Miles Jackson wrote:
>
Okay, Woj has successfully jerked my chain on this. There are many
hunting and gathering societies that have far less gender stratification
than the United States today. It's either ignorance or ethnocentrism to
claim that women in our society today are better off in social and economic
terms than in any other type of society. I know the image of the caveman
dragging his mate around by the hair is ubiquitous, but it's just not
accurate as a depiction of gender relations in "primitive" societies.
>
> Interesting anthopological work on this: as societies shift from
> hunting and gathering to agrarian mode of production, the social role > of
women becomes more limited, men gain more economic power, and > political
authority is increasingly held by men.
^^^^^
Yep. Right on Miles. I know I must have said this before here ( or on related lists)many times .This is confirmation of one of Engels' main theses in _The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State_. "The Family" is the male supremacist family. Ancient society had gender equality, matrilineality. They were kincentered societies, with family traced through women; no states ( See also _Ancient Society_ by LH Morgan). There isn't really "political" power in ancient society. It's egalitarian. The shift to agriculture is the _origin_ of political power.
Male supremacy ( the worldhistoric defeat of the female "sex", in Engels' famous phrase; the origin of gender) private property ( i.e. exploiting and exploited classes) and the state ( special repressive apparatus, standing bodies of armed men) arise together as a complex. It's coincident with domestication of animals especially (which might suggest to them "domestication of people" i.e. slaves) and domestication of plants ( agriculture); and with trade, commodity exchange, production for exchange not use ( overthrowing gift exchange; see "Essai sur le don" by whathisname, Marcel Mauss, and _Stone Age Economics_ by M. Sahlins).First slaves (exploited class), were women recent research shows. And I hypothesize therefore the first commodities were women too.
As in biology, in anthropology, Engels doesn't always get it right , but he gets it right when it counts ( Levins and Lewontin on biology).
(Note interestingly Darwin's first chapter in _The Origin of Species_ is on selection/breeding among domesticated animals by humans; the source and analogy of his idea for _natural_ selection. Such selection of domesticates begins at the "same" time in the large historical picture as the "family-private property-state" complex.)
Male dominance in modern primary cultures is probably to do contamination from "civilization" , and defense against aggression. Europeans with first contact with Indigenous American cultures , for example ,noted matrilineality, egalitarianism, communism, etc. It's in the ethnohistories written.
Original human societies are communist. End of class divided society (if we make it, as Carrol reminds) will be return to communism at a higher level of the dialectical spiral. The end of capitalism is a big rev because it ends not just capitalism , but class divided society of all types.
Charles
Sorry for way overposting, but I couldn't resist.