Full Description
Matriliny and Modernity (1996) explores the situation both past and present of women living in the matrilineal society of Negeri Sembilan in a rapidly modernising Malaysia. Written from a feminist anthropological viewpoint, it considers how far both the colonial and post-colonial remakings of matrilineal cultural practices within modernity have left women with what many western feminists would call a degree of social agency if not autonomy. Maila Stivens looks critically at the appropriateness of such judgements, at the same time reflecting on the ways that western knowledge production and the continuing importance of images of exotic matriarchies in the western imagination have shaped debates about such societies. As well as appealing to those with an interest in issues of gender-and-development, Asian Studies and women's situation in modernising societies, the book's explanation of the past and present of relatively more egalitarian gender arrangements also contributes to wider debates about causes of sexual inequality and the possibilities for gender equality.
Contents
Introduction: A Modern Malaysian Matriliny. 1. People and Places 2. Past and Present I: Gender and the Remaking of Adat Perpatih 3. Past and Present II: Gender and the Remaking of Rembau Peasant Economy 4. Gender and a Marginal Village Economy I: Women of Property 5. Gender and a Marginal Village Economy II: Local Production and Income 6. Gender, Work and Inequality in Rembau 7. Rembau Femininities 8. Modernising Kinship and Family in Contemporary Rembau. Conclusion: Female Autonomy in Rembau?
