3.04.Patriarchy.2014.pptx

Political economy


egalitarian


socialism


democracy


stratified


by caste


by class


[other egalitarian]


feudalism


landed elites or aristocracy


peasants or serfs


capitalism


owners or capitalists


wage laborers


by race

































political economy of sex/gender


gender egalitarian


gender stratified


patriarchy


[other gender stratified]












Patrifocality and Patriarchy
Traditional China & North India
North Indian 'family' photo 1890
Tamang 'family' in Nepal 1982
Michelangelo's 'Moses'
Chinese ancestral tablets
Kathryn S. March
Cornell University
Audio: Marilyn Monroe
Every baby needs a daddy
Patrifocality (conclusions)
Always ask:
1. How ramifying are relations established by birth as a woman or man in a particular group, and how strong do they remain throughout a person's life?
2. How much are relations of birth reinforced (or undercut) by subsequent marital or residential relations?
Patrifocality
(If) patrilineal birth relations continue through life only for men
(And) women have to move patrilocally when they marry
(at great physical and social distance)
(And) most important forms of property are inherited by sons
Then it is a patrifocal (or patri-centered) system
Because patriliny is reinforced for men by other "patri"- institutions in marriage, post-marital residence & property
Patriarchy
Not just the "power of men" but a special form of authority
Need for care in use of term
In common (inaccurate) usage, the term simply means "the power of men"
In anthropological usage, the term refers to a specific system of formal political authority, in which
(If) Men, in their role as fathers:
(Are) heads of lineages
(&) have authority over subordinates because of this position as fathers
(&) control sons (through control of lineage & property) until they are quite mature
(&) come to see wives & daughters as like property
(Then) it is a patriarchy

Today's audio
Marilyn Monroe Every baby needs a daddy
Prokofiev Peter and the wolf (Grandfather's theme)
Metric Patriarch on a vespa
Heather Bishop Patriarchy
Shabba Ranks Best grandfather
The Johnson Family Singers Grandfather's clock
Peter Alsop High standards
Moorea Malatt No patriarchy here
Amy Read Patriarchy
Audio: Johnny Cash
My grandfather's clock
Ancestor tablets
Tamang overall picture
Women important as wives & mothers
But also
As sisters
As producers & keepers of prosperity
In both everyday & ritual roles
Tamang inheritance
Men inherit lands & houses (which is extremely important in a largely subsistence agricultural economy)
Women inherit herds, grain, jewelry & money (which are non-trivial and often contribute substantially to family wealth)
Tamang patrilocality
Women move to live in their husbands' fathers' houses
But brides are not expected to move to live there immediately after marriage; instead they divide their time between marital and natal home for up to 9-10 years after marriage
And those houses are almost never very far away from their own natal houses so that visiting back and forth is common
Tamang marriage
Women speak of marrying into "someone else's house"
And must marry into another clan
But also must marry a cross-cousin which means that a bride's father-in-law is also her "uncle" & her mother-in-law is also her "aunt"
Moreover, Tamang women marry as adults to men their own age




Groom's "red clan" family
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Bride's "blue clan" family
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Matrilateral cross-cousin tie



Patrilateral cross-cousin tie
Which makes this diagram one of bilateral cross-cousin marriage.



Tamang
A different version of patrifocality
Tamang patriliny
Unilineal descent traced from father
But sisters and daughters remain important
At all life cycle rites for brothers' children
At community rituals
At cremations and mortuary feasts
And sisters retain their identity as clansisters throughout life
For North Indian & Nepalese Hindu women
Birth ties do not last
Marital expectations disadvantage women much more than men
Women have no independent property rights
Indicators:
Female fetuses & girl babies are at risk of abortion, infanticide & neglect
Brides are at risk of "dowry deaths"
Women who do not become mothers are at risk of divorce (or husbands taking another wife)
Women without responsible fathers, husbands or sons are at risk of just about everything...
"Individually, the tablets have little significance. They are simply a focal point for burning offerings in honor of the parent who was respected if not loved. Collectively, however, they are the symbol of something larger. They are proof of an unbroken chain of men beginning in the distant past of splendid achievements, a past in which the insignificant farmer burning incense was represented by his own blood relatives even though not himself present. Through him and because of him the chain will pass to his sons and his sons' sons into an equally splendid world of the future in which he will again be represented although not present" (1968: 25-6).
Ancestors
The ultimate goal of all traditional Chinese men
To become patriarchs
Then to become an ancestor
Deeply respected (worshipped) in ancestral halls
Represented by ancestral tablets
Buildings & people
"In the ideal Taiwanese family several generations of fathers and sons live with their wives under the same roof, sharing, under the supervision of the eldest male of the eldest generation, their labor and their wealth" (Wolf 1968: 27-8).








