Patriarchy

Description

Patriarchy, particularly as embedded in the Old and New Testaments, and Roman legal precepts, has been a powerful organising concept with which social order has been understood, maintained, enforced, contested, adjudicated and dreamt about for over two millennia of western history. This brief book surveys three influential episodes in this history: seventeenth-century debates about absolutism and democracy, nineteenth-century reconstructions of human prehistory, and the broad mobilisations linked to twentieth-century women's movements. It then looks at the way feminist scholars have reconsidered and revised some earlier explanations built around patriarchy. The book concludes with an overview of current uses of the concept of patriarchy – from fundamentalist Christian activism, over foreign policy analyses of oppressive regimes, to scholarly debates about forms of effective governance. By treating patriarchy as a powerful tool to think with, rather than a factual description of social relations, the text makes a useful contribution to current social and political thought. Cover Half Title Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Table of Contents Acknowledgements 1. Thinking with patriarchy Notes References 2. Remembering Rome and reading the Bible Remembering Rome Classical education Reading the Bible and making church law Notes References 3. Absolutism, democracy and God Absolutism and monarchs’ God-given patriarchal power Patriarchalism and democracy Notes References 4. Patriarchy, matriarchy and the origins of humanity Legal anthropology and revolutions in time Sir Henry James Sumner Maine (1822–1888) Johann Jakob Bachofen (1815–1887) John Ferguson McLennan (1827–1881) Lewis Henry Morgan (1818–1881) Karl Marx (1818–1883) Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) August Bebel (1840–1913) Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) Notes References 5. Patriarchy and the making of sisterhood Freud, psychoanalysis and habits of mind Engels, Marxism and ‘materialist feminism’ When did it start? Patriarchy is at home at home … Towards a new synthesis So what about patriarchy? Notes References 6. Patriarchy in feminist scholarship and activism from the 1980s to the end of the millennium Critiques of imperial feminism Belated grand overviews Words, patriarchy and the speaking subject Patriarchy and the subjugation of nature A rupture in patriarchal systems of thought Historically specific, messy patriarchies Interestingly different gender regimes War over the family Notes References 7. Contesting patriarchy today Feminism and anti-feminism in the twenty-first century Debating fatherhood and reclaiming men’s rights Patriarchy and bringing up babies Reforming soft males: the mythopoetic movement Reclaiming fathers’ patriarchal rights Fundamentalist Protestant and Catholic groups Do their women really need saving? Patrimonialism and paternalism in scholarly debates about effective governance Notes References Index