DO YOU HAVE A HISTORY OF WOMEN? During February Pallas asked a question about how to manifest the status of women that I described at the entrance, along a history of mentalities ...
would like to make a description of my thesis through a series of texts in which, basically, we're going to ask whether or not history women have and what are the causes and consequences.
But remember that what I do from anthropology and not from history, since I am not a historian.
These texts will have an interview format, as shown in the 2nd book I've written
The forgotten dream of Avalon, lest you aburráis, and the starting point is one of the entrances of the month February: An approach to
complementarity and cultural context for understanding domestic violence. So you know, read that entry and then ...
(Incidentally, the book
Mae's loneliness. An anthropological research on domestic violence, will be published by Basic and subsidized by the Institute for Women).
WHAT IS THE HISTORY OF WOMEN?
Can we say then that when human groups increase, so that they are effective, operational subsystems must come inside? Yes And, of course, in the sub-groups are more important than individuals. More important than the concept I would rather say that becomes the minimum unit of social interaction.
We'll see. In hunter-gatherer systems in the absence of effective range / affection between the individual and the group is the group itself that forms the ethos of the subjects. This identification makes both the group and each subject should be organized as a minimum unit of social interaction. However, when groups increase and become more complex, the effective distance individual / group emotionally, so the clan will be structured as a mediator, as of one's personality, and a structure of power and social control. The community is not of individuals but clans.
And how does this affect the ways of feeling and thinking about domestic relations between women and men? domestic relations system is to articulate from what we might call representational and affective complementarity as reflected in the legend of the Ona referred to above, which results in a behavioral patterns of woman's subjection to man, mother and wife, the warrior-hunter.
She ceases to be autonomous and begins to identify with his own body: mother, wife, home, eschara, domus ...
The wife is essentially mother (midwife), and within the community is no longer a factor balance and cohesion, social achievements identify with the achievements of his son, who only identifies with his father and his mother's clan.
But there is a wife, and from there can only be attributed part of the status of her husband, but he takes none of it.
But why these changes? We must stop thinking in terms of Alice in Wonderland. Westerners are very spoiled and we have eradicated from our vocabulary the term survival.
How many problems can be generated in a community if women compete directly with men for the same spheres of reality? (You'd be surprised what the structural situation of women in Sweden ...)
In groups of hunter-gatherers never have direct competition, both can develop their public functions without interference in the field of the other (which is the subject of social status), because the group local and the individual are identified. However, when communities get older, when regional groupings are becoming units of survival, the need for male use (by the use of war as a strategy, the emergence of surpluses, the distance between the community and the individual, etc.) necessarily involves the reduction of the public dimension of women and their subsequent relegation to the domestic sphere.
But this does not work in the case of large matrilineal or matrilocal societies, which would mean they are an exception to what you're saying. sure you can find exceptions, so what? When the phenomenon is the human being, every day we find our exceptions to our theories about biological, medical, sociological, psychological, etc. and no one is invalidated, smoking two packs of cigarettes for 80 years and with 95 still alive, estimates of votes that are never met (and hence win-win), women who are battered for many years and do not let their husbands , etc.
But is that in this case your statement is not an exception to our hypothesis. matrilineal systems exist in fact, the Iroquois, the Hurons of North America, Africa and Munducuru Nayar Amazon are typical, as are the trobiandeses Malnowski studied, but these communities do not represent an effective power of women ( matriarchy) but a male power is acquired through the mother.
The fact of organizing matrilineally has to do with the survival strategies on a large scale in the men spend long periods outside the community: hunting, warring, trading ... Who is going to take care of the daily organization of the group?: its women.
But there matriarchy, and although women enjoy high social status does not imply that its organizational structure is not complementary. The father is not replaced by the mother, but her brother, the Grand Chief is still a man and although humanity comes from a woman, the male hero is a man. Would
illustrate this with some myth? This is a myth of the ceram, a cannibalistic culture of New Guinea (Melanesia), which tells how human beings were no longer together and formed the tribes and how they ceased to be immortal.