*
*
HOUSE FLOOR PLAN
FAMILY KINSHIP CHART
Different sons (& their families) end up living in different parts of the house.
"Patrifocality"
Patriliny
Patrilocality
Patrilineal inheritance
?Patriarchy
Patriliny
unilineal descent traced in the father's line
Everyone (girls as well as boys) is born into the natal family of their father (and father's father's fathers)
Fathers
line
Patri
liny
The "Patriarch":
The eldest son of the eldest generation
"Lim Han-ci was respected and grudgingly admired, but his Puritan temperament did not endear him to his contemporaries. He knew all there was to know about farming and when he decided on an innovation in the customary way of doing things, his neighbors usually followed him. ...when an important decision had to be made, he was always consulted. He was not a man to ignore or to take advantage of. ... And, if the adults walked quietly around Lim Han-ci, the children literally fled at the sight of him. Aside from his known disapproval of any form of play or frivolity, he was also renowned for his fiery temper. Even his own children admit to being terrified of him." (Wolf 1968:38)
Patrilocality
Virilocality
Brides move to live with their husbands, typically in vicinity of husband's parents, but in their own houses.
Cross-cultural gender variation
In some cultures, brides marry far away & come home rarely.
In others, brides' natal and marital homes may be nearby with lots of visiting back and forth.
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Is where the bride moves to live in the extended household of her husband's father(-and-mother)


Patrilineal inheritance
"Descent" = aspects of birth identity
Transmission of clan or other birth group membership along with its rights and obligations
May or may not be associated with "family names" or titles
"Inheritance" = transmission of property
Especially productive property such as land (in agricultural families), herds (in pastoral families), tools/skills (in artisanal families), capital (in capitalistic families), etc.
Cross-cultural gender variation:
Daughters may have the same rights as sons, different rights from sons, or few/no rights at all.
Patrifocality
Always ask:
1. How ramifying are relations established by birth as a woman or man in a particular group, and how strong do they remain throughout a person's life?
2. How much are relations of birth reinforced (or undercut) by subsequent marital or residential relations?
Patrifocality
(If) patrilineal birth relations continue through life only for men
(And) women have to move when they marry
(sometimes at great physical and social distance)
(And) most important forms of property are inherited by sons
Then it is a patrifocal (or patri-centered) system
Because patriliny is reinforced for men by other "patri"- institutions in marriage, post-marital residence & property
Traditional China/Taiwan, North India & Nepal
All are patrilineal, patrilocal, with patrilineal inheritance of economically significant property (land & houses)
Each shows some variation in the continued importance of daughters to the patriline, the continued visitations between marital and natal houses by women, and/or the gifting/inheritance of other kinds of property to daughters
Three cases:

NORTH INDIA
NEPAL
CHINA
TAIWAN
Traditional China/Taiwan
"House"
The residence (the building)
And its residents (the people)
Cf. the 'House of Stewart' or The fall of the house of Usher
M. Wolf (1968)
The House of Lim
In her marital family & community, a North Indian or Nepalese Hindu woman
Must show constant deference to elder in-laws
Including not showing her face or speaking unless spoken to
Photo by Doranne Jacobson
Patriliny
Daughters' and sisters' continued importance varies
Cross-cultural gender variations:
In some ethnographic cases, daughters & sisters MOVE OUT (& are no longer important to their patrilines) when they marry.
In other cases, daughters & sisters remain important, even if they marry and move out.







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Hindu North India/Nepal
Patriliny that largely excludes sisters after marriage
Marriage that
expects girls to marry young to older husbands
expects brides' families to provide substantial dowries
& no divorce or widow remarriage for women (but ok for men)
Patrilocality that
expects brides to go live immediately & permanently in the husband's father's house
which is typically far away
& from which they can only rarely visit their natal home
Patrilineal inheritance of all productive forms of property by sons only
"Patriarchy is a specific form of male dominance, and the use of the term ought to be confined to the Old Testament-type pastoral nomads from whom the term comes, or groups like them. Abraham was a Patriarch--one old man whose absolute power over wives, children, herds, and dependents was an aspect of the institution of fatherhood, as defined in the social group in which he lived." (Rubin 1975: 167-68)
Mary Cameron: "Patriarch"

