Women in States

Abstract

Slave, come to my service!" "Yes, my master. Yes?" "I'll fall in love with a woman." "fall in love, my master. Fall in love! Who falls in love with a woman forgets his griefs and sorrows." "No, slave. I won't fall in love with a woman!" "Don't love, my master. Don't love.Woman is a snare, a trap, a dark pit.Woman is a sharp steel blade slitting a man's throat in darkness." Dialog between a master and his slave; Sumer, 10th century Be (12:23)The division of labor [in tribal society] is purely primitive, between the sexes only. The man fights in the wars, goes hunting and fishing, procures the raw materials of food and the tools necessary for doing so. The woman looks after the house and the preparation of food and clothing, cooks, weaves, sews. They are each master in their own sphere: the man in the forest , the woman in the house. Engels, 1972Engels, [1884, p.218The overthrow of mother right [matrilineality I was the world historical defe at of the fe male sex. The man took command in the home also; the woman was degraded and reduced to servitude; she became the slave of his lust and a mere instrument for the production of children.Engels [1884], 28:120 (emphasis in the original) That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain't I a woman? Look at me' Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain't I a wuman? I cuuld wurk as much and eat as much as a man-when I could get it-and bear the lash as well! And ain't I a woman? I have born thirteen children, and seen them most all sold off into slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain't I a woman? ...If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back, and get it right side up again! Sojourner Truth [1851], 149:94--95 427 0084-6570/88/1015-0427$02.00 Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 1988.17:427-460. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org Access provided by University of Washington on 02/05/15. For personal use only. Quick links to online content Further ANNUAL REVIEWS SILVERBLATTThe problem,"women and the state," has deep, ambivalent, and subversive roots . I It emerged as an issue in the anthropology of the 1970s, when political and economic challenges to Western dominion began to invade scholarly consciousness. Feminist scholars called for a new look at the official record of past and present that had for so long denied women a voice and vision. They retrieved Sojourner Truth (third epigraph). Putting conventional wisdom on notice, fe minists began to tear apart its categories, which had muffled, trivialized, and degraded women's contributions to social process. While disturbed about how these categories had become the common sense of social science, feminist anthropologists also demanded that their discipline ...

Descent of Iron Age Farmers in Southern Africa During the Last 2000 Years

“…Tribute is an important part of increased sociopolitical complexity (Service 1971:133-169). These sociopolitical changes that accompany increased complexity, tend to favour men who gain greater control over aspects of daily life (admittedly a complex issue, but see Musisi 1991;Nash 1978;Silverblatt 1988).…”

Blood from the Moon: Gender Ideology and the Rise of Ancient Maya Social Complexity

“…It is important to remember that we 'do not do justice to the diversity of women's experiences by generalizing that all (or even most) gender ideologies produced in state contexts colluded in downgrading kin spheres, reifying women as child-bearers, and belittling females because of their link to kin group reproduction'. 57 Indeed, many elite women benefited from the symbolic removal of this symbolic power from other women. Because they were elite, these women were still able to access these sources of power through the abstract ritual symbols and practices perpetuated by the elite in general.…”

Interrogating the neo-pluralist orthodoxy in American anthropology

“…6 Ironically, this florescence of work on the state emerged at exactly the time when many commentators were arguing that the state had become less totalizing, less crucial to cultural continuity and change, or even attenuated and soon to disappear in face of neo-liberal globalization (Castells 2000;Mann 1997;Price 2003;Weiss 1997Weiss , 1998. In fact, the traditional disciplines that had concerned themselves with the state and its myriad allied institutions and political forms, political science, political sociology, international development studies, and political geography were suddenly far more interested in ''social capital'' and ''civil society'' (Baker 2002;Feldman and Assaf 1999;Higgott et al 2000;Korovkin 2001 5 It might be claimed that Irene Silverblatt (1988) was the first non-archaeological ARA review essay on the state. However, I do not include her essay because it is primarily a response to Engels, Leacock, Sacks, and Gailey on the problem of class versus gender and makes explicit on the second page that it only concerns ''non-capitalist states'' (p. 428), drawing heavily on the archaeological record and ethnographies that generally did not consider states.…”

“…Just as early and mid-twentieth century anthropologists attempted to engage the theories, politics, and practices of other disciplines and the wider society when they took up the implications of studying the social fact of race with physical techniques (Boas 1912), the social fact of culture within nation building (Kenyatta 1978;, 1973b, Gamio 1948, prejudice and social inequality (Lewis 1959;Powdermaker 1944;Stack 1974), and women's liberation (Coontz and Henderson 1986;Leacock 1981;Rubin 1975;Silverblatt 1988) contemporary anthropologists taking up the state as part of their analysis also need to ask similar questions about the relationship between the theories they use and the implied social prescriptions and outcomes.…”