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The result is a unique photographic record of a young girl growing up in a matrilineal “matriarchate.” For this essay, A include pictures of typical activities and life-cycle ceremonies in order to approach the subject of “matriarchy” through the reality of life as it is lived on a daily basis. I took pictures of Eggi from the time she was born until she was nine years old. This essay, and the exhibition on which it is based, focuses on my namesake, Eggi, and her village. These women chose to name one of their children after me, a girl who was born on my birthday while I was in the village. Spending in all more than two years in Balabuih, I developed a relation ship of unusual intimacy with one family that included four generations of women. By this term, the Minangkabau mean that women have more rights than men in the daily affairs of village life.Īn this photo essay I try to convey through the eyes of a cultural anthropologist aspects of daily life as 1 experienced it in a Minangkahau village. The Minangkabau themselves label their social system a matriarchy or “matriarchate,” using a term borrowed from their Dutch colonizers. The Minangkabau of West Sumatra, Indonesia, are known to anthropologists as the largest and most modern matrilineal society in the world today (Figs. There are some matrilineal societies in which women share power equaly with men.Ī carried out ethnographic field research in such a society over a sixteen-year period, from 1981 to 1997. In my view, the latter conclusion lacks scientific validity. Many would also concur with the notion that females do not exercise economic or political authority in matrilineal societies, even though names and property are inherited through the female line. Today, most anthropologists would agree with the statement that there has never been a society where women ruled. Western anthropology gave up on the idea of a matriarchal stage early in the 20th century. The contention that such societies represented a middle stage in a presumed universal cultural evolution from “primitive promiscuity” to civilized patriarchy was an important aspect of 19th century Western social theorizing. their names from their mothers and their estates to their daughters, not to their sons” (Nicholas of Damascus, quoted in Bachofen 1967 [1897 122). Early Greek philosophers and historians considered them remarkable because they showed “women more honor than the men…. Knowledge of such societies goes as far back as reports on the ancient Lycians of Asia Minor. There are many living societies in the world today in which women hold positions of significant power and authority in the public domain, positions that are quite different from what we know in contemporary Western society.