Historicizing Gender and Class in Early Western State Formation

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An archeology of domination: Historicizing gender and class in early Western state formation

Peterson, V. Spike, Ph.D.

The American University, 1988

UMI 300 N. Zeeb RA Ann Arbor, MI 48106

GENDER AND CLASS IN EARLY WESTERN STATE FORMATION

by V. Spike Peterson

submitted to the

Faculty of the School of International Service

of The American University

in Partial Fulfillment of

The Requirements for the Degree

Doctor of Philosophy

International Relations

Signatures of Committee:

Chair:

______Dean, School of International Service

Date J

1988 The American University Washington, D.C. 20016

TEE ÂMSRICAF UîüTERSÏïY LTBRAP?

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. (c) COPYRIGHT

V. SPIKE PETERSON

1988

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. "Praise our choices, sisters, for each doorway open

to us was taken by squads of fighting women who paid

years of trouble and struggle. Who paid their

wombs, their sleep, their lives that we might walk

through these gates upright. Doorways are sacred to

women for we are the doorways of life and we must

choose what comes in and what goes out."

— Marge Piercy

Dedicated to four generations of women who have opened

doorways in my life: Loretta Gibson, Lois Peterson, Paula

Jones, and Nicole Banks.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. AN ARCHEOLOGY OF DOMINATION: HISTORICIZING

GENDER AND CLASS IN EARLY WESTERN STATE FORMATION

V. Spike Peterson

ABSTRACT

This study provides a theoretical framework for and

historical discussion of the construction, legitimation, and

institutionalization of domination relations in early

Western state formation (paleolithic era to classical

Athens). Processes of social differentiation are examined

within three societal configurations— Communal/Egalitarian,

Kin Corporate/Lineage, and Archaic/Civil State. Societal

transformations are shown to result from systemic and

processual interactions among ecological, cultural, and

technological variables— particularly the politics of

sexuality, kinship, and citizenship; militarism;

trade/exchange relationships; and cosmological/ideological

transformations. Examination of transformations in meaning

systems— expressed in cosmologies— is especially crucial for

understanding state formation and domination relations

because (1) a reorientation of meaning systems invariably

accompanies— in order to legitimate— specialization of

activities and differentiation of wealth, and (2) the

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. invention of writing accompanies state formation, with

significant implications for the power of justificatory

ideologies. To facilitate comparisons of meaning systems,

three "core-relations" presumed to order the assumptions

embedded in cosmologies are developed (intra-subjective,

subjective-objective, and inter-subjective).

The study describes state formation in the Near

Eastern empires and in the Athenian polis, with attention to

cosmological alterations legitimating the institution of

sexual and socio-economic hierarchy. Because classical

Athenian texts "fixed" the Western tradition's notions of

the state and definition of "politics," a fuller

understanding of Athenian state formation is critical for

contemporary political and social inquiry. In particular,

the public-private dichotomy delineated in those texts

justified (and thereby also mystified) the fundamen

tally— but not exclusively— patriarchal foundations of the

polls, and by implication, subsequent Western states;

failure to acknowledge the patriarchal foundations of the

state impairs our understanding of the state, "politics,"

and domination relations.

Further, institutionalization of the dichotomy

established not only the politically oppressive division of

public and private, but also other dichotomies as

naturalized ordering principles. Specifically, the "core-

iii

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. relations" that characterize the Western tradition are

hierarchical dichotomies (creativity over procreativity,

culture over nature, and autonomy over mutuality) that

sustain the dynamics of domination implicit in androcen-

trism, essentialism, instrumentalism, and elitism.

Significantly, these dichotomies are mystified by their

embeddedness in the public-private dichotomy still

legitimized by the liberal state.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Throughout this project, I had looked forward to

composing the "Acknowledgements" section. Not only would

writing it mark the completion of a (seemingly endless)

undertaking, but would also provide an opportunity to

"name" those who helped make it possible. As it turns out,

I have accumulated so many "debts" in the process that I no

longer consider a complete expression of acknowledgements

possible. I offer instead simply an abbreviated listing of

those to whom I owe special thanks.

I am especially grateful for close friends who

nourished my spirit as well as my research: Therese Borden,

Mary Case, Sandra Gain, Peggy Johnson, Ed Mihalkanin, Mary

Margaret Pignone, Paul Ramshaw, Anne Runyan, Sandra Sands,

Jane Sledge, and Claudine Weatherford. The love of friends

far away but with me in heart has also kept me whole; I

thank especially Barbara Crook, Celia Forrest, Ross Halleck,

Jane Hera, John Olander, and the extended family of the

mountain-top camp.

My family has also been an important source of love,

support, and encouragement. I owe my parents special

thanks— for a lifetime of promoting my education, and for

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. facilitating the current project by providing me with a

computer!

I am very grateful to Nick Onuf, whose intellectual

quality has inspired many of us at the School of

International Service, and whose encouragement of my own

work has been invaluable to my development.

Finally, it is with particular fondness and

admiration that I thank Valerie French. Her enthusiasm,

commitment, and hugs have kept me going when the going got

tough. Her vitality, warmth, and integrity have inspired

my work and my belief in the possibilities of a "heartier"

and— in that specific sense— "richer" world.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT ...... ii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...... V

CHAPTER

I. INTRODUCTION ...... 1

II. COMMUNAL/EGALITARIAN CONFIGURATION ...... 68

III. KIN CORPORATE/LINEAGE CONFIGURATION ...... 92

IV. ARCHAIC/CIVIL STATE CONFIGURATION;

MESOPOTAMIA...... 124

V. ARCHAIC/CIVIL STATE CONFIGURATION;

ATHENS ...... 165

VI. THE PUBLIC-PRIVATE DICHOTOMY IN CLASSICAL ATHENIAN

TEXTS ...... 198

VII. CONCLUSION ...... 240

BIBLIOGRAPHY...... 291

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INTRODUCTION

I begin this chapter with a brief "overview" of the

dissertation project— setting out several objectives of the

study and suggesting the relevance of the work for

contemporary inquiry. I then provide the background and

justification for the research effort to follow. First, I

address the failure of international relations theorists to

analyze the patriarchal foundations of the state by setting

out and examining some of the reasons for that failure.

Doing so involves a contextualization of academic

disciplines, theoretical perspectives, and (related)

underlying assumptions that shape our pursuit and

construction of knowledge. Second, having confirmed the

omission of a critical awareness of patriarchal relations, I

examine the relationships among the various explanations for

"neglecting" patriarchy. Doing so further clarifies what a

more accurate understanding of the state and power relations

would entail. Third, having established how, and perhaps

why, patriarchal relations have been underacknowledged in

political theory, I identify the necessary elements of a

corrective course of action. I conclude the chapter by

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setting out the organization and intent of the research

effort to follow.

Overview

This dissertation takes as its starting point the

centrality of the "state" and "politics" to the study of

international relations. Inadequacies in our understanding

of either concept diminish both the accuracy of our

knowledge and efficacy of our actions within the global

system. An accurate understanding of the state and the

power relations— or politics— it constitutes requires

knowledge of shared meaning systems as well as material

relations of production and reproduction. I believe that

our understanding of the state is demonstrably weakened by

the failure of international relations theorists to

acknowledge, critically examine, and integrate into their

analyses the patriarchal foundations of the state.1

^"Patriarchy" in this study refers to male domination— individually and as a "class"--through the appropriation/control/regulation of women's productive and reproductive labor; it includes meaning systems accompanying and legitimizing male domination relations. I make note here of typographical conventions: generally, throughout this paper the use of a slash between terms (e.g., domestic/private/household) suggests some commonality of meaning or reference, while the use of a hyphen (e.g., public-private) implies contrast. Two exceptions to the latter should be noted: I use the hyphen in its "connecting" sense when the context clearly warrants it (e.g., "nineteenth-twentieth centuries"), and in a few cases of descriptive terms conventionalized in hyphenated form (e.g., "gathering-hunting" societies); I note instances

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Therefore, one objective of this dissertation is to make a

contribution to the study of international relations by

advancing our understanding of power relations as shaped by

the processes of state formation, particularly in

Mesopotamia and Athens as those states most directly

antecedent to the Western state system.

I consider the Athenian polis significant not only

for its role in establishing the Western intellectual

tradition but also, and related, its role in establishing a

definition of politics and articulation of the state that

powerfully shaped subsequent theory and practice: it is the

classical Athenian texts that "fixed" in the Western

tradition our ideas of the state and notions of what

constitutes "the political.Therefore, an accurate

understanding of the state in the Western tradition is

advanced to the extent that our knowledge of the Athenian

polis and its concomitant systems of shared meaning is

advanced. A second objective of this dissertation is to

of the second exception when they occur in the text.

2"It was in and through the elaboration of a philosophic-scientific approach to natural and human phenomena by the ancient Greeks— above all, by Plato and Aristotle— that the intellectual categories of the Western tradition took shape. The significance of Aristotle's Politics lies in the first instance in that it represents the earliest attempts to elaborate a systematic science of politics." Carnes Lord, "Introduction," Aristotle: The Politics, trans. C. Lord (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), p. 1.

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document historically the Athenian state formation processes

and ideological legitimations in order to contribute to our

understanding of the Western political tradition, in

general, and its ideas of the state and "the political,"

specifically.

The state formation literature establishes that a

reorientation of meaning systems (through altered

cosomologies, worldviews, or ideologies) invariably

accompanies— because lending coherence and legitimation to—

social differentiation processes associated with state

formation. It is the thesis of this dissertation that the

public-private dichotomy, as articulated in classical texts,

established such legitimation of the relations of domination

constituting Athenian state (polis) formation. Further, the

relations of domination thus mystified by such legitimation

were fundamentally, though not exclusively, patriarchal

relations: that is, the public-private dichotomy that was

established in the Athenian context justified— and in the

process mystified— the patriarchal foundations of the polis,

and by implication, subsecpient Western states. Initially

instituted as a legitimation of relations of domination, the

public-private dichotomy has proven to be a resilient

ordering principle, having significantly shaped Western

thought and practice ever since.

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Failure to acknowledge the patriarchal foundations

of the state— omitting consideration of that foundation in

our understanding of state formation— distorts our knowledge

not only of the state and "the political," but impoverishes

our understanding of other fundamental relations as well.

This is so because the separation of public and private is

inextricably entwined with other fundamental assumptions

embedded in the classical worldview: the dichotomy

established not only the politically oppressive division of

public and private, but dichotomous renderings more

generally as "naturalized" ordering principles in Western

thought. In other words, I believe that the hierarchical

dualizing of the classical worldview established a number of

domination relations as "giiens" in the Western tradition;

that a critical analysis of those "naturalized" relations is

essential to moving beyond their domination dynamics; and

that the public-private dichotomy is a particularly powerful

lens through which to undertake the requisite critical

analysis. A third objective of this dissertation is to

contribute to that critical analysis through historicizing

the construction of social hierarchy— i.e., relations of

domination— and the legitimation of domination in Western

state formation through the dichotomizing of public and

private spheres.

