Patriarchy (anthropology)

Patriarchy (from Greek: patria meaning father and arché meaning rule) is the anthropological term used to define the condition where male members of a society tend to predominate in positions of power; with the more powerful the position, the more likely it is that a male will hold that position. The term "patriarchy' is distinct from patrilineality and patrilocality. "Patrilineal" defines societies where the derivation of inheritance (financial or otherwise) originates from the father's line; a society with matrilineal traits such as Judaism, for example, provides that in order to be considered a Jew, a person must be born of a Jewish mother. "Patrilocal" defines a locus of control coming from the father's geographic/cultural community. In a matrilocal society, a woman will live with her father and/or brothers after marriage, and those males will hold a higher influence on the women's offspring to the detriment of the children's father. Most societies are predominantly patrilineal and patrilocal, however all societies have been patriarchal. Britannica claims that there have been many attempts to disprove this but that the consensus is that it is unsupported by evidence;^[1] instead a peer reviewed anthropological article, reviewing current literature on the subject, says that drawing from anthropological studies, it can now be concluded that "patriarchy is not a universal feature of human societies."^[2]

Human societies can be described in anthropology in terms of being patriarchal, matriarchal or equiarchal (where gender is unrelated to attainment) systems. Most known societies have been defined as patriarchal by some researcher, varying in the degree that the society allows variance from the norm.

Despite the paucity of evidence for the existence of matriarchal societies and the worldwide preponderance of patriarchal ones, anthropologists have documented cases of egalitarianism, such as in Vanatinai.^[3]^[4]^[5] Such cases disprove the claim that patriarchy is universal. Furthermore, the use of discreet, dichotomous categories (such as patriarchy and matriarchy) is in decline among anthropologists today since these categories are incompatible with the overlapping and sometimes contradictory gender ideologies and gendered practices existing in many societies.^[6]

Still, the majority of the higher economic, political, industrial, financial, religious, and social positions of the world today are held by men. There are no known exceptions to this rule recognized by the American Anthropological Association. Anthropologist Donald Brown has claimed patriarchy to be a "human universal" (Brown 1991, p. 137), which includes characteristics such as age gradation, personal hygiene, aesthetics, food sharing, rape, and other sociological aspects, claiming that patriarchy is innate to the human condition.

All advanced industrial societies are variations of patriarchy. In countries such as Saudi Arabia, patriarchy is distinctly visible, and in the European nations patriarchy remains the underlying social structure in spite of some changes creating wider possibilities for both women and men. In both cultures, men still dominate public life. In Marxist cultures, there has also been an attempt to create an impression of egalitarian organizations based on gender equality.

In China, for example, the National People's Congress consists of an equal number of men and women. There are, however, no women within the ruling Politburo of the Communist Party of China. Prior to its dissolution, the Soviet Union's Congress of People's Deputies likewise consisted, by law, of equal numbers of men and women. However, the successor Russian Duma, which unlike the predecessor Congress actually has power and is not a rubber-stamp organization, presently has only 35 woman deputies among the 450 members.^[7]

History

According to English language professor Robert M. Strozier, historical research has not yet found an "initiating event" of the origin of patriarchy.^[8] Strozier in his work notes the logical consequence of such missing.

Several researchers outside the field of anthropology have accepted the absence of matriarchy within history. However, others outside anthropology have speculated, contra anthropological consensus, that six thousand years ago (4000 B.C.E.), that the notion of fatherhood was "invented" making possible the "spread" of patriarchy.^[9]^[10] ^[11] ^[12]Feminist writers have also supported the analysis of ancient societies as patriarchal.

Already in 3100 B.C.E. of Ancient Near East, some scholars see evidence of sexual domination on women, a restriction on their reproductive capacity, and their exclusion from "the process of representing the construction of history".^[8] With the appearance of the Hebrew cult, there is also "the exclusion of woman from the God-humanity covenant".^[8]^[13]

Neo-Marxist scholars have argued that the global emergence of patriarchy as a seemingly hegemonic pattern of social organization is a function of the capitalist mode of production^[14], while structuralists have attributed it to a universal tendency for societies to organize themselves around a binary of nature/culture that is mirrored in an opposition between female and male, the former being subjugated to the latter as nature is thought to be subjugated to culture.^[15] However, this structuralist position has been revised^[16], as evidence against the universality of gender inequality has surfaced.^[17]^[18]^[19]

The worldwide preponderance of patriarchy is also often linked, among the others mentioned above, with the Kurgan hypothesis, by now widely accepted among scholars. At present, however, the historical reconstruction of this phenomenon remains contested among scholars.