FAMOUS CHINESE PATRIARCHS
Patriarchy poses different kinds of problems for men and for women
FOR MEN OVERALL
Inevitable tensions
between fathers and sons
as patriarchs exercise absolute authority
Genesis 22:1-19
God said, "Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about."
(and) among brothers
as each vies for succession to the patriarchy
FOR YOUNG MEN IN PARTICULAR
Special difficulties of male youth under patriarchy
not yet (or all ever) become patriarchs
may have to wait to marry or get much of the male authority they may think is their due
The Masai moran warriors
Initiated but unmarried men
Beautiful
Dangerous
"Finally, there are gender-stratified systems which are not adequately described as patriarchal. Many New Guinea societies … are viciously oppressive to women. But the power of males in these groups is not founded on their roles as fathers or patriarchs, but on their collective adult maleness, embodied in secret cults, men's houses, warfare, exchange networks, ritual knowledge, and various initiation procedures."
JUST BECAUSE THERE IS SEXISM DOES NOT MEAN THERE IS PATRIARCHY
"Similarly, any society will have some systematic ways to deal with sex, gender, and babies. Such a system may be sexually egalitarian, at least in theory, or it may be 'gender stratified,' as seems to be the case for most or all of the known examples.
"But it is important--even in the face of a depressing history--to maintain a distinction between the human capacity and necessity to create a sexual world, and the empirically oppressive ways in which sexual worlds have been organized.
"Patriarchy [as it is often used] subsumes both meanings into the same term. Sex/gender system, on the other hand, is a neutral term which refers to the domain and indicates that oppression is not inevitable in that domain, but is the product of the specific social relations which organize it."
Situating 'capitalism' as one form of political economy
'Capitalism' is not the ONLY possible form of 'stratification.'
Patriarchy
Defined by Rubin (1975) The traffic in women
"The term 'patriarchy' was introduced to distinguish the forces maintaining sexism from other social forces, such as capitalism. But this use of 'patriarchy' obscures other distinctions.
"Its use is analogous to using capitalism to refer to all modes of production, whereas the usefulness of the term 'capitalism' lies precisely in that it distinguishes between the different systems by which societies are provisioned and organized.
"Any society will have some system of 'political economy.' Such a system may be egalitarian or socialist. It may be class stratified, in which case the oppressed class may consist of serfs, peasants, or slaves. The oppressed class may consist of wage laborers, in which case the system is properly labeled 'capitalist.' The power of the term [capitalism] lies in its implication that, in fact, there are alternatives to capitalism."
Fallacious constructions of patriarchy
"Patriarchy is the structuring of a society under male leaders." (Wikipedia)
"Patriarcy: Social organization marked by the supremacy of the father in the clan or family, the legal dependence of wives and children, and the reckoning of descent and inheritance in the male line; broadly : control by men of a disproportionately large share of power." (Merriam-Webster)
"Patriarchy – Literally means the rule of the father and is generally understood within feminist discourses in a dualistic sense as asserting the domination of all men over all women in equal terms." (Glossary, Wisdom Ways, Orbis Books New York 2001)

overgeneralize to equate 'patriarchy' with 'male domination'
Patriarchy
Not just the "power of men" but a special form of authority
Need for care in use of term
In common (inaccurate) usage, the term simply means "the power of men"
In anthropological usage, the term refers to a specific system of formal political authority, in which
(If) Men, in their role as fathers:
(Are) heads of lineages
(&) have authority over subordinates because of this position
(&) control sons (through control of lineage & property) until they are quite mature
(&) come to see wives & daughters as like property
(Then) it is a patriarchy
Patriarchs & polygyny
The typical pattern (here, from the Azande)
Girls marry young
North Indian & Nepalese Hindu women's two worlds
In own natal family & community
Relationships are informal and relaxed
Marked, in part, by being allowed to move about & express themselves freely
With face uncovered
Young men can only marry when older
Sometimes first taking "boy wives"
Selling or sending away of girls
As mui tsai ('slave')
Sold or sent into domestic and/or sexual service
Or sim pua ('adopted daughter-in-law')
Sold or sent as an infant to the household of her future husband
Mui tsai ca 1930
Sim pua ca 1920
Historical indicators of the
devaluation of girls in China
Contemporary/newer indicators of the
devaluation of girls in China
1979 "One Child Policy"
Delayed marriage & delayed childbearing
Fewer & healthier births
But only one child per couple
Selective abortion & international adoption
Both led to neglect, abandonment & infanticide of girls
Chinese poster promoting the one-child policy ca 1980
Chinese poster decrying abandonment of girl children ca 2000
Women have multiple lives
(2) As a bride/daughter-in-law
Abrupt and complete rupture with natal family
Weeping & "slamming" of the door behind the departing bride
Who must make new alliances in her marital community
Two main ways for a bride to reconstitute social networks in her new (marital) home
1. The "women's community" (Wolf 1968) and the manipulation of "face" as a way for in-married women to gain some measure of power
2. The "uterine family" (Wolf 1968) and the creation of a family of her own within her husband's patrilineal family
Which brings women to the last of their contradictory & multiple lives: as mother and mother-in-law
Patriarchy poses different kinds of problems for women
Women have multiple lives
(1) As a child/daughter
Sometimes cherished
Sometimes neglected
Always temporary & less valued than sons
to be junior wives in a patriarch's extended polygynous household
Hence, their 'beauty' and 'dangerousness'
Then seducing a patriarch's junior wife
And only much later (if ever) bringing in other wives to establish their own polygynous family
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