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How Patriarchy is Rendered "Invisible"

The absence of a critical consideration of women's

roles in production, reproduction, militarism, trade, and/or

cosmological systems— elements consistently associated with

state formation and maintenance— is readily documented by a

perusal of mainstream international relations texts.^ There

are a number of possible explanations for this omission; I

have organized my identification of such explanations around

the following (interrelated) themes; disciplinary divisions,

theoretical preferences, and androcentric assumptions.

^The silence on these topics in regard to state formation is symptomatic of the silence in political science generally in regard to feminist critiques. Specifically, Bernice Carroll notes "the absence of the concept of 'patriarchy' from the literature on comparative politics and international affairs. See her "Review Essay: Political Science, Part II," Signs 5 (1980): 453. In a survey of six major political science journals from 1976 through 1985, Gertrude A. Steuernagel and Laurel U. Quinn located not one article on the topic of "Gender and IR. " For additional citations in regard to the inattention to feminist issues in contemporary political science, see their "Is Anyone Listening? Political Science and the Response to the Feminist Challenge," Paper presented to the American Political Science Association, Washington, DC, 1986. In a recent review of NOMOS XXV: Liberal Democracy. Carole Pateman notes the failure of all the contributing authors to address the feminist critique of "fundamental questions about the way in which political theorists see the scope and content of their subject, and about its central categories." See "Problems of Liberalism," Ethics 96 (January 1986): 375. In regard to recent political theory, see Kathy E. Ferguson's telling commentary in "Male-Ordered Politics: Feminism and Political Science," in Terence Ball, ed., Idioms of Inquiry: Critique and Renewal in Political Science (Albany: State University of New York, 1987), pp. 213-14. Additional references in regard to treatment of women by political theorists are cited throughout this chapter.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Disciplinary Divisions

In terms of disciplinary divisions, theories of the

state in international relations tend to focus on the m o d e m

nation-state and the inter-national system emerging with the

Peace of Westphalia. With their focus on the relations

between states— the international system— international

relations theorists tend to rely upon theories of state

formation generated within the political science discipline,

to which they add the particular issues of state inter

action. To the extent that theorists (in both disciplines)

specifically address state formation, it is generally in

terms of the modern state, with only secondary reference to

formation of early states as acknowledged but historically

distant precursors. This emphasis is appropriate from the

perspective of what distinguishes the modem from the early

phase: industrialism and its significance for constituting

an inter-state system.

However, by concentrating on the modern period and

what distinguishes it, theorists tend to take as given the

Western tradition within which modern states are

constituted. To that extent, the patriarchal foundations of

that tradition, i.e., those instituted in early Western

state formation (specifically Athens), fail to be

problematized and therefore remain unexamined. That is.

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those factors operating in state formation during both

phases are thus taken as givens— "naturalized" rather than

problematized— and hence not examined critically for insight

on state formation processes per se. Instead, the "rise of

civilization" is generally considered the domain of

archeology, anthropology, history, and— in the case of

Athens— classicists; to the extent that the "civilizing"

process is political, it is to be studied by political

anthropologists.

Similarly, by focusing only on what distinguishes

modern state formation. Western theorists overlook the

historical specificity of the early Western state phase. As

one consequence, early Western state formation is

generalized— not differentiated from other early states—

rather than treated as the specific precursor of the Western

state tradition. In other words, the "rise of civilization"

is the generalized description across all early states,

whereas the phase of modern state formation is always

perceived "specifically"— as, for example, the "modern

Western state." Consequently, the legitimizing ideology

(primarily, the dichotomization of public and private)

accompanying Athenian state formation tends to be

overlooked— or underacknowledged— as being specifically

Western. The result has been both an unwarranted

generalization of the public-private dichotomy (as

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. applicable in non-Westem societies), and a failure to

regard the dichotomy— especially from a critical

perspective— as a historically specifical. Western ordering

principle. That is, the dichotomy has been "naturalized."

The identification of international relations and

political science with the modern period is also evident in

the current proliferation of literature addressing the state

(including contributions from the discipline of economics):

As economies throughout the world have developed, the public sector— what we call here the State— has grown increasingly important in every society, from advanced industrial to Third World primary-good exporter, and in every aspect of society— not just politics, but in economics (production, finance, distribution) , in ideology (schooling, the media), and in law enforcement (police, military) . Why this occurs, and how the growing State is shaped, has become for social scientists a crucial issue— perhaps the crucial issue— of our times. The State appears to hold the key to economic development, to social security, to individual liberty, and, through increasing weapons "sophistication," to life and death itself. To understand politics in today's world economic system, then, is to understand the national State, and to understand the national State in the context of that svstem is to understand a society's fundamental dynamic.4

Carnoy attempts an encompassing analysis of "the

State as an object of investigation" (p. 4); he is joined by

many other scholars examining the interaction of political

(including ideological) and economic dynamics, especially as

^Martin Carnoy, The State and Political Theorv (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984), p. 3. Throughout this paper emphases in quotations are always those of the author being quoted.

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regards the ownership and control of capital in the

contemporary global system.5 On the one hand, by attending

primarily to industrialism and international political

economy, this literature similarly tends to presuppose

rather than problematize the Western state. On the other

hand, in its attention to processes of internal political

development in industrializing countries, and the complexity

of public vs. private categorizations in late capitalism,

much of this literature challenges traditional theories of

the state. However, the critical focus in these analyses of

the state has not yet targeted the patriarchal foundations

of the state or women's role as crucial to the domestic or

international division of labor.®

®See, for example, James O'Connor, The Fiscal Crisis of the State (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1973) and Accumulation Crisis (New York: Basil Blackwell, 1984); Erik Clin Wright, Class. Crisis and the State (London: New Left Books, 1978) ; Claus Offe, "Political Authority and Class Structures— An Analysis of Late Capitalist Societies," International Journal of Sociology 2 (Spring 1972): 73-108; Anthony Giddens and David Held, eds., Classes. Power. and Conflict (London: Macmillan, 1982), "Section III: Classes, Elites, and the State."

®Literature on the state as well as literature on the role of "women in development" is increasing rapidly; much of the latter does incorporate feminist critiques of political economy. See, for example, Maria Mies, Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale: Women in the International Division of Labour (London: ZED Press, 1986); Haleh Afshar, ed., Women. State, and Ideology (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1987); Lourdes Beneria, ed., Women and Development (New York: Praeger, 1982); Miranda Davies, comp., Third World— Second Sex. Vol. 2 (London: ZED Press, 1987) ; Susan P. Joekes, Women in the World Economy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987).

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To the extent that the patriarchal foundations of

the state? are inextricable from the relations constituting

the "family," perhaps the most obvious disciplinary division

is that imposed by the following assumptions: 1) the public,

the state, and the political refer to closely related

concepts, all of which are definitively the domain of

political science; 2) the private, the family, and the

personal refer to closely related concepts, belonging

variously to the domains of sociology, anthropology, and/or

psychology.

The task of taking the family seriously for purposes of scholarly inquiry was assigned first to sociology, the discipline deemed most appropriate to familial concerns. If families in primitive or non-Westem societies were the topic, then anthropology was considered the appropriate arena for research and debate. Political scientists focused on the big questions: sovereignty, relations between nation-states, institutions (Congress, the presidency, the judiciary), or political processes (voting, lobbying)....The family remained invisible or

?Unless otherwise indicated, subsequent references to the state refer to the Western state system. I note here an additional terminological clarification: processes deemed constitutive of state formation (e.g., the centralization of political authority as a state formation process) are frequently deemed definitive attributes of "the state" once it is so constituted (e.g., centralized authority as an element in the definition of states). The distinction between the two is blurred when both are considered "definitive" (or foundational) of the same object (e.g., states). In referring to the patriarchal foundations of the state, I mean both the patriarchal relations preceding and enabling the process of state formation, and the patriarchal relations instituted— or constituted— by the "actual" formation of the state, which become part of the definition of the state. In this sense, I occasionally use "state" and "state formation processes" interchangeably.

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was seen as part of that vast consensus-making machinery necessary to a stable, well-run political society.®

In sum, we can readily observe how the structure of

disciplinary divisions "permits" political science and

international relations theorists to neglect the

significance of patriarchal relations. This is especially

evident in the assumption that the subject matter of

political science is definitively "the political," which is

specifically contrasted with "the private." In addition to

the inter-disciplinary compartmental i zat ion of subject

matter is the development of different theoretical

preferences, both within and between disciplines. I turn

then to this second category of explanations for the neglect

of patriarchal relations in theories of the state.

Theoretical Preferences

It was in the context of nineteenth-century

intellectual debates over the method and content of social

inquiry that the foundations of separate academic

disciplines and powerful theoretical traditions (that

continue to dominate Western thought) were established.

®Jean Bethke Elshtain, "Preface: Political Theory Rediscovers the Family," in The Familv in Political Thought, ed. Jean Bethke Elshtain (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1982), p. 1.

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Variously identified as "the Study of Man,"® "attempts to

define the fundamental elements of social structure,"^® or

"the contest over how to theorise the relationship between

instinctual and culturally determined behaviour,the

nineteenth-century debates reflected the complex social

transformations accompanying industrialism, imperialism, and

intensive social stratification.

Many contemporary authors tend to simplify the

categorization of perspectives on these debates by dividing

them into two major types or schools, reflecting "major

opposing philosophical/theoretical positions": those

stressing conflict and those stressing integration.1% The

conflict perspective is further identified with

®Susan Carol Rogers, "Woman's Place: A Critical Review of Anthropological Theory," Comparative Studies in Societv and History 20 (January 1978): 125.

^®Tom Bottomore and Robert Nisbet, "Introduction," in Tom Bottomore and Robert Nisbet, eds., A History of Sociological Analvsis (New York; Basic Books, 1978), p. viii.

llRosalind Coward, Patriarchal Precedents (London: Routledge & Regan Paul, 1983), p. 12.

l^Quotation from Jonathan Haas, The Evolution of the Prehistoric State (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), p. 20. In terms of state formation literature adopting this duality, see Ronald Cohen and Elman R. Service, eds.. Origins of the State (Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issues, 1978), especially Ronald Cohen, "Introduction," pp. 1-20, and Elman R. Service, "Classical and Modern Theories of the Origins of Government," pp. 21-34; Henri J. M. Claessen and Peter Skalnik, eds., The Earlv State (The Hague: Mouton Publishers, 1978), especially Part One.

