Women at the Center: Life in a Modern Matriarchy

by Peggy Reeves Sanday

Overview

Contrary to the declarations of some anthropologists, matriarchies do exist. Peggy Reeves Sanday first went to West Sumatra in 1981, intrigued by reports that the matrilineal Minangkabau—one of the largest ethnic groups in Indonesia—label their society a matriarchy. Numbering some four million in West Sumatra, the Minangkabau are known in Indonesia for their literary flair, business acumen, and egalitarian, democratic relationships between men and women.

Sanday uses her repeated visits to West Sumatra in the closing decades of the twentieth century as the basis for a new definition of matriarchy. From the vantage point of daily life in villages, especially one where she developed close personal ties, Sanday's narrative is centered on how
the Minangkabau conceive of their world and think humans should behave, along with the practices and rituals they claim uphold their matriarchate.

Women at the Center leaves the reader with a solid sense of the respect for women that permeates Minangkabau culture, and gives new life to the concept of matriarchy.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780801440045
Publisher:	Cornell University Press
Publication date:	04/25/2002
Series:	7/23/2008
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x 1.06(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Peggy Reeves Sanday is R. Jean Brownlee Endowed Term Professor of Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania. Her many books include Divine Hunger: Cannibalism as a Cultural System, A Woman Scorned: Acquaintance Rape on Trial, and Female Power and Male Dominance: On the Origins of Sexual Inequality.

Table of Contents

	Preface	ix
	Introduction: Coming Home, 1996	1
I	"Nature Is Our Teacher"
1	Adat Matriarchaat as a World View	15
2	The Divine Queens	32
II	Discovering Belubus
3	Looking toward Mt. Merapi	51
4	Diversity in Daily Life	63
III	Celebrating Life
5	Discovering Adat Ibu	79
6	Eggi Becomes Minangkabau	87
7	Exchanging Husbands and Bananas	100
8	Negotiating Marriage	118
9	Getting Married	131
10	Songs and the Performance of Desire	149
IV	How Men Uphold Matrilineal Adat
11	Being and Becoming a Penghulu	173
12	Death of a Penghulu, Reprimand of Another	188
V	Millennial Musings
13	Adat in the Twenty-first Century	207
14	Redefining Matriarchy	225
	Notes	241
	Glossary	255
	Bibliography	261
	Index	267

What People are Saying About This

Silja J.A. Talvi

In this densely detailed and painstakingly researched book, Sanday makes no bones about her contention that the Minangkabau are truly a living—and thriving—matriarchal society... Women at the Center deserves to be read and studied widely for bringing something breathtakingly new and exciting to the forefront of anthropology and gender studies.

Riane Eisler

This fascinating, richly documented work is an invaluable contribution not only to anthropology but to a better understanding of human possibilities. It dispels the notion that society always has been and always will be male dominated. It shows that societies where women have power are not mirror images of patriarchy but societies where both women and men benefit from an ethos of peace and accommodation The importance of these findings cannot be overemphasized in a world where relations based on domination rather than partnership threaten us, our children, and our future.

Lila Abu-Lughod

Peggy Sanday has long been a dissenting voice in the debates about the universality of male dominance. This pioneering feminist anthropologist now gives substance to her arguments, redefining matriarchy and revealing the power of maternal symbols through an accessible ethnography of a famous matrilineal community.

Editorial Reviews

Women at the Center is an argument against the polarizations implicit in the old studies of power and gender. The Minangkabau, Sanday shows us, have thrown out polarity and subjugation and brought in a society modeled on 'conjugation.' What makes them so remarkable is that they are at once wholly, authentically matriarchal and also determinedly Islamic.

Women's Review of Books

This is an accessible study delivering vivid and personal descriptions of the importance of women to the everyday workings of Minang life.

The Australian Journal of Anthropology - Maila Stivens

This is an accessible study delivering vivid and personal descriptions of the importance of women to the everyday workings of Minang life.

--Maila Stivens, University of Melbourne "The Australian Journal of Anthropology"

Women at the Center is an argument against the polarizations implicit in the old studies of power and gender. The Minangkabau, Sanday shows us, have thrown out polarity and subjugation and brought in a society modeled on 'conjugation.' What makes them so remarkable is that they are at once wholly, authentically matriarchal and also determinedly Islamic.

-- "Women's Review of Books"

From the Publisher