Patriarchy (anthropology)

Bois, Cora du (1944). The People of Alor: A Social-Psychological Study of an East Indian Island. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 

"They are under the political authority of a Village Head, who is usually the descendant of the first settler or of the most senior man of a small band of first settlers in the locality. Where the village is the largest autonomous political unit, he may exercise a titular claim to all land within the village boundaries, but the implications of this are political rather than economic. The right to reside in a village and cultivate its land is contingent on obedience to the Village Head and conformity to custom." [Page 29.]

"I stress this point since the European observer, confronted by the spectacle of women bending over their hoes through the day while a number of men may be seen lounging in the compounds, are apt to regard the division of labour as not only inequitable but as an exploitation of the female sex. Such an attitude, however, fails to take into account the contribution made by the men in the heavier tasks, more especially in the dry season; and, secondly, the onus on them to earn money for household necessaries." [Page 27.]

"Women are not eligible for the headship of kin or political groups." [Page 148.]

Kaberry, Phyllis M (1952). Women of the Grassfields. London: Colonial Research Publications 14. 

"As is typical of the Bantoc ... the Tanowong are organized into different dap-ay groups ... . The dap-ay ... is the men's house. The dap-ay are the religeous, social, and political centers of village life, where major decisions are made ... . While each dap-ay theoretically has a council of old men who make the decisions, in actual fact, especially at present, every mature man participates in the deliberations of the council."

Bacadayan, Albert S (1974). "Securing water for drying rice terraces: irrigation, community organization, and expanding social relationships in a Western Bontoc group, Philippines". Ethnology 13: 247–260. 

"Wives usually go where their husbands want to go and the men seem to prefer their own home areas. ... The Batek have a system of headmanship which appears to go back some time. There are at least seven men in the Aring and Lebir Valleys today who are commonly regarded as penghulu ('headmen') and they have in their genealogy several generations of penghulu, menteri ('ministers' or 'chiefs'), panglima ('war captains'), and even a raja ('king'). ... The position of the penghulu descends to the sons of previous penghulu, ideally in order of birth. If the penghulu has no sons, it goes to his next oldest brother and then to his sons in order."

Malinowski on Kiriwina

These are matrilinear, patrilocal and patriarchal tribes. Maternal uncles are family heads, and the tribal chiefs are dynastic male monarchs, paid a tribute.

"A district is formed by a number of villages, which are tributary to a particular headman of high rank, a chief."

"A chief has a wife from each subject village."

"The headman of a village is the oldest male of the dominant subclan."

"Next to the chief and sorcerer, the garden magician is the most important person in the village. He may even be the chief. He is a hereditary specialist in a complex system of magic handed down in the female line."

"Fishermen are organized into detachments, each of which is led by a headman who owns the canoe, performs the magic, and reaps the main share of the catch."

"Although descent is matrilineal, postmarital residence is patrilocal."

Quotes from an article sourced on Malinowski (see below) by Martin J Malone.

Malinowski, Bronisław (1916). "Baloma: Spirits of the Dead in the Trobriand Islands". Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 46: 354-430.  Malinowski, Bronisław (1918). "Fishing in the Trobriand Islands". Man 18: 87-92.  Malinowski, Bronisław (1920). "Kula: The Circulating Exchange of Valuables in the Archipelagoes of Eastern New Guinea". Man 20: 87-105.  Malinowski, Bronisław (1920). "The Economic Pursuits of the Trobriand Islanders". Nature 105: 564-565.  Malinowski, Bronisław (1921). "The Primitive Economics of the Trobriand Islanders". The Economic Journal 21: 1-16.  Malinowski, Bronisław (1922). Argonauts of the Western Pacific. Seattle: Washington University Press.  Malinowski, Bronisław (1936). "The Trobriand Islands of Papua". Australian Geographer 3: 10-12. 

There is an amusing anecdote of cross-cultural contact on Kiriwina. The local yam is part of the staple diet and has something of a contraceptive effect. The Kiriwina tribes were initially reluctant to believe western stories of sex causing pregnancy.

"(The brother) ... or in the default of a brother, a cousin or uncle, [has a ruling voice in any family council or discussion]."

Gabb, William Moore (1875). "On the Indian tribes and languages of Costa Rica". American Philosophical Society Proceedings 14: 483–602. 

"The archaeological evidence of female oriented ritual at Catal Hüyük is no more a substatial demonstration of matriarchy than some future excavations of a contemporary shrine of La Virgin de Guadalupe (or some other cult of the Madonna) might uncover."

Webster, Steven (1973). "Was it Matriarchy?". New York Review of Books: 37–38. 

"Nowhere [in Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies] do I suggest that I have found any material which disproves the existence of sex differences [in Tchambuli Society]. ... This study was not concerned with whether there are or are not actual and universal differences between the sexes, either quantitive or qualitative."