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"discontinuity, propensity to change, conflicting interests

and values," while the integration perspective emphasizes

"structural continuity, interconnectedness, cultural

unity."13 This dichotomizing of theoretical positions

becomes even more familiar when we add to the conflict

perspective an association with socialism and marxist

political economy; and to the integrative perspective an

association with liberalism/conservatism and classical

political economy.1^ The evolutionary perspective, so often

cited as dominating nineteenth-century inquiry, cuts across

this division in that it was adopted by both "sides":

Nineteenth-century social thought was... concerned with questions about the origins and evolution of human social organization....It inquired into the evolution of forms of social organization just as Darwin inquired into the evolution of species....And from the information available, Spencer and Engels, like others of their time, reconstructed the evolution of human social organization and sought the laws underlying their own society. But they did so through the class perspective of their own social milieu. The bourgeois and academically dominant views affirmed the soundness and naturalness of the social order in their analyses of the long ago and far away, while marxists sought the genesis and agents of contemporary oppression in the

l^Bottomore and Nisbet, "Introduction," p. xi.

l^Haas identifies Rouseau, Morgan, Marx, Engels, Childe, White, and Fried with the conflict school; Spencer, Sumner, Durkheim, Moret, Davy, and Service with the integrative school. See his chapter 1, "The Philosophical Background," Evolution. See also Anthony Giddens, The Nation-State and Violence (Berkeley and Los Angeles : University of California Press, 1987), p. 9: "Both liberal and Marxist conceptions of the state are heavily influenced by their respective critiques of political economy."

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past and sought the means for future liberation in the present.15

That the social darwinism associated with Spencer

has played a significant part in social and political theory

is widely acknowledged; it has been especially important in

setting the terms of subsequent debates in regard to

w o m e n . 15 This is so because social darwinism affirmed (on

the basis of biopsychological characteristics) the

"naturalness" of women's inferiority and therefore the

inevitability of their subordination to men.l? In other

words, not only is male supremacy "explained" by women's

innate inferiority, but it is rendered acceptable— even

desirable— on the basis of viewing social evolution as

necessarily "progressive": only the fittest survive. We

observe then, on the one hand, that evolutionism shaped by

social darwinist perspectives denies the social construction

of male dominance by "naturalizing" that dominance. From

l^Karen Sacks, Sisters and Wives: The Past and Future of Sexual Ecmalitv (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1979), p. 19.

l^The continued significance of this perspective is evidenced in contemporary sociobiological explanations of male dominance. I return to this issue below.

l^Sacks, Sisters, p. 22; see her extensive treatment of these issues in chapter 1.

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this theoretical perspective, patriarchal relations are

simply "given," and their origin is a "non-question."1®

On the other hand, evolutionism shaped by a radical

historicizing of human social organization challenged the

status quo, arguing that social hierarchy was not a given

but a historical construction. This evolutionary

perspective was a submerged discourse during the first half

of the twentieth century, partly due to resistance to

"historical materialist" or marxist/socialist perspectives,

and partly due to the shift in anthropology (and other

disciplines) from evolutionary, grand theory perspectives to

"...ahistorical, particularistic studies of the ways in

which specific societies operate....Cultural relativism

replaced social evolutionism."^® While criticisms of the

search for a "universal history of humanity" were clearly

warranted (and continue to be relevant), the rejection of

18"Overtly stated acceptance of the status quo is less prevalent today among anthropologists than it was several decades ago; but implicit or explicit belief in the universal subordination of women, if not in its inevitability, continues to obstruct efforts to understand both other societies and our own." See Mona Etienne and Eleanor Leacock, "Introduction," in Mona Etienne and Eleanor Leacock, eds.. Women and Colonization: Anthropological Perspectives (New York: Praeger, 1980), p. 2. See additional references in regard to the issue of universal male dominance in the next section of this chapter, and especially in chapter 2.

l®Rogers, "Woman's Place," p. 126; also Claessen and Skalnik, p. 9.

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evolutionary perspectives altogether tended to legitimize

ahistorical, non-systemic approaches.

For many general questions were put aside as well in the rejection of grandiose claims. On the one hand, the emergence of modem anthropology correctly insisted on the numerous different types of family organisation. Kinship relations are not just variations on one basic form, but are different relations, entailing different obligations, meaning different things, and distributing power and property differently in different cultures. On the other hand, although these claims were important, they engendered a form of argument which is somewhat sterile from the perspective of contemporary feminism. The refusal of any explicit account of determination in favour of a detailed account of the necessary interrelation of all elements of a culture, retarded the interrogation of how power and domination arise. A series of issues were not raised— issues about the unequal power between the sexes; how kinship might reproduce or construct sexual inequalities; and the role which kinship might play in organising reproduction.2°

This "anti-historical" period is widely

acknowledged— and generally deemed inadequate— within

anthropology, 21 and was followed by a resurgence of

20 Coward, Precedents, pp. 255-56; see especially chapters 3 and 4 for her detailed examination of the issues raised here and historical documentation of the nineteenth and twentieth-century debates attending them. See also Jack Goody, The Domestication of the Savage Mind (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), p. 2: "In accepting the functionalist and structuralist critiques, in acknowledging the necessity of proving rather than assuming difference, it is only too easy to set aside the developmental questions, as pseudo-historical, as 'evolutionary', as speculative....Any resort to comparative work necessarily raises the evolutionary issue."

21"This hostility to history, [Evans-Pritchard] says, has been dominant in England under the influence of Radcliffe-Brown and Malinowski. In the United States it has been the same." See Evelyn Reed, Woman's Evolution (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1975), p. xvi. For additional reviews of the history of anthropological theory see Rogers,

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evolutionary perspectives. Evolutionism was especially

apparent in anthropological theory after the Second World

War when "interest in the origin and development of the

state also became prominent once more."22 Indeed, the state

formation theories most frequently cited in the contemporary

literature have their origin in this revival of

evolutionism. I refer here to the "prime-mover" theories associated with V. Gordon Childe,23 Morton H. Fried,24 Karl

A. Wittfogel,25 and Robert Carneiro,26 and the more

synthetic theories of Julian M. Steward,2? Elman R.

Service,28 Robert McC. Adams,28 Lawrence Brader,3® and Henry

"Woman's Place,"; M. Etienne and E. Leacock, "Introduction"; and Sacks, Sisters. Wives, chap. 1.

22nenri J. M. Claessen and Peter Skalnik, "The Early State: Theories and Hypotheses," in The Earlv State, p. 10.

23Man Makes Himself (London: Watts, 1936); "The Urban Revolution," Town Planning Review 21 (1950), pp. 3-17.

24The Evolution of Political Societv (New York: Random House, 1967); and "On the Evolution of Social Stratification and the State," in S. Diamond, ed., Culture in History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960).

25priental Despotism: A Comparative Study of Total Power (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1957).

26"a Theory of the Origin of the State," Science 169 (1970), pp. 733-38.

2 7 Theory of Culture Change: The Methodoloov of Multilinear Evolution (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1955).

28oriqins of the State and Civilization: The Process of Cultural Evolution (New York: Horton, 1975).

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T. Wright and Gregory J o h n s o n . 3i There are several points

to be made about how the theoretical preferences evidenced

in these theories— that continue to dominate the state

formation literature— perpetuate the neglect of the

patriarchal foundations of the state.

First, in their pursuit of a universal variable to

explain state formation, "prime-mover" theories adopt a very

limited perspective. Not only is theirs an extremely

reductionist approach, and thus unable to accommodate the

diversity of cross-cultural and cross-temporal contexts, but

theirs is also an extremely retrospective approach:

They tend to see the state as an inevitable and efficient solution to a particular set of problems. But when the evolution of the state is viewed as a unilineal success story, we lose the specificity of history....In overgeneralizing, we ignore histo:iy, and the context in which political formations c h a n g e . 32

In failing to adequately historicize pre-state and early

state configurations, these theorists especially fail to

examine the historical variation in gender relations and

meaning systems. That is, their preoccupation with seeking

Z^The Evolution of Urban Societv (Chicago: Aldine, 1966) .

3QFormation of the State (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice- Hall, 1968).

31«population, Exchange, and Early State Formation in Southwestern Iran," American Anthropologist 77 (1975), pp. 267-89.

32payna Rapp Reiter, "The Search for Origins: Unraveling the Threads of Gender Hierarchy," Critique of Anthropology 3 (Winter 1977): 8-9.

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universal explanations tends to displace their attention to

historical diversity and precludes an appreciation of the

systemic interaction of variables. Similarly, the pursuit

of universal explanations reflects a theoretical preference

for causal as opposed to correlational understanding of

social phenomena; in positing monocausal (and primarily

materialist) explanations, these theorists tend to disregard

social relations as probable prime-mover candidates.33

Second, while systemic explanations represent an

advance over narrow prime-mover theories, their authors

still tend to focus on technological and ecological factors

at the expense of kinship/societal organization and

cosmological/ideological factors. Consider Cohen's summary

description of the systemic approach:

In this view, state formation is an "output" or effect of any one or more of a number of factors. The initial impetus could be population pressure or circumspection of a population, long-distance trade, warfare and military organization, conquest, defense, internal strife, protection of privileges by a higher ranking group, or the benefits to be derived from subordination to centralized authority....It is now becoming clear that there are multiple roads to statehood.34

While systemic theorists invariably go further than

monocausal theorists in considering social relations as a

33por a rejection of mono-causal and reductionist explanations see, for example, Cohen and Service, Origins of the State. passim; and Claessen and Skalnik, The Earlv State. passim.

34"Introduction," p. 8.

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key variable, what they intend by reference to social

relations rarely incorporates the patriarchal relations

fundamental to state formation, and none of these systemic

theorists provides a critical analysis of patriarchal

exploitation.

Even the theories that include political and social factors fail to account for state origins because, for the most part (and except for the new feminist scholarship), they ignore the emergence of patriarchy as a critical institution during specific historical periods. Asserting the universal dominance of men over women as a biolgoical and/or cultural given, mainstream paradigms, particularly in anthropology, ignore the interrelationships among the several hierarchies of male supremacy, economic stratification, and political centralization that characterize particular state formation.35

In terms of cosmological/ideological factors, while

systemic theorists invariably identify a shift in societal

meaning systems as an accompaniment of state formation, they

tend to treat this as an epiphenomenon to be noted rather

than a source of explanatory power in itself. By treating

the cosmological and ideological changes as products of

social transformation— rather than mutually interactive

influences— state theorists neglect what we are increasingly

coming to recognize as essential sources of information.