"Nine families of mankind came to the top Nunusaku Mount, where people had sprung from bunches of bananas. Among them was a man whose name was Ameta, which means "Dark", "Black" or "Night", and neither married nor had children. One day he went hunting with his dog. Soon the dog smelled a wild pig and followed the trail to a pond in which the animal fled, but the dog remained on the shore. And the pig got tired swimming and drowned, but the man, who had arrived meanwhile, recovered it and found a coconut in his tusk, although at that time there were no coconut trees in the world.
Returning to his hut, Ameta placed the fruit on a shelf and covered with a cloth where there was a picture of a snake, then went to bed. And at night there appeared a man who said: "The coconut you've placed on the shelf and covered with a cloth should be planted in the earth." Ameta planted the coconut the next day and three days later the tree had grown and was high. It took another three days and already had flowers. Climbed the tree to cut, because I wanted to get a drink, but picked up while a finger was cut and the blood fell on a leaf. Returned home to bandage the finger. After three days back and found someone's face in the place where his blood had mixed with the sap from cut flowers. Three days later it was the trunk of the person, and when he came back after three days, found that one little girl had grown up. That night the man appeared to him in the dream, "Grab your cloth with a picture of the snake, carefully wrapped the girl in the coconut with the cloth and take it to your house." Ameta
did what the man's dream and told him three days later took home the girl, whom he called Hainuwele, cella. But it was not like an ordinary person, because when I answered the call of nature produced all sorts of valuable things, so that Ameta became rich.
And at that time was to be held maro a grand ball at the place of the Nine Lands of Dance, which were to participate the nine families of humanity and would last for nine full nights. When people dance the maro, the women sit in the center and from there they will give men betel nut, the dance they are a great spiral of nine laps. The first night, Hainuwele stood in the center and distributed seeds of betel.
The second night, the nine families of humanity gathered in the second field, and again Hainuwele was placed in the center, but this time, instead of coral distributed seeds among the dancers. The third night, handed china. The following machetes. After copper boxes beautifully carved betel. So every day that passed, Hainuwele gave most valuable things. People
seemed mysterious donation of many gifts. They met and discussed the matter.
Everyone was very jealous and afraid that Hainuwele could distribute as much wealth and decided to kill her. So the ninth night, when the girl was in the middle of the field, the men dug a deep hole in the area. Then, during the dance of the nine circles, were gradually pushing Hainuwele until brought down in the hole. They covered the hole with earth and trampled all night.
When the festival ended and Hainuwele Maro did not return, his father knew he had been killed. It was the site of the new field of Dance, dug up the corpse and went looking for satin, the second highest Dema virgin who had given being to human beings. Ameta
showed him the body of her daughter and cursed humanity, and the maiden Satin called people and said, "Because you killed, I refuse to live here anymore. Today abandon you and never see me again on earth. From now on, anyone who wants to recover his being must die. "
And Satin went and people were left without their being, each family had to invent a different one, and thereafter ceased to be one and divided into different tribes who were eventually enemy. "
If you notice, the reason is the same as in the myth of the Ona, but the fact is that if these communities are patrilineal, in the case of the ceram we find matrilineal communities, in which the feminine (Hainuwele) is of great significance in the way of regulating the relations between the clans.
Where is the difference? For the Ona are the men who removed the female, either directly, while in the case of the ceram female is killed by the community.
Where lies the ordinary? "Regardless of the culture hero is a man?
in that both reflect a structure Additional: patriarchy (patrilineal / matrilineal), in which women are subjected in the political field and reduced the scope of the family. That none describes a historical situation but legitimize a particular type of organization that finds its role in the environment: survival versus other groups; depletion, demographic crisis, etc..
any case, communities that are organized in clans are matrilineal and patrilineal either be structurally organized in the same way.
Why? Because they are complex communities in determining what are extrinsically, relations between different groups fighting for resources and, intrinsically, the relationship of individuals to the group.