Mead, Margaret (1937). "Letter". The American Anthropologist 39: 558-561. 

"All the claims so glibly made about societies ruled by women are nonsense. We have no reason to believe that they ever existed. ... men everywhere have been in charge of running the show. ... men have been the leaders in public affairs and the final authorities at home."

Mead, Margaret (1973). "Review of Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies". Redbook October: 48. 

"This combination of patterns has brought the Filipino woman to a point where, although denied some of the adventurous freedom of the male, she may be even better prepared for economic competition. The acceptance of the boredom of routine work may be seen as part of 'patient suffering' which is said to characterize the Filipino female to a greater extent than the male. Her responsibile role in the household means that the wife is charged with practical affairs while the husband is concerned to a greater extent with ritualistic activity which maintains prestige."

Hunt, CL (1965). "Female Occupational Roles and Urban Sex Ratios in the United States, Japan, and the Philippines". Social Forces 43: 144. 

"At marriage a Fore woman ... is expected to be ... an obedient spouse, a prolific childbearer, and generous with gifts of food to her affines and her husband's friends."

Glasse (Lindenbaum), Shirley (1963). The Social Life of Women in the South Fore. Port Moresby: Department of Public Health, Territory of Papua and New Guinea, 1. 

What is tastefully left out of this description is that food sometimes consisted of recently deceased members of the tribe. A disease called kuru, probably spread by this canibalism, affected more women, children and elderly than men. [Note again that anthropologists provide scientific observations not moral judgements.]

"It seems that brothers are assumed to be senior to sisters, and entitled to respect as such, in the absence of evidence to the contrary."

Freire-Marreco, Barbara (1914). "Tewa Kinship Terms from the Pueblo of Hano, Arizona". American Anthropologist new series 16: 269–287. 

"Within the family, the mother's brother, or, in his absence, any adult male of the household or clan, is responsible for the mainenance of order and the discipline of younger members."

Dozier, Edward P (1954). "The Hopi-Tewa of Arizona". American-Archaeology and Ethnology 44: 339. 

"Typically, every bilek family has as its head a man who is responsible for the general management of the farm." (page 81)

The original ethnography is cited in Whyte, William King (1978). The Status of Women in Pre-Industrial Societies. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 

"The tuah rumah is the administrator and custodian of adat, Iban customary law, and the arbiter in community conflicts. He has no political, economic, or ritual power. Usually a man of great personal prestige, it is through his knowledge of custom and his powers of persuasion that others are induced to go along with his decisions. Influence and prestige are not inherited. The Iban emphasize achievement, not descent."

Quote from Martin J Malone's cultural summary drawn from sources including:

Gomes, Edwin H (1911). Seventeen years among the Sea Dyaks of Borneo: a record of intimate association with the natives of the Bornean jungles. London: Seeley. 

The main Wikipedia entry above includes a short recent history of colonial politics and wars involving the Iban, up to the co-operation between Iban and Australians against Japanese in World War II.

The film, The Sleeping Dictionary, is set among the Iban.

Imazighen

"Nuclear families are reported to be independent social groups only among the Mzab. Elsewhere they are aggregated into patrilocal extended families, each with a patriarchal head."

Iroquois

"The Indian regarded woman as the inferior, the dependent, and the servant of man, and from nurturance and habit, she actually considered herself to be so."

Morgan, Lewis Henry (1901). League of the Ho-Dêé-No-Sau-Nee or Iroquois. New York: Dodd, Mead, and Company, 315. 

"Ruling over the League was a council of 50 chiefs known as sachem[s] or lord[s]."

From Marlene M Martin's cultural summary, which draws upon the text quoted above.

Two interesting thing about this society are that the chiefs were elected, not hereditary, and that the voters were exclusively female. The council itself had a ruler, but he was elected by the council.

See also: Richards, Cara B (1957), “Matriarchy or Mistake: The Role of Iroqois Women Through Time”, Cultural Stability and Cultural Change, New York: American Ethnological Society, p. 36–45 . Randle, Martha C (undated). "Iroqois Women, Then and Now". Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 149. 

The main Wikipedia entry also provides enough circumstatial evidence to suggest what the anthropologists reported – the Iroqois were traditionally a matrilineal but patriarchal people.

"On relations between husband and wife it may be proper to say that it is regulated according to the principle 'the man governs, but the woman holds sway'."

Karstan, R (1935). The Headhunters of Western Amazonia:The Life and Culture of the Jibaro Indians of Eastern Ecuador and Peru. Helsingfors: Finska Vetenskaps-societeten Helsingfors, 254. 