This brings me to the next point about theoretical

preferences.

35puby Rohrlich, "State Formation in Sumer and the Subjugation of Women," Feminist Studies 6 (Spring 1980); 76.

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Third, the recurring emphasis on "material"— in

contrast to ideational or symbolic— factors further conceals

the role of patriarchal relations in state formation. There

are a number of theoretical preferences that promote the

tendency to privilege material factors in explaining social

phenomena; I will simply refer here to positivistic and

economistic perspectives.3® In terms of positivism, the

preference for empirically verifiable data— "hard facts"

about the tangible world--has limited theorists'

consideration of the role of meaning systems in constituting

social p h e n o m e n a . 37 To the extent that the construction of

gender hierarchy is inextricable from the alteration of

meaning systems it produces and is produced by, disregarding

those meaning systems disregards important elements in the

constitution of patriarchy.

Because writing is invented as a corollary of state

formation (necessitated by the need for record-keeping), and

35Methodological questions at issue here are at the heart of contemporary philosophy of science debates; I will not attempt to address their complexity here. For my attempt to address them elsewhere, see N. G. Onuf and V. S. Peterson, "Custom and Discourse," Paper presented to the International Studies Association Annual Convention, Atlanta, GA, 1984. See also Richard J. Bernstein, The Restructuring of Social and Political Theory (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1978); Ball, Idioms of Inquiry; John S. Nelson, ed., What Should Political Theory Be Now? (Albany: State University of New York, 1983).

37gee, for example, K. E. Ferguson, "Male-Ordered Politics," p. 212.

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patriarchal relations emerge prior to and enable state

formation (as argued in this dissertation), failure to

include meaning systems in the analysis of pre-state and

early state societies significantly diminishes' our

understanding of their social relations as "reflected" in

altered meaning systems. Thus, although interpreting

societal meaning systems is particularly problematic in

regard to pre-literate and early literate cultures— due to

the absence or only minimal availability of texts— it is

particularly important to make the attempt because relations

of domination are being instituted as part of this societal

transformation. That is, if the construction of patriarchal

relations does precede and enable state formation, failure

to understand the attendant shifts in legitimating ideology

impairs our understanding of those relations as specifically

fundamental to state formation.

In terms of economistic perspectives, I refer to the

tendency to privilege the mode of production over that of

reproduction, or "the productivist economic analysis that

has so often dominated marxist writing..., which limits the

sphere of analysis to the relations of (social)

production."38 Feminists are critical of the reduction of

38Ruth Pearson, Ann Whitehead, and Kate Young, "Introduction," in Kate Young, Carol Wolkowitz, and Rosalyn McCullagh, eds., Of Marriage and the Market; Women's Subordination Internationally and Its Lessons (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984), p. xiii.

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domination relations to the material basis of economic relations.38

On the question of ideology, the influence of Marxist theory has led us to seek to root our understanding of ideology in material processes, and what the Marxist tradition has generally understood by material processes are those in the realm of economic relations. Ideologies, we tend to believe, do not persist if they are not supported by and embedded in material processes. However, the attempt to understand ideologies of gender differentiation suggests that we may have to widen our concepts of the "material" beyond economic processes to include the area of sexuality. The relations of sexuality..., are surely as material as production relations.40

In other words, while marxist theories at least

problematize the domination relations implicit in liberal

economic theory, they still fail to address the domination

relations constituted by patriarchal social relations, which

precede state formation and industrialization. Under

patriarchy, women are "assigned" both productive and

reproductive work; the latter "involves the production of

38it is important to recognize that "feminism" is not monolithic and that the tendency to universalize a particular version of "feminism" (e.g., white, liberal, middle-class) or an essentialized notion of "woman" (e.g., nurturant, nonviolent) must be struggled against— politically and methodologically. As employed in this study, "feminist" generally reflects my own commitments to a "post-positivist" feminism (non-essentialist, constructivist, interpretive, critical); I understand these "methodological" commitments to be inextricable from "political" commitments.

4®Maureen Mackintosh, "Gender and Economics," in Of Marriage and the Market. p. 10. See also Ann J. Lane, "Woman in Society: A Critique of Frederick Engels," in Berenice A. Carroll, ed., Liberating Women * s History (Urbana: Univeristy of Illinois Press, 1976), pp. 4-25.

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people: not merely the bearing of children...but also their

care and socialisation, and the maintenance of adult

individuals through their lives,... [ensuring] the

continuation of that society in the next generation. "41

Perspectives preoccupied with commodity production fail to

take seriously both women's socially necessary reproductive

work and its significance in reproducing the ideology of

male supremacy--the ideology that legitimizes the

appropriation of women's productive and reproductive labor

within patriarchal social relations.

A related critique of economic theorizing targets

the reification of the "family" and the "household,"

especially as constructed in theories positing a domestic or

family mode of production. These theories are particularly

significant in the state formation literature since they

attempt to explicate the distinction between production

inside and outside of the household and are applicable to

pre-industrial societies.42 But: "Fundamental to such

43-Mackintosh, p. 11.

42"The most elaborate formulation is to be found in the work of the anthropologist Marshall Sahlins r Stone Age Economics (London: Tavistock, 1974)], and it has been developed in a rather different direction by another anthropologist— Claude Meillasoux FMaidens. Meal and Money (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981)]." See Olivia Harris, "Households as Natural Units," in Of Marriage and the Market. p. 140. Christine Delphy also theorizes a domestic mode of production in Close to Home: A Materialist Analvsis of Women's Oppression, trans. D. Leonard (London: Hutchinson, 1984).

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theories is the assumption that as organizational forms the

household or family transcend both historical and social

boundaries, that they contain some inner logic separable

from the context in which they are e m b e d d e d . "43

The criticism being made here is that distinguishing

a "domestic" mode of production in non-capitalist societies

tends to "naturalize" a particular version of the household

as it is presented in the "domestic mode of production"

literature; the version so presented tends to presuppose a

sexual division of labor (with women performing all the

"domestic tasks"), a male authority as head of household,

and intra-household distribution characterized by pooling.

"Universalizing" a particular "domestic mode of production"

denies the historical variation in the division of labor,

the social relations within the "household," and the

"production and consumption" patterns of household and

community.

The definition of use-values by Marx is closely associated with the idea of direct consumption....As a result the denomination of economic structures within which commodities do not normally circulate as natural, in contrast to the social relations engendered by commodity production and exchange, is further confirmed. The concept of consumption, modelled on the ingestion of food and drink, is deeply imbued with naturalistic assumptions,...The domestic as a category is then defined in relation to a set of other concepts which mutually reinforce each other as natural, universal and not amenable to social analysis. These unspoken associations are important in that they continually

43q . Harris, "Households as Natural Units," p. 139.

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reproduce the domestic as a separate, readily- identifiable domain.44

The point here is that this naturalizing of the

family and household has the effect of naturalizing the

division of labor observed under patriarchy, rather than

examining that division of labor historically. Without an

adequate historical analysis of the sexual division of

labor, women's subordination remains unexplained; without an

adequate analysis of reproductive labor, the social

reproduction of relations of domination remains

unexplained.45

In summary, we can observe the following patterns in

how theoretical preferences tend to obscure the role of

patriarchy in state formation. First, the social darwinist

"side" of the nineteenth-century evolutionary debates simply

"naturalized" women's subordination, thereby denying any

need to examine its historical specificity. The other

"side's" challenge to the status quo was effectively

silenced, as a result of resistance to marxist analyses as

44ibid., p. 150.

45Alison M. Jaggar, Feminist Politics and Human Nature (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Allanheld, 1983), p. 73; also Verena Stolcke, "Women's Labours,” in Of Marriage and the Market, pp. 160: "By adopting a productionist perspective, students of women's subordination have often been blinded to the specific nature of women's subordination, which lies precisely in the socially necessary role which the family plays, not initially in the reproduction of cheap labour power but in the social reproduction of class relations."

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well as resistance to speculative grand theories. Second,

when the anti-historical phase passed and state theorists

turned again to evolutionism, the questions they asked still

precluded taking patriarchal relations seriously. The

reasons for this renewed indifference included 1) a

preoccupation with monocausal, universalizing explanations

in which kinship and cosmology were perceived peripherally,

and 2) a preoccupation with technological, ecological, and

economic factors that masked the significance of women's

labor— both productively and reproductively— and minimized

the significance of ideological factors in constituting and

reproducing relations of domination.

Androcentric Assumptions

Incomplete and one-sided understanding is distorted understanding- By ignoring women as social actors who contribute to continuity and change in society the social sciences have seriously impaired their understanding of the total social reality. Making "man" stand for humanity and subsuming woman under this generalized term, intellectual actitivity in the social sciences put forward inadequate and defective theories and concepts which did not take cognizance of the existence of women; or incorporated women without giving any distinct recognition to gender as a meaningful category for variation, proof, and validity; or were built on assumptions of the insignificance and passivity of women and primacy of men for understanding human behaviour and thought, and structures and processes of human societies. In other words, women were absent.

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ignored, relegated— in some disciplines— to limited areas, and were commonly misrepresented.4®

Failure to address patriarchal relations is not only

the consequence of disciplinary divisions and theoretical

preferences, but the inevitable result of the androcentric

perspective (assuming male-as-norm: that male experience and

perspective equals human experience and perspective) that is

pervasive in international relations as well as other

academic discourses— in fact, in discourse generally. We

are probably most familiar with critiques of the male-as-

norm bias in discussions of gendered language patterns: the

perpetuation of sexist thought and practices through use of

allegedly "generic" masculine nouns and pronouns.

Accumulated research indicates that, consistent with the

pervasive androcentrism of the worldview and practices we

are immersed in, male-as-norm presuppositions are ubiquitous

both within and outside of the a c a d e m y . 4?

4®Leela Dube, "Introduction," in Leela Dube, Eleanor Leacock, and Shirley Ardener, eds., Visibilitv and Power: Essavs on Women in Societv (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), p. xi.

