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This book presents the results of Heide Goettner-Abendroth's pioneering research in the field of modern matriarchal studies, based on a new definition of «matriarchy» as true gender-egalitarian societies. This new perspective on matriarchal societies is developed step by step by the analysis of extant indigenous cultures in Asia, Africa, and the Americas.
The range of the book includes the development in West Asia and Europe from the Palaeolithic via the Neolithic to the Bronze Age. In this wide field, the author creates revolutionary new insights, which are relevant for all social and historical sciences.
Nonfiction. Gender Studies. Political Science. SOCIETIES OF PEACE: MATRIARCHIES PAST PRESENT AND FUTURE, edited by Heide Goettner-Abendroth, celebrates women's largely ignored and/or invisible contribution to culture by exploring matriarchal societies that have existed in the past and that continue to exist today in certain parts of the world. Matriarchal societies, primarily shaped by women, have a non violent social order in which all living creatures are respected without the exploitation of humans, animals or nature. They are well-balanced and peaceful societies in which domination is unknown and all beings are treated equally. This book presents these largely misunderstood societies, both past and present, to the wider public, as alternative social and cultural models that promote trust, mutuality, and abundance for all.
Rita M. Gross offers an engaging survey of the changes feminism has wrought in religious ideas, beliefs, and practices around the world, as well as in the study and understanding of religion itself. "This book will be an important resource for all ongoing work in feminist teaching and research in religion."-Rosemary Radford Ruether
Contrary to the declarations of some anthropologists, matriarchies do exist. Peggy Reeves Sanday first went to West Sumatra in 1981, intrigued by reports that the matrilineal Minangkabau--one of the largest ethnic groups in Indonesia--label their society a matriarchy. Numbering some four million in West Sumatra, the Minangkabau are known in Indonesia for their literary flair, business acumen, and egalitarian, democratic relationships between men and women. Sanday uses her repeated visits to West Sumatra in the closing decades of the twentieth century as the basis for a new definition of matriarchy. From the vantage point of daily life in villages, especially one where she developed close personal ties, Sanday's narrative is centered on how the Minangkabau conceive of their world and think humans should behave, along with the practices and rituals they claim uphold their matriarchate. Women at the Center leaves the reader with a solid sense of the respect for women that permeates Minangkabau culture, and gives new life to the concept of matriarchy.
In this lucide and fascinating volume, Eller traces the emergence of feminist matriarchal myth, explicates its functions, and examines the evidence for and against a matriarchal prehistory. Finally, she explains why this vision of peaceful, women-centered prehistory is something feminists should be wary of.
Essays originated at the conference "The Maternal Roots of the Gift Economy," held at the International Women's Building in Rome, Italy, from April 27-30, 2015. Some essays have been rewritten, and some presenters contributed new essays for this collection.
Blending theory, criticism, and ritual, reveals the foundations of the ancient tradition of "matriarchal art," and shows how that tradition flourishes in the works of major contemporary women artists and in contemporary women's spirituality.
This book makes a compelling case for a matriarchal Bronze Age Crete. It is acknowledged that the preeminent deity was a Female Divine, and that women played a major role in Cretan society, but there is a lively, ongoing debate regarding the centrality of women in Bronze Age Crete. a gap in the scholarly literature which this book seeks to fill.
Stories of the primordial woman who married a bear, appear in matriarchal traditions across the global North from Indigenous North America and Scandinavia to Russia and Korea. In The Woman Who Married the Bear, authors Barbara Alice Mann, a scholar of Indigenous American culture, and Kaarina Kailo, who specializes in the cultures of Northern Europe, join forces to examine these Woman-Bear stories, their common elements, and their meanings in the context of matriarchal culture. The authors reach back 35,000 years to tease out different threads of Indigenous Woman-Bear traditions, using the lens of bear spirituality to uncover the ancient matriarchies found in rock art, caves, ceremonies, ritu...