Modern Development of Matriarchal Theory

Creating a substantial definition of African mother-centered societies, the Senegalese historian Diop argued that Africa's cultures, continent-wide, had matriarchal roots going back to the earliest times. He argued that Africa's matriarchal roots formed the source of the unity among African cultures, although colonization by Arabs and Europeans had obscured this unity, engendering cultural heterogeneity. However, former internal African transformations are omitted by him. Originally published in French in 1959.

Gimbutas referred to the 30,000 female statuettes, usually glossed as “idols,” as goddess figurines, seeing them as symbols of ancient beliefs and social practice. However, she explicitly labelled the social and religious orders of these early cultures “matristic” and did not contribute to a new definition of the term “matriarchy.” (See also below, “Studies of Historical Matriarchal Societies, Mythology.”)

Tracing women's social significance from Palaeolithic through the Neolithic, Gimbutas argued that women had held the rank of priestess in cultures venerating a variety of goddesses. In a broad overview, she documented the rich, urban cultures of Old Europe in the diverse cultural regions from the Danube valley to North Europe, labelling them “matristic,” or mother-centered, and additionally, created the “Kurgan theory” as a theroy of the rise of patriarchy in Europe. (See also below, “Studies of Historical Matriarchal Societies, Archaeology.”)

Adler summarized matriarchal studies, to date, without breaking new ground. She did offer at starting point for late-twentieth-century Western feminists, however.

An anthology, Rethinking criticized anthropology's then-male-dominated perspective while showing that female anthropologists had had an easier time than men in making contact with women of Indigenous cultures, hinting that much had, thereby, been omitted from the story of culture. Since the anthology's authors all came from different perspectives, however, they offered divergent and not necessarily compatible conclusions on matriarchy.

A cultural historian and theorist, Eisler tried to upend the patriarchal imprint on the field of social and cultural history by applying her new terms, “andocracy” and “gylany,” to disrupt any lingering rubrics of male superiority vs. female inferiority that might have been distorting perception (Eisler, vii, 105). But her starting point was without any lasting effect on terminology, as “Matriarchy” remained the preferred term in the debate.

German philosopher of science Goettner-Abendroth founded modern Matriarchal Studies in 1988. She articulated a systematic, comprehensive definition of “matriarchy”, and by using an explicit methodology and a thorough critique of ideologies she gave the field a scientific base. From her long-time, cross-cultural research she inductively identified the “deep structure” of the matriarchal form of society: gender- egalitarian and consensus-oriented; manifesting maternal values in matrilinearity and matrilocality; and gift-giving food distribution. In her rich work, recent and still extant societies of this type are presented.

Sanday's large-scale, cross-cultural study of Indigenous societies disputed the dominant and then-popular argument even among feminists of universal female subordination. She argued instead that male dominance had come about as a solution to various kinds of cultural strains. She showed the full range of variation between male and female power roles and developed a theoretical framework for explaining this variation.

Sanday began to develop an adequate definition of matriarchy from field work based on her observations of the Indigenous society of the Minangkabau in Sumatra (as discussed further in the section, Pacific Islands, below).

In her provocative look at the connection between economics, mothering and language, Vaughan saw the gift economy as arising from the prototype of a mother's nurturance, as an economic and socio-cultural, not a biological, function. She posited that gift-giving permeates the whole of society lifelong, as a hidden economy that is exploited and fed on by the Western capitalist exchange economy.

Indigenous Ohio Seneca Mann analysed the cultural history of the Iroquois and explicitly labelled the cultural type as “matriarchy” (63), describing its characteristics as expressed in the political, social, economic, and spiritual realms of culture, paving the way toward a full definition of matriarchy, independently of Sanday and Goettner-Abendroth. (See, also, Mann in “The Americas, North America, the Iroquois.”)

Goettner-Abendroth edited the proceeding papers of two World Congresses on Matriarchal Studies, which she organized and guided, 2003 in Luxembourg and 2005 in Texas. The proceedings include the work of indigenous researchers commenting on their own matriarchal cultures in the Americas, in Africa, and in Asia. Published in German in 2006: Gesellschaft in Balance, Stuttgart: Kohlhammer Verlag. The 2011 Congress papers were published on the internet: www.kongress-matriarchatspolitik.ch