Re: Patriarchy: Re: What Matriarchy?
Daniel Maltz (dmaltz@inmind.com)
27 Jul 1996 13:30:02 GMT
: The fact is, both uses of the word, not only have been used, but are
: still in use by anthropologists. I see no reason why you cannot have a
: preference for one use over the other,
For some reason that I don't understand you keep making the claim that
anthropologists use the word "matriarchy" in two different senses,
sometimes as a synonym for matrilineality. How about some specific
citations of trained anthropologists who have used the word that way in
published material in the last fifty years.
Until you can establish that there is any ambiguity about the meaning of
the word in the published scholarly literature, I see no reason why
people are not justified in simply dismissing this usage as incorrect or
totally unscholarly.
By the way, for the past twenty-five years there has been an extensive
literature on the topic of women and power including reasons for the
non-existence of matriarchies, and it seems somewhat pointless to again
discuss this topic as if this literature does not exist.
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