4?0n the politics of language see, for example, Michael J. Shapiro, Lancmage and Political Understanding (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981); William E. Connolly, The Terms of Political Discourse (Lexington, MA: Heath & Co., 1974); Gunther Kress and Robert Hodge, Language as Ideology (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979); Hanna Fenichel Pitkin, Wittgenstein and Justice (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972). For feminist critiques see, for example. Dale Spender, Man Made Language (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980); Mary Vetterling-Braggin, ed., Sexist Language (NJ; Littlefield, Adams & Co., 1981); Casey Miller

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In the discourse of political theory, androcentrism

is particularly exposed by an examination of the

discipline's definitions of " h u m a n . "48 Claims to the

contrary notwithstanding, evidence of the exclusion of women

from the concept "human" is well-documented; I refer

specifically to the Western literature articulating "human

nature," the "moral agent," the "rational being," and the

"political animal." "'Human nature,' we realize, as

described and discovered by philosophers such as Aristotle,

Aquinas, Machiavelli, Locke, Rousseau, Hegel, and many

and Kate Swift, Words and Women (Garden City, NY; Anchor Books, 1977). For feminist critiques of and correctives to androcentrism throughout "men's studies" see, for example, Dale Spender, ed., Men's Studies Modified (Oxford and New York: Pergamon Press, 1981); Sandra Harding and Merrill Hintikka, eds.. Discovering Realitv (Dordrecht, Holland: D. Reidel Publishing Co., 1983); Marcia Millman and Rosabeth Moss Kanter, eds.. Another Voice: Feminist Perspectives on Social Life and Social Science (New York: Anchor Books, 1975); Julia A. Sherman and Evelyn Torton Beck, eds.. The Prism of Sex: Essavs in the Sociology of Knowledge (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1979); Diane L. Fowlkes and Charlotte S. McClure, eds.. Feminist Visions (University, AL: University of Alabama Press, 1984); Sally McConnell- Ginet, Ruth Borker, and Nelly Furman, eds.. Women and Language in Literature and Societv (New York: Praeger, 1980); and Susan Hardy Aiken, et. al., eds.. Changing Our Minds: Feminist Transformations of Knowledge (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988).

4® Port ions of the following are excerpted from my "Re constructing the ' Individual ' in ' Human Rights ', " Paper presented at the Twenty-eighth Convention of the International Studies Association, Washington, DC, April, 1987.

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others, is intended to refer only to male human nature."49

For example, examining Kant's model of moral agents as

necessarily "rational beings," we discover that women "lack

these humanly essential characteristics."5® Rather, "Women

will avoid the wicked not because it is unright, but only

because it is ugly....They do something only because it

pleases them....I hardly believe that the fair sex is capable of principles. "53-

Similar examinations of what is meant by the

designations "human" or "moral agent" in the works of

Aristotle, Hobbes, Locke, Hume, Rousseau, Hegel, and

Nietzsche all confirm the pattern of generalizing men's

experience at the implicit, and often explicit, exclusion of

women's— defining women as only "partial males," or

exclusively in terms of men, or as lacking an essential

element for moral or rational agency; but especially (in the

liberal tradition), by intending only male heads-of-

48susan Moller Okin, Women in Western Political Thought (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979), pp. 6-7.

50carol C. Gould, "The Woman Question: Philosophy of Liberation and the Liberation of Philosophy," in Women and Philosophy, ed. by Carol C. Gould and Marx W.. Wart of sky (NY: Capricorn Books, 1976), p. 18.

53-ibid., p. 18, quoting Immanuel Kant, Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime, trans. by J. Goldthwait (Berkeley: University of California, I960), p. 81. Gould documents a "similar prejudice" in Fichte, Rousseau, Schopenhauer; see her discussion, pp. 18-44.

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household as "individuals. "52 The recurrent, underlying

notion is an ultimately unquestioned assumption of women's

subordination to male authority, "necessitated" by women's

reproductive function. In other words, women's capacity for

biological reproduction has been "essentialized" as her

"nature"; the "givenness" of this capacity is then extended

to the entire process of social reproduction, thereby

consigning women to a restricted "family" domain (also

"essentialized" as unchanging, and therefore, "unpolitical").53

The "naturalizing" of women in terms of their

biological capacities is especially evident where public and

private domains are rigidly separated, with women excluded

from participation in the public domain while remaining

52see the extensive bibliography (pp. 135-41) and individual articles criticizing androcentrism in Plato, Locke, Rousseau, Hume, Hegel, Marx, and Nietzsche, in Lorenne M. Clark and Lynda Lange, eds.. The Sexism of Social and Political Theory: Women and Reproduction from Plato to Nietzsche (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1979); M. B. Mcihowald, ed. Philosophy of Woman : Classical to Current Concepts (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1978); Caroline Whitbeck, "Theories of Sex Difference," in Women and Philosophy: Christine Battersby, "An Enquiry Concerning the Humean Woman," Philosophy 56 (1981), pp. 303-12; Okin, passim; and Elshtain, ed.. The Family in Political Thought, especially Richard W. Krouse's "Patriarchal Liberalism and Beyond"; and Harding and Hintikka, especially the articles by Lynda Lange, Elizabeth V. Spelman, and Judith Hicks Stiehm.

53gee especially Okin, Women in Western Political Thought. for documenting the functionalist treatment of women— and its implicit assumption of inequality— in our "philosophical heritage," particularly in Plato, Aristotle, Rousseau, and J.S. Mill.

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subject to patriarchal authority in the private, familial

sphere : i.e., the classical liberal "solution."54

References to "equality" among "individuals" turns out to

refer to (propertied) males only, as heads of families. "A

natural subordinate cannot at the same time be free and

equal. Thus women (wives) are excluded from the status of

'individual' and so from participating in the public world

of equality, consent and convention."55

The "genderedness" of the public-private dichotomy

is of particular significance to political theory in that

(as noted above) only activities pertaining to the public

54Locke's "attack on patriarchy" did not extend to the domestic sphere, where the "rule" must "naturally" fall to the father as the "abler and stronger." For substantiation of Hobbes' and Locke's acceptance of patriarchal assertions about women, see Teresa Brennan and Carole Pateman, "'Mere Auxiliaries to the Commonwealth': Women and the Origins of Liberalism," Political Studies. XXVII (1979): 183-200; Lorenne M. Clark, "Women and Locke: Who Owns the Apples in the Garden of Eden?" in The Sexism of Social and Political Theory. pp. 16-40; and Krouse, "Patriarchal Liberalism and Beyond." For the "reconciliation" of liberalism and patriarchalism "through the answer given by the contract theorists... of who counted as free and equal individuals," see Carole Pateman, "Feminist Critiques of the Public/Private Dichotomy," in Public and Private in Social Life, eds. S. I. Benn and G. F. Gaus (London Croom Helm, 1983), pp. 281-303.

55pateman, "Feminist Critiques of the Public/Private Dichotomy," p. 284. "Implicit within the paradigm is a concept of persons which admits into the privileges of full personhood...only those individuals who hold dual statuses as both public and private persons [men] and denies such personhood to those individuals with a single private status [women]." See Jean Bethke Elshtain, "Moral Woman and Immoral Man," Politics and Societv 4 (1975): 472-73.

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sphere are accorded social or political significance. And

those activities (having consigned women to the private

domain and simultaneously separated it from the public) are

primarily men's. We observe one consequence in the focus on

the public and visible ("power politics," wars, spectacle),

at the expense of attention to the everyday and less formal

(diplomacy, childrearing, interpersonal dynamics).56

Depiction of women as passive beings or as playing insignificant roles, an overemphasis on the management of their sexuality and on their roles as mothers and wives, and an underestimation of their contribution as decision-makers and as producers are all aspects of this distorted visibility. It is not only that male-centered investigations into the life of a community have ignored the part played by women in various spheres; the bias also enters in the degree of significance accorded to various avenues of activity in a society and the roles of women in them.5?

Another consequence is the trivialization of women's

political demands as "private" concerns: women's care-

55 "When focusing only on 'official' actors and actions, sociology has set aside the equally important locations of private, supportive, informal, local social structures in which women participate most frequently. In consequence, not only do we underexamine and distort women's activities...,but we also fail to understand how social systems actually function." Marcia Millman and Rosabeth Moss Kanter, "Editorial Introduction," in Another Voice, p. xi. See, in this anthology, in regard to focusing on the public, articles by Roby, Kanter, Daniels, Millman. As an empirical example, Dube (p. xxxvii, note 12) notes that the Khasi do not assign greater prestige to war and politics than to the rights to and responsibilities for property and children. For citations regarding the neglected "politics of everyday life," see Jane S. Jaquette, "Review Essay: Political Science," Signs 2 (Autumn 1976): 163, notes 53-58.

57Dube, p. xxiii.

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taking or peace activities being described in terms of

"virtue and sacrifice, rather than justice and right;"58 and

women's "industrial militancy” being described in terms of

their "family concerns."58

Those characteristics and enthusiasms which supposedly sway men (war, controversy, electoral manipulation) are defined as specifically political, while those charcteristics and enthusiasms which supposedly sway women (human needs for food, clothing, and shelter, adherence to consistent moral principles, the pre emption of national by human concerns, a rejection of war as rational) are simply not considered political. When women are being "political," they are being more like men and, in fact, most women have learned to be just that.50

Feminist historians are documenting and criticizing

similar effects of androcentric bias in historical work;

Throughout historical time, women have been largely excluded from making war, wealth, laws, governments, art, and science. Men, functioning in their capacity as historians, considered exactly those activities constitutive of civilization; hence, diplomatic history, economic history, constitutional history, and political and cultural history. Women figured chiefly as

58Ruth L. Smith and Deborah M. Valenze, "Mutuality and Marginality," (n.d.), p. 23. (Mimeographed.)

58janet Siltanen and Michelle Stanworth, "The Politics of Private Woman and Public Man," Theory and Societv. 13 (January 1984): 103. They argue "that the private women/public man conception misleads as to the relationship of the political to both private and public,..." specifically, by mystifying the extent to which each sphere is implicated in the other (p. 92). See also Elshtain's "Moral Woman and Immoral Man."

5®Susan Bourque and Jean Grossholtz, "Politics an Unnatural Practice: Political Science Looks at Female Participation," Politics and Societv 1 (1974): 258, quoted in Steuemagel and Quinn, p. 2.

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exceptions, those who were said to be as ruthless as, or wrote like, or had the brains of men.51

In international relations and political science,

androcentric bias has the consequence of excluding those

activities associated with women and the day-to-day

maintenance of family life and personal relations from a

critical understanding of productive and reproductive

relations— as constituting the state, reproducing the social

system, and/or transforming social institutions. This is

particularly obvious in the almost total absence of

"reproduction" as a central topic in sociomoral and

political philosophy. 52 As noted above, reproduction is

more than its biological component:

51Joan Kelly, Women. Historv and Theorv (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), p. 2. Also: "If history is defined simply as a record of public events [traditionally the case], what happens to the history of women, whose experiences have overwhelmingly taken place in the 'private world'?" Julia Sherman and Evelyn Norton Beck, "Introduction," in The Prism of Sex, p. 6. See also Carroll, ed., Liberating Women's Historv (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1976), especially Part I: "On the Historiography of Women."