Definition

Anthropological studies now defines patriarchy as a multidimensional condition of power/status. Whyte's 1978 comprehensive study examined 52 indicators of patriarchy, to which corresponded 10 relatively independent dimensions. The ten dimensions are:^[20]^[21]

Appendix

This appendix provides one table and one list. The table shows all patriarchal societies that have been alleged at one time or another to be matriarchal. The list gives, where available, quotes from the anthropologists who originally studied them (ethnographers). In nearly every case it is clear from what the women and men who studied them report, that the societies were patriarchal not matriarchal, even before changes brought by contact with western culture. What some of the societies do typify, however, is matrilinearity or matrilocality, not matriarchy, because of clear features of male dominance. This is the evidence that verifies the statements made by Encyclopaedia Britannica, Margaret Mead, Cynthia Eller and Steven Goldberg elsewhere in this article, and has been mainly located using their bibliographies. There are a lot of cultural groups in this appendix. No bias is intended against the more than 1,000 uncontroversially patriarchal cultural groups, nor against the few matrilocal or matrilineal cultural groups not mentioned here.

Table

Autonym	Continent	Country	Marriage	Property	Government	Ethnographer	Date	F/M
Alor	Asia	Indonesia			patriarchy	Cora du Bois	1944	female
Bamenda	Africa	Cameroon	patrilocal	only Kom matrilineal	patriarchy	Phyllis Kaberry	1952	female
Bantoc	Asia	Philippines			patriarchy	Albert S Bacadayan	1974	male
Batek	Asia	Malaysia	patrilocal		patriarchy	Kirk Michael Endicott	1974	male
Boyowan	Australasia	Papua New Guinea	patrilocal	matrilineal	patriarchy	Bronis?aw Malinowski	1916	male
Bribri	North America	Costa Rica	matrilocal	matrilineal	patriarchy	William Moore Grabb	1875	male
Çatalhöyük	Asia	Turkey	na	na	na	James Mellaart	1961	male
Chambri	Australasia	Papua New Guinea			patriarchy	Margaret Mead	1935	female
Filipino	Asia	Philippines			patriarchy	Chester L Hunt	1959	male
Gahuku-Gama	Australasia	Papua New Guinea			patriarchy	Shirley Glasse (Lindenbaum)	1963	female
Hopi	North America	United States of America	matrilocal	both	patriarchy	Barbara Freire-Marreco	1914	female
Iban	Asia	Borneo	both	neither	patriarchy	Edwin H Gomes	1911	male
Imazighen	Africa	North Sahara			patriarchy	George Peter Murdock	1959	male
Iroqois	North America	North East North America	matrilocal	matrilineal	patriarchy	Lewis Henry Morgan	1901	male
Jivaro	South America	West Amazon			patriarchy	R Karstan	1926	male
Kenuzi	Africa	Sudan			patriarchy	Ernest Godard	1867	male
Kibutzim	Asia	Israel	neither	neither	patriarchy	Judith Buber Agassi	1989	female
!Kung San	Africa	Southern Africa			patriarchy	Marjorie Shostak	1976	female
Maliku	Asia	India	separate	matrilineal	patriarchy	Ellen Kattner	1996	female
Minangkabau	Asia	Indonesia		both	patriarchy	PJ Veth	1882	male
Naxi	Asia	China	only Mosuo separate	only Mosuo matrilineal	patriarchy	Joseph Francis Charles Rock	1924	male
Nayar	Asia	India			patriarchy	E Kathleen Gough	1954	female
Tlingit	North America	United States of America	matrilocal	matrilineal	patriarchy	Aurel Krause	1885	male
Wemale	Southeast Asia	Indonesia			patriarchy	Adolf E Jensen	1939	male
Woorani	South America	Ecuador			patriarchy	John Man	1982	male
Yegali	Africa	Madagascar	na	na	na	na	na	na