(Book Summary) Matriarchal Societies: Studies on Indigenous Cultures across the Globe by Heide Goettner-Abendroth

Bringing the world back into balance means creating equilibrium and peace at every level: between the genders, the generations, different social groups, and different peoples. Over the past decades a new socio-cultural science offering definitive insights for this process has been developed: research on matriarchal societies, known as modern Matriarchal Studies.

Widespread misconceptions about matriarchy notwithstanding, women’s strong position does not mean that matriarchies are women’s autocratic rule. Contrary to this, matriarchal societies are based on gender equality. Their social rules have developed out of thousands of years of experience, and demonstrate a perfectly balanced relationship between women’s and men’s spheres of action. All political decisions are reached through consensus among community members, and insightful, thoroughly worked out principles and social guidelines ensure that unanimity will eventually be achieved on each issue. The resulting social structure is non-violent, and enables a good life for all.

This book is the basic mainwork on modern Matriarchal Studies. It gives the philosophical and theoretical foundation of this new field of knowledge, the matriarchy paradigm of human history and society.

At first the history of research on matriarchy is briefly given, in its various contexts and academic disciplines. It sheds new light on old theories, and re-evaluates newer theories in light of modern Matriarchal Studies.  The chapter ends with a brief review of various feminist and indigenous approaches to matriarchy research. They differ fundamentally from traditional matriarchy research, both in their ideological criticism of patriarchy and their liberative context.

In the main part, the complete and detailed new definition of matriarchy, which presents the deep structure of this form of society, is given, a definition which was missing in traditional research on this subject.

Based on a vast case-by-case cross-cultural research, the structures and guidelines that function across all levels of matriarchal societies are elaborated. This has been done by investigating and presenting most of the still existing matriarchal societies across the continents of Asia, South and North America, and  Africa, which exhibit a fascinating richness of matriarchal forms and patterns.  The focus is not only on the microstructures of matriarchal societies, i. e. the guidelines and customary practices that make up family and clan systems, but also on their macrostructures, i.e. the institutions that refer to larger social structures, which can even extend beyond one single matriarchal people to encompass connections of several matriarchal peoples.

Topics include:

Introduction: Philosophy and Methodology of Modern Matriarchal Studies

Part I

Chapter 1:   A Critical History of Perspectives on Matriarchy

Chapter 2:   Matriarchy in North-Eastern India

Chapter 3:   Matriarchal Cults in Nepal

Chapter 4:   Ancient Queens Realms, and Group Marriage in Tibet

Chapter 5:   Matriarchal Mountain Peoples of China

Chapter 6:   Women Shamans in Korea

Chapter 7:   The Islands of Japan:  Women’s Cultures of the South and North

Chapter 8:  “Alam Minangkabau” – the world of the Minangkabau in Indonesia

Chapter 9:   Matriarchal Patterns in Melanesia

Chapter 10  Pacific Ocean Cultures

Part II

Chapter 11: Matriarchal Cultures in South America

Chapter 12: The Spread of Matriarchy to Central America

Chapter 13: North America: Matriarchal Immigrants from the South

Chapter 14: North America: At the Cultural Crossroads of South and North

Chapter 15: Matriarchy in South India

Chapter 16: Ancient Matriarchy in Central Africa

Chapter 17: Matriarchal Queen-Kingship in West Africa

Chapter 18: Matriarchal Pastoral Peoples in North Africa

 

Dr. Heide Goettner-Abendroth is a German philosopher and researcher of culture and society, she is a founder of modern Matriarchal Studies. She taught at the University of Munich and was visiting professor at the University of Montreal, Canada, and the University of Innsbruck, Austria. She guided two World Congresses on Matriarchal Studies in 2003 and 2005, and a third large congress on Matriarchal Politics in 2011. She was nominated as one of the “1000 Women for the Nobel Peace Prize” in 2005.

 

Voices on the book “Matriarchal Societies”:

With the publication of this important book, Heide Goettner-Abendroth’s  brilliant  critical conceptualization of the deep structures shared by matriarchal societies around the world becomes fully available in English.  Her theory has developed, not abstractly, but inductively from the analytical investigation of numerous societies by non-indigenous and indigenous researchers. It provides the basis for a full fledged interdisciplinary and cross-cultural field of Matriarchal Studies where previously only isolated studies were possible.

Matriarchal Studies is a deeply political and liberatory field grounded in an understanding that the destructive patriarchal power structures pervasive today are a historically recent development.  Scholars of matriarchy, some of whom are members of remaining matriarchal societies, are uncovering and reclaiming cultures created mainly by women. Their research offers support for indigenous peoples’ struggles on every continent for land and cultural rights and brings hope to us all that  we can build a better world. – Angela Miles, Professor of Adult Education, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, Toronto.

If in the millenium of women, future generations look back to find the origin of their peaceful societies, they will find  that the work of Heide Goettner Abendroth opened the way. Modern Matriarchal Studies break through patriarchal capitalist ideology, and provide the new/old models for viable ways of life of which our present globalizing market is only a destructive  abberation. – Genevieve Vaughan, Author of the books For-Giving, a Feminist Criticism of Exchange and Women and the Gift Economy: A Radically Different Worldview is Possible, and Founder of the International Feminists for a Gift Economy.

For decades, Dr. Heide Goettner-Abendroth has worked as a serious scholar on the deep history and on-going traditions of matriarchy in Europe. Her extensive research has taken her through strong, historical matriarchies, both on her own continent and on other continents, drawing together the research of the most modern, international scholars on matriarchy. Her book now brings to undeniable light the matriarchal alternatives available to humanity. Dr. Goettner-Abendroth should be on the reading list of every Women’s Studies program. – Barbara Alice Mann, Ohio Bear Clan Seneca, Assistant Professor at the Honors College, University of Toledo, Co-director of the Native American Alliance of Ohio.

Heide Goettner- Abendroth has devoted her life to the study of matriarchal societies and the development of Modern Matriarchal Studies. This monumental work is presented in this book. As a Western feminist and peace activist this knowledge has transformed almost every facet of my thinking, theorizing and activism as well as my daily life. My work on, among other things, motherhood, sexuality, racism and above all peace and peace building has been significantly altered by Goettner-Abendroth’s scholarship. I believe her work offer Western feminist and other progressive scholars as well as social change activists a new, innovative vision of an alternative society – a  society of peace and balance, insightful ways to heal the many harms Western civilization brought about, and groundbreaking passages of doing politics, peace building and conflict resolution. – Erella Shadmi, feminist and peace activist and scholar, Israel, Former Head of Women’s Studies Program, Beit Berl College
Isha L’Isha – Haifa feminist center.

 

(Meet Mago Contributor) Heide Goettner-Abendroth.