Universal Power by Desirée Delgado licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 GenericJust like in TLL, there are some similarities and merged topics in SPS that are ideal for blogging. The following sociological analysis is based upon an article in the SPS anthology.
In one part of the article there was a historical analysis on women in West Africa, and I think it's so interesting that I couldn't wait a second to share it here. Unlike almost the rest of the world, in early West African tribes and colonies, women were dominant, and the society can be described as martiarchal, although the writers didn't mention so. Anyway, in those tribes, "women had their own fields and grew their own crops. They dominated the local markets and acquired considerable wealth from trade." Isn't this amazing? This is not all - since female gender was so important and valuable, men had to pay vast amounts of bridewealth as a compensation and the families were very reluctant to give away their daughters, and later on, if the wife rejected polygamy, the husband could definitely not marry any other person (who would accept it anyway?), but "women, for their part, had considerable freedom of movement to travel to market towns, where they often had extramarital affairs." Furthermore, people knew that having many daughters rather than sons was more valuable!
The girl in the image is almost certainly not a West African, but isn't it a great symbol to describe the female gender power in those societies? This cultural shock made me think of why and how gender inequalities have become so obvious. What is it that makes men desiring more and more strength, and playing down and tranquilizing the female gender?
The parts in the quotation marks were retrieved from Marvin Harris & Orna Johnson, Cultural Anthropology, (Allyn and Bacon, 2000)
(it is very challenging if not impossible to cite this in the APA format, sorry)
This is so fascinating Beri, thanks for sharing it! There were in fact many matriarchal tribes, both in Africa and South America, and they provide evidence that gender roles are constructed by the particular needs of each society rather than fixed states of being, which is what Katz is arguing in Tough Guise.
ReplyDeleteGreat image and thanks for citing it. One thing: when citing images on a blog, it's also a good idea to link to the artist's page (as you have linked to the Creative Commons page).
As for citing your source in APA format, it's certainly not impossible. :) Just have a look at the first example here: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/08/
Don't forget your in-text citation; you will need a page number for that.
Great work!
Sonja
Hello Beri,
ReplyDeleteWe haven't met actually in face to face and you must wonder why I comment to your post. We had an argument in class about whether violence to women and everyone else is an instictive behaviour or not. And Sonja recommended us to read your post and I'm glad she did.
First of all, it is the best post I've read in eng101. Thanks I've learnt a lot from it. It is fascinating to see colonies like those at that time. But in our society ( at least in our ancient society), elder women had great power and everyone had to listen to them. They had been respected by the society. So in a way, the problem maybe the last 3-4 generations and this generation.Secondly Sonja, I don't argue with Beri's post and what I say is totally different, well not totally but mostly. What I ment to say is that violence - not only to women to everyone - biological. I bet the collonies that Beri was talking about had wars between them.
And lastly, It is probably my lack of skills in arguing I should have explained myself better. I'm not discriminating women =). My comments were only about violence.
I'm passing on congratulations from one of our teachers who saw your blog presented at the conference over the weekend...
ReplyDelete;)