"The subservient position of women was determined by the Islamic religion." (page 133)

"Women influence their husbands, but [their husband's] decisions are decisive." (page 89)

The original ethnographies are cited in: Whyte, William King (1978). The Status of Women in Pre-Industrial Societies. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 

It is also worth noting that in this society, girls are married before puberty (Godard, 1867), by adult men who inspect them manually for virginity (Kenedy, 1970). Female circumcision is later performed at puberty to ensure chastity (Barclay, 1964). [Once more we note that niether the anthropologists who report such practices, nor those who cite them, nor this article endorse these things in any way. These practices are mentioned only to explain why most scholars do not consider this society matriarchal.]

"Some women serve as secretaries of kibbutzim, very few as treasurers; women as economic directors are still a rarity. Experience in the internal positions of power is the stepping stone to external positions of power. There has been one woman national secretary of a kibbutz federation. The kibbutz federations usually send into national politics one token woman at a time."

Agassi, Judith Buber (1989). "Gender Equality: Theoretical Lessons from the Israeli Kibbutz". Gender and Society 3: 160-186. 

"N≠issa's descriptions ... of her relationship with her husband, Tashay, suggest that relations between the sexes are not egalitarian, and that men, because of their greater strength, have power and can exercise their will in relation to women. This confirms Marshall's (1959) finding that men's status is higher than women's."

Shostak, Marjorie (1976), “A !Kung Woman's Memories of Childhood”, in Lee and De Vore, Kalahari Hunter-Gatherers, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, p. 277 

"The dominant impression one gets from accounts of patrilocal bands is one of semi-isolated, male-centered groups, encapsulated within territories."

Lee, Richard B (1976), “!Kung Spacial Organization”, in Lee and De Vore, Kalahari Hunter-Gatherers, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, p. 75 

"There are inherited positions, such as the 'headman'."

Marshall, Lorna (1976). The !Kung of Nyae Nyae, 125. 

"Raising 2 or 3 children to competent maturity—the life's work of a successful woman—has typically required hard decisions about priorities, attentive management of social relations, ingenuity, luck, and decades of hard labor."

Fielder, Christine; Chris King (2004). Sexual Paradox Complementarity, Reproductive Conflict, and Human Emergence. ISBN 1-4116-5532-X. 

Maldives Royal Family 1888

"Maliku seamen then had small colonies in Burma, near Rangoon, and on the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Nowadays, the men prefer to work on cargo ships owned by national and international shipping companies. Their 'Minicoy Seamen's Association' shifted from Calcutta to Bombay, where they teach the young men and supply employment."

"Until 1960, all the villages selected an additional authority, the rahubodukaka (lit. the country's big brother), who was in charge of the rahuge (lit. house of the country). He and the rahuweriñ (lit. ruler of the country), a boduñ selected by the boduñ and niamiñ [high status groups], were responsible for all the affairs concerning the whole island and the access to the southern part for collecting firewood and coconuts."

Kattner, Ellen (1996). "Union Territory of Lakshadweep: The Social Structure of Maliku". Institute for Asian Studies Newsletter 10. 

"In spite of the nominal 'matriarchate', Van Hasselt claims that the women are really the servants of the men. They not only prepare the meals of the men in their family, but they also serve them first, later eating with the children."

Paraphrase of:

Hasselt, AL van (1882), “Volksbeschrijving van Midden-Sumatra”, in PJ Veth, Midden-Sumatra, Leiden, p. Third Part 

"The women have not the legal right to make a contract, not even to dispose of themselves in marriage."

Both quotes from:

Loeb, EM (1934). "Patrilineal and Matrilineal Organization in Sumatra: The Minangkabau". The American Anthropologist 36: 49. 

More recently, Peggy Reeves Sanday observed the following:

"The Minangkabau are guided by a hegemonic idealogy called adat, which legitimizes and structures traditional political and ceremonial life." [Page 146]

"Thus, the Minangkabau make a distinction between female/weak and male/strong ..." [Page 149]

"In the specifics of male and female role definition, adat [sic] ideology is decidedly androcentric." [Page 150]

"First there are the ninik mamak, the men who have the authority to decide in accordance with adat law. The ninik mamak have authority over their nephews and nieces. [The ninik mamak] are the heads of the clan in the villages." [Page 151]

Sanday, Peggy Reeves (1990), “Gender in Minangkabau Ideology”, in PR Sanday and Ruth Gallagher Goodenough, Beyond the Second Sex, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press 

Mohammad Hatta, the first vice president of Indonesia, was a Minangkabau.

"The Naxi Kingdom flourished from the eighth century until 1724 when it came under direct Chinese rule. ... Their predominant tribe is the Moso, the name by which the Naxi were originally known. The Moso of today carry on the matrilineal family structure in the Naxi tradition. ... Naxi is the only living pictographic language. ... Although a large percentage of Naxi ceremonies deal with exorcism, the Library's collection also includes a pictographic creation story, a sacrifice to the Serpent King, accounts of Naxi warriors and other people of high social standing ascending to the realm of deities, and love-suicide stories." From Library of Congress website.