52gara Ann Ketchum, "Female Culture, Womanculture and Conceptual Change," Social Theorv and Practice. 6 (Summer 1980): 158-59; Caroline Whitbeck, "The Moral Implications of Regarding Women as People," in Abortion and the Status of the Fetus, ed. by W. B. Bondescn, H. T. Engelhardt, Jr., S. F. Spicker and D. Winship (Dordrecht: Reidel Publishing Co., 1983), passim; Hilary Rose, "Hand, Brain, and Heart," Signs. 9 (1983): 82. For a deep and compelling critique of the exclusion of reproduction from political theory, see Lorenne Clark, "The Rights of Women: The Theory and Practice of the Ideology of Male Supremacy," in Contemporary Issues in Political Philosophy. William R. Shea and John King-Farlow, eds. (New York: Neale Watson, 1976), pp. 49-65.

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Reproduction is the whole process from conception, through birth, to the point of personal independence of the child. It includes the 'reproductive labour' of directly nurturing and socializing children. This Icibour, unlike other forms of labour essential to the continuation of society, has not been assumed to have any theoretical significance. It is assumed instead to be an aspect of purely personal relationships, and an outgrowth of the natural association of the sexes. Traditional political theory assumes that women bear some unique relation to reproductive labour itself, and not just to the biological process, such that it is seen to fall naturally to them to perform it,.. .Women, gua women are excluded from the public, political, and economic spheres.53

In adopting the mind-body dualism, coupling it with

public-private dichotomization. Western (especially,

liberal) thought has systematically "ignored" what would

seem on the face of it crucial elements of the constitution

of social reality. The failure to address our physical

embodiment, sexuality, procreation, child-rearing and

socialization practices, and intrafamilial relationships as

definitively human problématiques reflects, I argue, a male-

as-norm viewpoint.54 on the face of it, social and

political theory that glosses over the political, social,

and economic significance of sexual relations and social

53Lorenne M. Clark and Lynda Lange, "Introduction," in The Sexism of Social and Political Theorv. pp. vii-viii.

54"Reproduction is a necessary social fact: it is the central fact around which all theory about social organization ought to rotate....The only non-sexist political theory is one that begins from recognizing that reproduction is not simply inevitable, but is, in fact, necessary, and that it is a process that must be shared, fully." See Clark, "Rights," p. 54.

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reproduction is inadequate. That these socially constructed

identities and practices continue to be slighted in socio

political theory is striking testimony of our immersion in

androcentric assumptions. Clark and Lange draw the

following conclusion:

What all of the various and appalling philosophies about women amount to in practice is the doing of reproductive labour exclusively by women. All the talk about the limitations of women, such as their lack of "higher" reason, and other such "innate" factors, boils down in practice to the idea that women as a group are the ones who ought rightly to perform reproductive labour. The institution of matrimony ensured both that this labour would be performed, and that it would be done by women.65

The main point of the preceding is to substantiate

the extensiveness and "naturalness" of failing to take women

and their activities seriously in political theor^r. This is

not to say that theorists have simply "overlooked" or been

silent about women— for indeed, characterizations of women.

65ciark and Lange, "Introduction," pp. xii. Note that matrimony is instituted formally with state formation. What is especially significant in terms of the present paper, is that the exclusion of the reproductive process from the "political sphere" was not simply an "historical accident" but a deliberate decision: "It was declared by fiat not to be a political activity and not to have any significance within the political sphere. It was by definition, by arbitrary and deliberate convention, and not by mere historical accident, set apart from the political realm and declared to be of no political importance....The family became for women and children a prison from which they could not escape, and within which they had no rights, for rights, after all, exist only within a political and legal framework. Women and children remain in an eternal state of nature while the state, civil society, develops for adult males." See Clark, "Rights," p. 52.

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especially in terms of "essentializing" them in

functionalist terms, were (and continue to be) integral to

most theories. That is, "woman's place" was a topic not

ignored but elaborated, with the elaboration consistently

placing her in the family, and consistently subordinating

her to a male authority. In her introduction to Women in

Political Theory. Diana Coole states her intention to show

...that the references to women's place were no marginal or optional concern. Although women were generally excluded from political life, they were frequently ascribed an indispensable role in providing its preconditions; their treatment was an integral part of an overall philosophy....Relationships between the sexes are a significant element in the more explicit and general discussions between citizens or between individual and state.6®

The perpetuation of the liberal/patriarchal

worldview has ensured that women and women's life activities

continue to be primarily defined through an androcentric

lens. Representations of "human" reality are those "devised

by men about the male world of the public domain and about

the family as...seen by those men.The male-as-norm

6®(Boulder, CO; Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1988), p. 7. Okin also documents the functionalist treatment of women as integral to the Western political tradition; see also Jean Bethke Elshtain, "Preface," in The Family, p. 4; "Those thinkers whose work comprises the canon of the Western political tradition found it necessary to situate the family within their overall vision of political society."

®?Meg Stacey, "Social Sciences and the State; Fighting like a Woman," in The Public and the Private, eds. EVa Gamamikow, David H. J. Morgan, June Purvis, and Daphne Taylorson (London; Heinemann, 1983), p. 7. Similarly, Kathryn Pyne Parsons argues that the "main bias in moral

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perspective both perpetuates gender differentiated lives and

masks the extent of those differences, particularly the

"contradiction between civil equality and social, especially

familial, subjection."®®

Deeper Patterns

If we review all of these explanations for the

"neglect" of patriarchal relations, we can detect certain

patterns; "unpacking" the components of these patterns is

instructive for the next task: identifying what needs to be

done to address patriarchy adequately.

First, we observe the recurring assumption of

"universal male domination"; implicit in this first position

are additional assumptions: 1) women are bioculturally

inferior, rendering their subordination "natural" and not,

therefore, "oppressive" (and not, therefore, requiring

philosophy for two millennia" has been that "the moral- social world has been taken to be the world as men know it. A meaningful (or a 'good life') has been a life seen from the perspective of males and open only to males— and in fact, only to higher-class white adult males, so that the bias is classist and racist as well as sexist." See her "Moral Revolution," in The Prism of Sex, p. 192.

®®Pateman, "Feminist Critiques of the Public/Private Dichotomy," p. 292. See also Lynda Lange, "Reproduction in Democratic Theory," in Contemporary Issues in Political Philosohpv. p. 137: "I believe that the sexism of political theory is rooted in the existence of social units for the performance of reproductive labour (which happen to be exploitative of women) which is taken for granted at the point where theory begins,..."

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explanation); 2) sexual differences characterizing men and

women are "natural," not social constructions; therefore,

again, they require no historical explanation; holders of

this position, therefore, do not insist on a historicizing

method.

Second, we observe the recurring assumption of

androcentrism, assuming a male-as-norm perspective as

fundamental world-view and that male experience constitutes

"human" experience; implicit in this second position are

additional assumptions: 1) men's activities, experience,

interests, and perspectives are privileged— that is, taken

more seriously, accorded greater weight, or assumed to be

more "correct"— than those of women; in the Western context

this translates into a privileging of production,

"politics," "objectivity," and the public sphere over

reproduction, the personal, "subjectivity," and the private

sphere; 2) the presupposition of male experience/reality as

human experience/reality necessarily excludes, and in so

doing, devalues female reality; gender asymmetry (men over

women) takes on an implicit inevitability; 3) gender

asymmetry may be interpreted as "natural" or as socially

constructed; holders of this position who regard it as

socially constructed insist on the necessity of

historicizing (those who regard it as "natural" tend to

assume the first position).

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All of the explanations cited above take one or the

other of these assumptions as a given (although varying in

how directly they express those assumptions). Which

assumption being made permits us to further distinguish—

because of the subsidiary assumptions— the explanations

according to theoretical preferences. That is, the

universalizing position which "naturalizes" or

"essentializes" gender asymmetry tends to be ahistorical; it

stands in contrast to the social constructivist position

that insists on historicizing gender asymmetry.

What remains common to both assumptions/positions,

and all of the above explanations, is a third— and because

common to all— unquestioned assumption: a "naturalized"

sexual division of labor. Implicit in this third position

are additional assumptions: 1) anatomical differences are

seen as equivalent to sexual identity differences;

therefore, an "essential" difference between male and female

sexual identities is taken as given; 2) due to different

relationships to reproduction, men and women have different

and definite interests; 3) childbearing and child care are

universally the primary social activities of women;

similarly, social reproduction and nurturance are

"naturally" women's work; 4) sexual identity is an

individual rather than socially constructed attribute;

therefore, holders of this third position deny the need to

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historicize sexual identity or the primary sexual division

of labor. (Holders of the first position "naturalize" male

supremacy by allegedly observing it universally, across all

cultures and times. Holders of the third position share

this ahistorical perspective but their "naturalizing" of

male and female sexual identities also assumes a

methodologically individualist perspective: that sexual

identities are "located within the individual as a fixed

essence,"®® and in that specific sense are not social,

i.e,., historical constructions.)

How are these three assumptions/positions related,

and what are their implications for studying the power

relations constituted by the state? Quite obviously the

first and second are related by their privileging of

"maleness": the first "naturalizing" male supremacy, the

second "naturalizing" an asymmetrical division of male- vs.

female-identified experience and activities. The

assumptions implicit in each reinforce each other: if men

are "naturally" dominant, then their experience and

activities are "naturally" more important for understanding

soio-political phenomena; if men's activities appear more

important, it is because their long-standing dominance makes

this the case.

®®Robert A. Padgug, "Sexual Matters: On Conceptualizing Sexuality in History," Radical Historv Review 20 (Spring- Summer 1979): 8.

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For those (of the second position) who recognize the

asymmetry as socially constructed, the long duration and

apparent universality of that asymmetry renders a

symmetrical (re-)construction— while technically possible—

highly improbable in practice. To the extent that

symmetrical (re-)construction is deemed improbable, the

holders of the second position resemble those holding the

universal male dominance position. Or we might say that the

androcentrism of the second position inevitably— though not

explicitly— lends support to the "naturalizing" of male

supremacy simply assumed in the first, while the male

supremacy assumed in the first clearly lends

"substantiation" to the androcentrism of the second. The

only clear distinction— the possibility of changing the

asymmetry, held by those social constructivists of the

second position— becomes less and less significant to the

extent that the asymmetry— as well as the division— is

assumed to be "given" in the order of things, that is,

"naturalized." The corollary, of course, is that it is not

problematized, that is, it is not the focus of critical

inquiry.

