Hi there, well, that sounds interesting, yeah, I don't mean 'matriliny' I mean matriarchy, women ruling.
~Caroline.
-----Original Message-----
From: Society for The Academic Study of Magic [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Samuel Wagar
Sent: Monday, 22 August 2011 11:47 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [ACADEMIC-STUDY-MAGIC] Matriarchy - was "Important re-issue on slavic folklore"
> I'm wondering about this term 'matriarchy'? I was under the impression
> that anthropologists had never come across a matriarchal society.
Depends on your definition. Matrilineality is not uncommon, for example. The
best example I know of is the Mosuo people in Western China which have not
had marriages for two thousand years, live in larger extended households
usually led by the oldest woman in which lovers come and go but all return
to their mothers' house to live and work each morning. A fascinating recent
cross-cultural comparison of marriage and family values (I won't post my
full review because it's tangential to this list) that works through gay
male families in Hollywood, polygamist families in Africa and America (and
gay families in South Africa), and the Mosuo is Judith Stacey "Unhitched :
Love, Marriage and Family Values from West Hollywood to Western China" (NYU
Press, 2011). An ethnography of the Mosuo is Cai Hua (trans Asti Hustvedt)
"A Society Without Husbands or Fathers : the Na of China" (NY: Urzone / Zone
Books, 2001) - originally published in French in 1997 by Presses
Universitaires de France.
Best,
Sam Wagar
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