This secondary source describes the primary literature available regarding the Naxi. Unlike most of the other socieities in this list, the Naxi were literate and have left records of their beliefs and practices. The mention of "warriors" and "high social standing" and even "matrilineal" rather than "matriarchal", suggest an historically patriarchal society.

"The Karanavan [mother's brother] was traditionally unequivocal head of the group... . He could command all other members, male and female, and children were trained to obey him with reverence."

Gough, E Kathleen (1954). The Traditional Kinship System of the Nayars of Malabar (manuscript). Cambridge, Massachusetts: Social Science Research Council Summer Seminar on Kinship, Harvard University. 

Quoted in:

Stephens, William N (1963). The Family in Cross-Cultural Perspective. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 317. 

"The rank of chief ... passes from uncle to nephew."

Krause, Aurel (1956). The Tlingit Indians: Results of a Trip to the Northwest Coast of America and the Bering Straits. Seattle: Washington University Press, 77. 

The excellent Wikipedia main entry provides a clear and detailed report of the matrilineality, matrilocality and patriarchy of this society.

"About twelve women, dressed in the usual petticoat of grass-like stuff, followed at a distance, and kept close to the point for some time; but at length the natural curiosity of the sex (I suppose) overcame their fear, and although repeatedly ordered back by the men, they drew up closer and closer to have a peek at the strangers."

MacGillivray, John (1852). Narrative of the Voyage of H.M.S. Rattlesnake: During the years 1846-1850, Including Discoveries and Surveys in New Guinea, the Louisiade Archipelago. London: T. & W. Boone. 

"Almost all sorcerers on Vanatinai, who often exercise political and economic control over their neighbours, are male. ... No Vanatinai women have ever been elected as a Local Government Councillor."

Lepowsky, Maria (1981). Fruit of the Motherland: Gender and Exchange on Vanatina, Papua New Guinea. University of California: unpublished PhD dissertation, 469-470. 

"Knowledge of sorcery is one of the primary means by which certain men gain political ascendancy over other men and women." (p. 205)

"Sorcerers are often, but not always, big men and/or ritual experts, protectors, and healers of their own kin and neighbors. Although there are big women, female witches and sorcerers, and female ritual experts and healers, men who are widely known as sorcerers often have more influence than anyone else." (p. 176)

"Sorcery on Vanatinai is almost entirely the province of males, but even so they do not have a monopoly on sorcery...for a few women have been adepts." (p. 203)

"Sorcerers on both Vanatinai and neighboring Rossel Island are almost always male." (p. 172.)

"The Vanatinai men who are known as sorcerers are often the most influential members of their hamlet." (p. 173.)

"The activities that are exclusively male...are high in prestige, while one that is exclusively female is very low in prestige." (p. 123f.)

Lipowsky, Maria (1981). Fruit of the Motherland: Gender in an Egalitarian Society. New York City: Columbia University Press. 

Traditional origin of headhunting:

"Then Latulisa [war chief and leader of the baileo -- men's house] himself went to his sister who, at the time, was weaving a kanune [skirt], and he cut off her head. He hung up the head in the baileo which now was nicely decorated. From that time on people practiced headhunting."

Traditional story of war starting as game of "tag", eventually the losers took revenge by killing:

Translated from German original:

Jensen, Adolf E (1939). Hainuwele: Volkserzählungen von der Molukken-Insel Ceram. Leipzig: Frobenius Institute. 

Later commentary:

"[The Wemale men] filled-in their deficit as providers with ceremonial authority and with the terror of headhunting and cannibalism."

"Wemale men were obsolescent hunters who annually sacrificed a female Hainuwele [coconut girl] victim. Surely, they did not do so only because the mythical origin of tubers involved the death of a female dema deity, but also because the obsolescent hunters competed with their women for status."

Luckert, Karl W (1990). "Hainuwele and Headhunting Reconsidered". East and West: 261-279. 

"Kaempaede [a male] was, in short, the patriarch."

Man, John (1982). Jungle Nomads of Ecuador: The Woorani. Amsterdam: Time Life Books, 65. 

"It is true that leadership does exist, but it is situational by nature. A man becomes a leader for a specific event, and when that event has passed, his cloak of leadership disappears."

Yost, James A (1981). "People of the Forest: The Woorani". Ecuador Ediciones Libri Mundi: 109. 

This Madagascan tribe was mentioned in the textbook cited below. Hodges told Goldberg he'd heard about them from Donald Blender, but Goldberg and Hodges could find no evidence of them in any other academic literature.

Hodge, Harold (1971). Conflict and Consensus. New York: Harper and Row, 77.