, gestation, parenthood, socialization, siblingship etc. Human society is unique, he argues, in that we are "working with the same raw material as exists in the animal world, but [we] can conceptualize and categorize it to serve social ends." These social ends include the socialization of children and the formation of basic economic, political and religious groups.
The First Sex is a 1971 book by the American librarian Elizabeth Gould Davis, considered part of the second wave of feminism. In the book, Gould Davis aimed to show that early human society consisted of matriarchal "queendoms" based around worship of the "Great Goddess", and characterised by pacifism and democracy. Gould Davis argued that the early matriarchal societies attained a high level of civilization, which was largely wiped out as a result of the "patriarchal revolution". She asserted that patriarchy introduced a new system of society, based on property rights rather than human rights, and worshipping a stern and vengeful male deity instead of the caring and nurturing Mother Goddess.
Totem and Taboo: Resemblances Between the Mental Lives of Savages and Neurotics, or Totem and Taboo: Some Points of Agreement between the Mental Lives of Savages and Neurotics, is a 1913 book by Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, in which the author applies his work to the fields of archaeology, anthropology, and the study of religion. It is a collection of four essays inspired by the work of Wilhelm Wundt and Carl Jung and first published in the journal Imago (1912–13): "The Horror of Incest", "Taboo and Emotional Ambivalence", "Animism, Magic and the Omnipotence of Thoughts", and "The Return of Totemism in Childhood".
The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State: in the Light of the Researches of Lewis H. Morgan is an 1884 anthropological treatise by Friedrich Engels. It is partially based on notes by Karl Marx to Lewis H. Morgan's book Ancient Society (1877). The book is an early historical materialist work and is regarded as one of the first major works on family economics.
The Digo are a Nilotic ethnic and linguistic group based near the Indian Ocean coast between Mombasa in southern Kenya and northern Tanga in Tanzania. In 1994 the Digo population was estimated to total 305,000, with 217,000 ethnic Digo living in Kenya and 88,000 in Tanzania. Digo people, nearly all Muslims, speak the Digo language, called Chidigo by speakers, a Nilotic language.
The Tiwi people are one of the many Aboriginal groups of Australia. Nearly 2,000 Tiwi people live on Bathurst and Melville Islands, which make up the Tiwi Islands, lying about 48 kilometres from Darwin. The Tiwi language is a language isolate, with no apparent link to the languages of Arnhem Land on the Australian mainland. Their society is based on matrilineal descent, and marriage plays a very important part in many aspects of their lives. Art and music form an intrinsic part of their societal and spiritual rituals as the Tiwi people tend to follow a certain form of indigenous Animist belief system. The Stolen Generations saw many Indigenous people brought to the Tiwi Islands who were not of direct Tiwi descent.
A matriarchal religion is a religion that emphasizes a goddess or multiple goddesses as central figures of worship and spiritual authority. The term is most often used to refer to theories of prehistoric matriarchal religions that were proposed by scholars such as Johann Jakob Bachofen, Jane Ellen Harrison, and Marija Gimbutas, and later popularized by second-wave feminism. These scholars speculated that early human societies may have been organized around female deities and matrilineal social structures. In the 20th century, a movement to revive these practices resulted in the Goddess movement.
Traditional gender roles among Native American and First Nations peoples tend to vary greatly by region and community. As with all Pre-Columbian era societies, historical traditions may or may not reflect contemporary attitudes. Gender roles exhibited by Indigenous communities have been transformed in some aspects by Eurocentric, patriarchal norms and the perpetration of systematic oppression. In many communities, these things are not discussed with outsiders.
In modern Rabbinic Judaism, the traditional method of determining Jewishness relies on tracing one's maternal line. According to halakha, the recognition of someone as fully Jewish requires them to have been born to a Jewish mother. A person who is born to a non-Jewish mother and a Jewish father is regarded as Zera Yisrael and will only be accepted as ethnically Jewish and not as religiously Jewish. Thus, being Jewish through the paternal line typically necessitates conversion to Judaism to validate one's identity as a Jew in the fullest sense.
Patriarchy is a social system in which positions of authority are primarily held by men. The term patriarchy is used both in anthropology to describe a family or clan controlled by the father or eldest male or group of males, and in feminist theory to describe a broader social structure in which men as a group dominate society.
Cäcilia (Cillie) Rentmeister is a German art historian, culture scientist and researcher of cultural conditions of women and of gender. In addition to studying the different realities in which men and women are living, she has concerned herself with the matriarchy.
The origins of society — the evolutionary emergence of distinctively human social organization — is an important topic within evolutionary biology, anthropology, prehistory and palaeolithic archaeology. While little is known for certain, debates since Hobbes and Rousseau have returned again and again to the philosophical, moral and evolutionary questions posed.
A matrifocal family structure is one where mothers head families, and fathers play a less important role in the home and in bringing up children.
Multiple tribes in the state of Meghalaya in northeast India practise matrilineal descent. Often referred to as Khasi people and Garo people, among the Khasi people which is a term used as a blanket term for various subgroups in Meghalaya who have distinguishing languages, rites, ceremonies, and habits, but share an ethnic identity as Ki Hynniew Trep whereas the Garo people refers to the various groups of Achik people. The Khasi, Garo, and other subgroups have a proud heritage, including matrilineality, although it was reported in 2004 that they were losing some of their matrilineal traits. The tribes are said to belong to one of the "largest surviving matrilineal culture[s]" in the world.
The Iksa, a type of clan, was the traditional constituent element structuring the social and political society of the Choctaw nation. The same word is used to describe clans in the Chickasaw language, however, while often self-identified as "sister" or "brother" tribes, the manifestation of Iksas in the Choctaw nation does not necessarily immediately mirror those of the Chickasaw. Similarly to many other Muskogean tribes, such as the Cherokee and the Muscogee, the Choctaw clans were matrilineal and matrilocal, which exhibited important implications on gender roles. Historically, the clans were divided into either one of two groups: the Imoklasha and Iholahata. Therewithin, the clans were primarily composed of those who were considered to descend from a specific ancestor or ancestral group. The Choctaw stated to the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions that the "nation would not exist" without the presence of iksa. Aside from its importance within families, the clans also shaped and directed ceremonies and legal practices.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
