 |
Business | Industries | Finance | Tax |
| Index: > A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z |
|
|||||
| First Prev [ 1 2 3 ] Next Last |
Matriarchy is distinct from matrilineality, where children are identified in terms of their mother rather than their father, and extended families and tribal alliances form along female blood-lines. Matriarchy is sometimes extended to refer to "government by women", although this is more technically termed gynocracy.
In the present-day world, traditional matriarchal societies are rare, if not nonexistent. 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). 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 Bronislaw Malinowski; the dispute this view has engendered is discussed at that entry. 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.
The Islamic Minangkabau of West Sumatra number about four million and are 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 in its own unique terms.
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).
Matrilineal families ( Yak. ye-usa) have existed amongst Yakuts until modern time, where the female acted as the family head, living separately with her children and cattle. However, several such matrilineal units made up one patrilineal polygamic family (Yak. aga-usa), thus not a pure matrilineality.
The traditional nair community in Kerala, South India is matriarchal by system. (In today's modern world this system is rarely practised. The members of the nair community now live in nuclear families). A nair matriarchal family is called as a Tarawad or Marumakkathayam family. A traditional nair Tarwad consists of a mother and her children living together with their mother's surviving eldest brother or eldest surviving maternal uncle who is called as Karanavan. In a Nair family, amongst all the women at home, the eldest mother would become the head of the family. However this does not imply that the decision making was in the woman's hand. The 'Karanavan' was responsible for making most decisions. The main significance of this system is 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 mother's surname.
In ancient rabbinicalA Rabbi ( Classical Hebrew ''ribbi modern Ashkenazi and Israeli ''rabbi is a religious Jewish scholar who is an expert in Jewish law. The term means teacher or more literally my master (from rav which is equivalates to something between sir and Mr. in Eng tradition a person has to be born of a jewish mother in order to be jewish. According to tradition, the jewThe word Jew is used in a wide number of ways, but generally refers to either a follower of the Jewish faith, a child of a Jewish mother, or a member of the Jewish culture or ethnicity. This article discusses the term as describing an ethnic group; for aish nation is inherited through the mother while the tribe is inherited through the father. Through centuries of occidental contact, the jewish community is more patriarchal in nature, though firmly matriarchal in conception.
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 BachofenThe Swiss Johann Jakob Bachofen (1815 1887), is most often connected with his theory of matriarchy, or Mutterrecht the title of his seminal 1861 book Mother Right: An Investigation of the Religious and Juridical Character of Matriarchy in the Ancient Worl 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 HarrisonJane Ellen Harrison ( September 9, 1850 April 5, 1928) was a ground-breaking English classical scholar and feminist. Harrison applied current archaeological discoveries to the interpretation of Greek religion in ways that have become standard. Her books o, 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 GoddessThe author and poet Robert Graves's study of the nature of poetic myth-making, The White Goddess first published in 1948, represents a tangential approach to the study of mythology from a decidedly idiosyncratic perspective. The European deity in question by Robert GravesRobert von Ranke Graves ( July 24, 1895 December 7, 1985) was an English scholar, best remembered for his work as a poet and novelist. During his long life, he produced more than 140 works in total. He was the son of Alfred Perceval Graves, the Irish writ).
More recent archaeologists like Marija GimbutasMarija Gimbutas (Vilnius, Lithuania January 23, 1921 Los Angeles February 2, 1994) researched the Neolithic and Bronze Age cultures of " Old Europe", a term she introduced, in works published between 1946 and 1971, that opened new views by combining tradi, arguing for a widespread matriarchal culture in pre-Indo-European Old Europe of the Neolithic, have made missteps while attempting to overcome skepticism in what has been until recently an overwhelmingly masculine field.
| Politics | Business | Finance |
 |
 |
 |
|