That brings us to the third position: assuming a

"naturalized" division of the sexes. All three positions

are most obviously related by their fundamental division of

humans into males and females; the first position

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universalizes that division as male domination over females

(i.e., "naturalizing" male dominance); the second position

divides male from female experience/reality and tends to

assume an asymmetrical relationship between them (i.e.,

"naturalizing" a hierarchical separation of male and female

spheres/domains/identities). The third, while appearing

"neutral" in terms of male supremacy or androcentrism,

inevitably supports and reinforces the other positions. It

does so in terms of the first by sharing an ahistorical

perspective, in this case that of "naturalizing" separate

male and female sexual identities ; it does so in terms of

the second by sharing a "naturalizing" of a fundamental male

vs. female distinction, and thus constituting an "ideology

of sexuality":

The most commonly held twentieth-century assumptions about sexuality imply that it is a separate category of existence (like "the economy," or "the state," other supposedly independent spheres of reality), almost identical with the sphere of private life. Such a view necessitates the location of sexuality within the individual as a fixed essence, leading to a classical division of individual and society and to a variety of psychological determinisms, and, often enough, to a full-blown biological determinism as well. These in turn involve the enshrinement of contemporary sexual categories as universal, static, and permanent, suitable for the analysis of all human beings and all societies. Finally, the consequences of this view are to restrict class struggle to non-sexual realms, since that which is private, sexual, and static is not a proper arena for public social action and change.^®

^Opadgug, p. 8. He continues : "This is not to deny that human sexuality, like animal sexuality, is deeply involved with physical reproduction and with intercourse and

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The point in terms of the present discussion is

this: just as the second position is indistinguishable from

the first to the extent that it fails to problematize the

"naturalizing" of the asymmetry of male and female domains,

the third position is indistinguishable from the second to

the extent that it fails to problematize the "naturalizing"

of a male vs. female division. Without applying a method of

critical historical analysis, "naturalized"

categories/concepts remain unproblematized; taken as

"givens," they continue to powerfully structure our inquiry

by shaping what questions not only are but even can be

asked. The power relations embedded in the categorizations

its pleasures. Biological sexuality is the necessary precondition for human sexuality. But biological sexuality is only a precondition, a set of potentialities, which is never unmediated by human reality, and which becomes transformed in qualitatively new ways in human society" (pp. 8-9). Jaggar, p. 112, states it this way: "What biological determinism overlooks is the plasticity of human nature, which ensures that the limits of human nature are so elastic that they can never be identified with finality." See also Kathy E. Ferguson, The Feminist Case Against Bureaucracv (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1984), p. 28: "It is not biology per se but the web of significance within which biology is embedded and from which it takes its meaning that makes gender differences intelligible." These points are particularly relevant for the present study. My attention to the ideological dimension of power relations is in no way intended to displace material, technological, or biological factors in our explanations of social phenomena. The point is quite simply that to understand social phenomena we must include the "meaning" component that is, by definition, a social construction (as "opposed" to a "natural" element).

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remain unchallenged, continually obscured by the

"naturalizing" move.

It might be helpful to restate the preceding in the

following way. The first position "naturalizes" male

dominance; the second position "naturalizes" a division of

male and female experience/reality and tends to "naturalize"

it as asymmetrical; the third position "naturalizes" a

sexual division of male and female. What is "naturalized"

is not problematized— not seen as historically contingent,

therefore changeable— and therefore eludes our inquiry. Not

questioning the ideology of sexuality (i.e., the

"naturalization of sexual difference") serves to lend its

embedded power relations further "natural" legitimacy.

?lMy remarks here are based upon recent re constructions of the nature and extent of "power," as presented especially in post-structuralist discourse. On the deconstruction of traditional understandings of power (which conceive subjectivity and sexuality as derived effects of external or imposed repressions), and recognition of the historical construction of sexuality as a component of (repressive) power (and as a new way of organizing knowledge), see the works of M. Foucault, especially The Historv of Sexualitv. vol. 1 (New York: Vintage Books, 1980) and Power/Knowledge. ed. Colin Gordon (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980). For feminist perspectives more consonant with my theoretical preferences see, for example, Biddy Martin, "Feminism, Criticism, and Foucault," New German Critioue 27 (Fall 1982): 13: "Feminism shares with post-structuralist criticism a critique of the hegemony of the identical and the desire for other forms of discourse. Unlike many of the male critics, feminists are quite consciously involved in systematically articulating the extent to which woman has been situated very differently with respect to the 'human,' to 'Man, ' than has man;..." Also Anne L. Harper, "Human Sexuality: New Insights from Women's History," in Feminist Visions, pp. 170-212; and Nancy Fraser, "Foucault's Body-

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The intent of this discussion has been to clarify

the interrelatedness of these positions and assumptions, and

to suggest how they are related to the more encompassing

analysis of power relations undertaken in this study. I

turn now to the connections between the three positions

(immediately above) and the explanations (presented earlier)

of how patriarchy is rendered "invisible."

First, the way academic disciplines divide their

sub] ect matter "maps on to" the assumptions made in the

three positions; disciplinary divisions reflect the

assumptions of the second position in terms of separating

our examination of the public, the state, and the domain of

power relations, i.e, "the political"— political science,

international relations— from our examination of the

private, the family, the "society," sexuality, and the

domain of love relations, i.e., "the personal"— psychology,

sociology, anthropology. The difficulty of placing

economics and history within this framework is an

interesting example of the difficulty of assuming "fixed"

definitions of constructs like public and private1

Second, disciplinary divisions (and in some cases,

schools of thought within disciplines) also reflect

different methodological assumptions implicit in the three

Language: A Post-Humanist Political Rhetoric" Salmagundi 61 (Fall 1983): 55-70.

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positions; for example, historical, interpretive

perspectives associated with the humanities, as opposed to

ahistorical, objectivist perspectives associated with the

natural sciences; this distinction parallels that between

the "soft" and "hard" inquiries. Also related are

methodological assumptions in regard to individualist

(psychology) in contrast to social/collectivist inquiries

(sociology). The existence of social geography, physical

anthropology, and social psychology suggests the inadequacy

of positivist methodological cleavages.

Third, while a rigid separation of female

disciplines (home economics) from male disciplines

(industrial arts) appears to be diminishing, gender

differentiated disciplines remain the rule rather than the

exception. (I refer to the skewed distribution of female and

male students and faculty in, for example, engineering vs.

literature, and the continuation of sex-segregated physical

education and athletic competitions.)

The point here is to illuminate the deep linkages

among disciplinary divisions and theoretical preferences—

that is, ways in which we organize knowledge— and

androcentric assumptions and ideologies of sexuality. I

72p-or a rejection of the "distinction between social science as generalizing and 'model-building' and history as concrete and particularistic," see, for example, Immanuel Wallerstein, The Capitalist World-Economv (Cambridge; Cambridge University Press, 1979), pp. vii-xii.

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have argued that the "naturalized" categories/distinctions

implicit in all of these socially constructed

differentiations have precluded an acknowledgement and

critical analysis of the patriarchal foundations of the

state and power relations more generally. In other words,

the "neglect" of patriarchy is not only a function of taking

the separation of public and private for granted, or

defining "the political" in a particular way, but is

inextricably related to additional assumptions about the

nature of human sexuality, the relationship between the

individual and society, and the trade-offs between

historicist and objectivist perspectives in social inquiry.

We conclude that much of the ignoring of women or their facile dismissal as non-political beings stems not exclusively from "male prejudice" but from deeper roots...from the nature of the questions asked, from assumptions concerning what sort of phenomena are "political", rand] from kinds of methodologies adopted for research.'®

Most significantly, all of these assumptions have

implications for the constitution of power relations.

Therefore, if we are to understand power relations

adequately, we must begin with this appreciation of the deep

linkages among the assumptions comprising our world-view and

structuring our inquiry. I reach this conclusion on the

basis of contemporary philosophy of science— which

^®Mary L. Shanley and Victoria Schuck, "In Search of Political Woman," Social Science Ouarterlv 3 (1974); 632, quoted in Steuernagel and Quinn, p. 2.

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recognizes the social order as necessarily historical and

inter-sub]actively constructed— and contemporary feminist

scholarship— which insists on a gendered analysis that

transforms the locus and focus of inquiry.

Rendering the "Invisible" Visible

With this understanding of power relations as a

starting point, my dissertation attempts to historicize

(i.e., subject to critical historical analysis) the

construction of social hierarchy— the emergence of

domination relations and their concomitant legitimation^^—

specifically as formative of the Western state and political

tradition. I argue 1) that gender domination/patriarchal

relations— itself neither universal or "natural" but an

historical phenomenon grounded in specific, identifiable

^^The latter refers to the reorientation of meaning systems— through altered cosmologies, worldviews, or ideologies— invariably accompanying, because lending coherence to, social transformations. The mutual influence of "material" and "cultural" transformations is widely acknowledged (even as further specification of primacy and proportion of influence continue to be debated). There is notable agreement in the state formation literature that the intensification of social differentiation and spiraling demand for surplus wealth production associated with state formation necessitated— and is demonstrably accompanied by— ideological justification. See for example Jurgen Habermas, Communication and the Evolution of Societv. trans. T. McCarthy (Boston; Beacon Press, 1976), pp. 148-66, especially 151; Giddens, The Nation-State and Violence, pp. 71-79; Steward, Theory of Culture Change, p. 202; Claessen and Skalnik, passim; and additional citations in subsequent chapters.

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circumstances— preceded and enabled early state formation,

and 2) that failure to address the patriarchal foundations

of power relations— specifically those constituting the

state— profoundly dis-ables our understanding of politics in

its most encompassing sense.

My approach is first of all historical, "rejecting

the equation of origins with cause and reinterpreting

origins as early elements in a long story. To be

historical...means seeing that the social divisions

described by the categories of family, state, and economy

are not natural to the human condition but the product of

changes in social organization...."^® In other words,

adopting a critical historical perspective permits us to

problematize and therefore examine the construction and

change in categories, rather than reify them as "natural"

and thereby misunderstand them. Further, to guard against

the tendency toward "universalizing history," I adopt a

comparative approach: data from diverse societies are

explored in order to contextuali ze the particular, in

pursuit of the patterns.

My approach is also trans-disciplinary, recognizing

that a comprehensive, systemic understanding requires the

integration of theoretical and empirical insights from

Linda J. Nicholson, Gender and Historv (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), p. 131.