And everything happens for women right? Indeed, to prevent the woman becoming competitive and disorganized, through education of individuals, the established order.
So, how much larger the group the greater the need to control women? Indeed, but remember that this story is a working hypothesis, whose sole function is to:
1. Integrate a systemic conceptualization determined a possible way of describing human political structures to ...
2. Able to use that description ... in terms of structure to understand one type of phenomenon, domestic violence, which has a universal extension.
At this level of our description of a scenario, the important point is a kind of improbable but very possible law: the group size is directly proportional to the additional control exercised by the group on women.
With increasing distance between individuals and the group and knowing that this is the agency of survival of the species, how to guarantee such survival imbalances caused by individuals, while open systems, and other human groups?
The woman can not be competing at the heart of man of a human group, it would be a huge source of political conflict:
- Imagine what would happen when a party of Iroquois warriors go to war against the Hurons and their return, a group of women had taken "a coup" on behalf of a extended family and had come to power.
- O imagine Iroquois women with complete freedom over their sexuality and therefore reproduction. How would a man if the child is his or not? Etc.
would be a continuing source of conflict and confrontation that would make the Iroquois in a community not suitable for survival.
How to control this happening?
A throughout a system of knowledge, values \u200b\u200band principles that control complementary female ethos based on the male ethos.
This control is done by setting a structural system that:
1. Establishes a primacy and a separation of male over female, so that women and men are separated from infancy.
2. Establishing a ritual space in which children have access to the adult world (social) within a clan.
3. Reference provides a context in which the feminine is reinterpreted from the male.
The end result is a system that develops from the complementarity as context, distancing women from every sphere of power and controlling influence on the education of children.
whole order of reality is transformed in this way, ontology, epistemology, ethics and politics.
In short? a transition occurs (it is not an evolution, but a higher level of complexity due to increased population in human communities) of an ancient world in which they hunt animals with bows and arrows and dance ritual dancing ; make fire and are great teachers of humanity, a world where man take charge of the arc and impose their law on the natural and political order.
The passage of a universe in which men and women menstruate without bodies sex, a cosmos in which the man's teeth start to the vagina and menstruation becomes first pollutant.
The transformation of a reciprocal social reality based on the autonomy of women and men, to a political order in which the complementary relationships distribute social power of man (domain) on women (submission).
And this is what the myths of origin, under which it could recognize the change in an indigenous community based on reciprocity, in which women represent the creation and recreation of social order. In a community where women are the chaos, ignorance, evil that threatens the very survival of the group. It is the principle Be that be controlled and subdued.
And this structure continues with the emergence of the state? course, is what brings the clan syndrome: the complex system of knowledge, values \u200b\u200band complementary principles, which form a social space in which the male represents the public (political) and all that that entails, and women represents private (domestic) and all that that implies.
In the oldest Greek societies, women are identified with the home (chì), while the man (oikos) symbolizes what it covers and protects the home and, by extension, represents the lineage, the temple, homeland politics .
Clan syndrome occurs in Homeric society, under a system of representation in the husband is not only husband but his wife's father, and under that parenting exerts absolute control over women. And it does not matter whether in-law marriage, in which the woman is given and the donation is transferred possession, or in-law, in which the woman is possessed by the male line of his own family.
Is this type of organization responds to situations of survival? course.
In these societies the family group is organized and legitimated through marriage as an instrument complementary to minimize conflicts between families, prevent, for example, polygamy and, through it, a family set too many alliances and monopolize power, excessive population growth ...
Notice how again appears the intrinsic connection between the community (monarchy / state) and the family.
And what about the gynaecocracy Bachofen? Without focusing much more technical criticism and transcending the evolutionary view of history that had Bachofen we must consider that the continued existence of the matriarchy is confused with the matrilineal and matrilocal. And not even distinguish it is clear that the interpretation of Cretan society, or the Egyptian state, say, which is suitable Bachofen.
Remember the myth of Cecrops (Myth III)?
was an ancient Athenian king called upon all citizens to choose between the olive tree, representing Athena and Poseidon representing water as symbols of the city ...
In fact, if you remember the men voted for Poseidon, while that women, who could then vote for those (as myth), voted to Athena. Be that as it was a woman, won Athena with the resulting anger of Poseidon, without thinking twice, flooded the city.
To placate the men had to punish women ... Remember How?
could not vote again, could not keep the name of the mother and could not be named as Athenians. Perfect. And now what do you think that describes us this myth?
course is not a historical event, more like a way to justify the loss of the wife of his political status. The loss? That would mean that at some point enjoyed that status. And so, what was lost, at most, was the matrilineality, ie the myth justifies a system of patrilineal social functioning (Myth II). And ultimately, we described the same as the myth ona or ceram: a complementary structure of political organization.
It is therefore necessary to interpret, as does Bachofen, this myth as a historical reflection of the passage of humanity from a lower state / mother, to a higher state / father.
is clearly not necessary and, moreover, would be very controversial In fact, it is but we should not get into this maze.
What about Athens? Applying the additional control law can be deduced that the woman was removed from any political reference.
The emergence of the state involves the suppression of the clans (families) as the smallest units of social interaction. Now his position will be occupied by the legally constituted individual (and not naturally as hunter-gatherers, or ritually as clans). Thus emerges the citizen as a political entity.
Women Is a citizen? No, they belong to a political community is acquired through the marriage contract. It is, therefore, marriage, and not the birth that gives citizenship to women. Have you heard anything? But make no mistake, she is a citizen as a wife and mother and not as a person, so in the right Athenian women is politically irresponsible for what should be supervised throughout their life, by her husband.
Marriage is part of the individual donation and her dowry, the father of the bride to her son and, moreover, control of the husband over the person and her dowry.
What is left to the woman? Submit and domesticated.
So really, women have always been apart of history. In fact, not be naive, apart from official and unofficial history, because history, in whatever form it is always a political narrative.
And so, just so that when we hear the word god, imagine a man, when we hear the term history, we imagine masculinity. And it's not a matter of language but of ethos, because all women should be educated to submit to their husbands and teach their daughters the naturalness of that submission, at the same time you should teach your children to dominate their wives.
What do you expect a woman in a man? Domain.
What do you expect a man to a woman? Submission. Note that
so so "easy" to prevent women from becoming a competitor of man in society.
And the myth is what sets these attitudes? is what it reflects, ultimately, the structure that determines complementarity and domestic relations.
Who cares that the situation of women is caused mythological Eve's sin, voting to Athena, the nature (maternity), or law? Anyway, the real cause is the complementary structure (domain type / submission) under which any social system is organized (more complex than that of local groups) and whose function is to control the destabilizing and chaotic nature of human beings that through the myths (in this case level II), it is always attributed to the essential or willful irresponsibility of women.
of weak will, mind and incapable of being imperfect, Roman law became the "difference" with respect to the man in rule of law, with all that that entails from a political perspective ...
The woman then, never mind as a citizen? Not exactly. Women from a civic perspective remains important, but as a wife and mother, ie in its domestic role, so it reaches its civic recognition, not political, when she becomes a mother, that is, when her husband provides seed .
But is not it true that the Roman aristocracy gave equal importance to both genealogical family lines? Indeed, the bloodlines are important, but the exercise of control depended on the paternal line. So when when they married, she asked would you be my paterfamilias? With what he meant: that the man became for her in a "father", a householder, a householder, whose power had to be submitted along with their children.
But notice that a man becomes pater when his father died, while a woman becomes a mater, provides children with her husband. Thus
public and private domestic politics and reach different meaning depending on the autonomy of man or woman's dependence, so that while the motherland power was a matter of course important, but that did not reach beyond the household, parental rights was a legal relationship from which is generated across the political order.
In short: citizenship and masculinity were the same cosa. / strong>
In fact, once again repeated the same pattern complementary.
And in the Middle Ages any worse? (...)