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numerous disciplines. A trans-disciplinary approach is

further mandated by contemporary appreciation of the complex

interaction of multiple variables in constituting social

phenomena.^® Cohen addresses this complexity specifically

in regard to state formation:

The facts tend to disappoint anyone who emphasizes one causal nexus over another. It is now becoming clear that there are multiple roads to statehood, that whatever sets off the process tends as well to set off other changes which, no matter how different they are to begin with, all tend to produce similar results. It is this similarity of result, I believe, that has clouded the issue of causality. Similar results— the state— imply common antecedents. Unfortunately, as the data are compared, as more cases appear in the literature, historical sequences support the notion of multiple and varied causes producing similar effects. The reason for this is clear. Once a society begins to evolve more centralized and more permanent authority structures, the political realm itself becomes an increasingly powerful determinant of change in the economy, society, and culture of the system. After the tendency to centralized control has been triggered, the hierarchical structure itself becomes a selective determinant that feeds back to all the sociocultural features to make them fit more closely into its overall pattern.

Cohen's identification of the increased power of

centralized authority to perpetuate itself points to another

7®See especially Dube, passim, and Rapp, "Origins."

Cohen, "Introduction," p. 8. I would like to point out the similarities between a "false" search for causality in terms of the origins of the state and in terms of the origins of patriarchy. In both cases multiple and varied "causes" are discernible, but once set into motion feedback dynamics shape the process such that similar effects result. This observation has the value of avoiding "universalizing" "causes," while acknowledging the value of historical analysis for disclosing specific relationships and patterns.

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aspect of my approach: an interpretive perspective. We are

increasingly aware of the need to incorporate an

understanding of shared meaning systems in our explanations

of social phenomena. This is of particular significance in

state formation since the transformation in social relations

(considered definitive of state formation) both produces and

is produced by altered meaning systems, the alterations

serving to justify the increased exploitation constituted by

state formation. In a more general application, Sederberg

actually defines "politics" as consisting

...of all deliberate efforts to create, maintain, modify, or abandon shared meanings in the attempt to overcome the alienation produced by the loss of a sense of organic unity. To establish shared meaning, mutual response must be structured, [note deleted] Response may be shaped through the application of various forms of power from logical or moral suasion, through bribery, to coercion The ability to alter or maintain shared meanings short of the recourse to coercion provides one indicator of political success.^®

I am particularly interested in pursuing the

ideological factor in state formation because the invention

of writing— which has historically accompanied the

centralization of political authority in early states— so

profoundly alters potential power relations. While Cohen's

^®Peter C. Sederberg, The Politics of Meaning: Power and Explanation in the Construction of Social Realitv (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1984), p. 7. Antonio Gramsci's notion of "hegemonic" power is also relevant here; see Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci eds. and trans. Quinton Hoare and G. N. Smith (New York: International Publishers, 1971).

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comment on the increased power of centralized authority to

perpetuate itself recognizes a powerful feedback loop, he

does not develop the implications of this observation in

terms of the implementation of writing systems. There has

been very little exploration of this dynamic in the state

formation literature, and I consider my treatment of it one

of the more original contributions of the current work.^®

Finally, my approach incorporates the feminist

insistence on a "gendered analysis." Feminist scholarship

has moved along a spectrum of research and critique: from

identifying and objecting to unequal employment practices,

to arguing that male predominance biases the choice and

definition of what is problematized, to bias in the design

and interpretation of experiments, and finally to the

radical critique of androcentric bias in the deepest

assumptions of "scientific ideology itself"— "the very

assumptions of objectivity and rationality."®°

^®Consideration of this dynamic by other authors— especially Giddens— is acknowledged in the discussion to follow.

®®See especially Evelyn Fox Keller, "Feminism and Science," in Elizabeth Abel and Emily K. Abel, eds., The Signs Reader (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), pp. 110-14. Feminist critiques of science, rationality, and objectivity are extensive. See, for example, Evelyn Fox Keller, Reflections on Gender and Science (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985); Sandra Harding, The Science Question in Feminism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986), and ed., Feminism and Methodology (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987); Ruth Bleier, Science and Gender (Oxford: Pergamon, 1984).

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What counts as knowledge must be grounded on experience. Human experience différés according to the kinds of activities and social relations in which humans engage. Women's experience systematically differs from the male experience on which knowledge claims have been grounded. Thus the experience on which the prevailing claims to social and natural knowledge are founded is, first of all, only partial human experience only partially understood: namely, masculine experience as understood by men. However, when this experience is presumed to be gender-free— when the male experience is taken to be the human experince— the resulting theories, concepts, methodologies, inquiry goals, and knowledge-claims distort human social life and human thought...Masculine perspectives are not only distorting because they are partial; they are inherently distorting because they must invert some of the real regularities of social life and their underlying causal tendencies.®®-

The most important implication to note here is that

"correcting" the androcentric distortion requires much more

than simply "adding women" to the inherited framework:

feminist scholarship challenges the very foundations of that

framework. To address the critiques raised by feminist

scholarship requires no less than rethinking fundamental

categories of social analysis and our deepest assumptions

about the nature of theorizing— a reconsideration of the

"Enlightenment vision."®®

Three related ambitions have guided the growing

scholarship on women: the deconstruction of error

(eliminating falsehoods generated by sex-biased inquiry),

®®-S. Harding and Hintikka, "Introduction," p. x.

®®For a recent, excellent discussion of the issues involved, see Sandra Harding, "The Instability of the Analytical Categories of Feminist Theory," Signs 11 (Summer 1986): 645-64.

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the reconstruction of fact (incorporating women’s activities

and perspectives in the study of humankind) , and the

construction of theory (rethinking fundamental relationships

of knowledge, power, and community).®®

My work attempts a contribution to the first two ambitions,

providing in turn historical analysis valuable for the more

demanding third ambition.

Having described and defined my theoretical

approach, I turn to a brief outline of the historical

project undertaken here.

My historicizing of social hierarchy is structured

by positing three overlapping but distinguishable

configurations of societal organization:

Communal/Egalitarian, Kin Corporate/Lineage, and

Archaic/Civil State. The subjects of chapters two, three,

and four respectively, the three types and their

characteristic features are derived from numerous sources in

the anthropological and state formation literature. The

configurations are employed as heuristic tools facilitating

a historical examination of social differentiation

processes, particularly those clustering around the politics

of kinship and citizenship, military complexes.

®®Catharine R. Stimpson, "Women as Knowers," in Feminist Visions, p. 17.

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trade/exchange relationships, and the changing content and

role of cosmological systems and/or ideologies. Rejecting

mono-causal or deterministic sequences, transformations in

societal organization are thus examined as systemic and

processual interactions among ecological, cultural, and

technological variables— again, including concomitant

alterations in cosmologies or worldviews.

In order to facilitate a dynamic comparison of the

world-views (that is, the "deep structure" assumptions

constituting shared systems of meaning) characteristic of

the societal configurations, I introduce a "set" of "core

relations" as additional heuristic devices. I consider this

"set" of "core-relations" one of any number of possible ways

to separate and order understandings embedded in worldviews.

All worldviews are necessarily historically specific; the

"core-relations" permit the comparison of that specificity

vis-a-vis three presumably fundamental ways in which

consciousness or cosmologies are ordered. My rendering is

an attempt to afford meaningful comparisons between

extremely disparate— temporally and culturally—

configurations, and to avoid traditionally reified

categories.

I identify the first core-relation as "intra

sub j ective," referring to our "relation" to our "selves," to

our embodiment as "subjects." The second, "subjective-

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objective," refers to the "relation" between humans as

conscious beings and allegedly non-conscious reality.

" Inter-sub j ective, " as the term implies, is the third core-

relation and refers to the relation between "subjects,"

conceived either as individuals or collectivities.®^ I

examine each of the societal configurations in terms of the

meanings each appears to "plug in to" the core-relations;

this affords a comparison of the interaction of multiple

variables in different socio-historical contexts.

Models of pre-literate societal organization

necessarily draw upon a synthesis of hominid archeology,

primatological studies, and contemporary anthropological

ethnographies; with the introduction of writing the

historical record permits much richer interpretations,

especially of the meaning systems accompanying various

societal configurations. That is, as social relations of

domination develop in literate cultures, it is possible—

®^The quotation marks signal the problematic nature of attempting to refer to the concepts independent of their employment in specific contexts. For example, absent a consciousness of separateness (as posited in psychoanalytic theories of self-identity formation), treating the "inter- subjective" as relation presupposes a differentiation as yet nonexistent. While "core-relation" by definition implies some differentiation, I adopt it as the present best candidate in terms of appropriateness and mutability. While the three core-relations are separated here for analytical purposes, it is important to recognize their interrelatedness. For a more extensive explication of "relations" similar to that intended here, see Bertel1 Oilman, Alienation (London and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1971), especially chapters 1-3.

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through interpretation of literary texts— to examine the

reorientation of meaning systems accompanying and providing

the requisite legitimation of those domination relations.

The historical analysis to follow focuses on those

social systems and developments most directly antecedent to

Western state formation: the centralization of political

authority in the Near East empires and Mediterranean city-

states, particularly the Athenian polis. In both cases

there is considerable documentation of the cosmological

shift accompanying and legitimating the transition from the

primacy of kinship as the mode of organization to class-

divided, citizen-based states. The differential

concentration of resources made possible by appropriating

the labor of women (and subsequently war captives and

slaves) was a crucial element in the process of state

formation; this exploitation required ideological

justification. Turning to the literature from the classical

Athenian period, and contemporary interpretations of that

literature in regard to its ideological significance, I

argue that the public-private dichotomy was employed as a

primary legitimation of the exploitative dynamics

constituting Athenian state formation.

As further clarification, I introduce here a

synopsis of the historical analysis to follow:

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From a non-hierarchical base of social relations—

the gathering-hunting communal configuration— predominating

for the greater span of human history, a (non-hierarchical)

sexual division of labor emerges as a correlation of

interacting ecological, biological, and cultural variables

(e.g., the regulation of fire, the discovery of carrying

implements, altered fertility patterns). Social

differentiation vis-a-vis task diversity begins to occur,

but in the absence of stratifyng incentives (environmental,

biological, or social), tends to remain non-hierarchical.

The shift from food-gathering to food-growing is

correlated with additional interactive variables (e.g., the

making of storage containers, altered food consumption

patterns, population growth, task diversity requiring

training) and tendencies toward increased complexity of

societal organization. These take the form of kin-based,

corporate societies with marriage and residence rules;

corporate property ownership permits for the first time a

contradiction between producer and "owner" roles.

Competitive environments (as a consequence of, for example,

resource scarcity, internal prestige competition, or

external threats) provide incentives for surplus production;

corporate groups shifting to patrilocal/patrilineal

principles more effectively appropriate women's productivity

and reproductivity toward securing a surplus. Gender

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hierarchy (and hierarchy of lineage males) emerges and is

generalized as patrilocal/patrilineal social formations—

because of their expansionary dynamic— are generalized.

Women as a "class" lose power, while some individual women

gain power as members of "successful" lineages; non-producer

roles assume increasing importance.

Once set in motion, sexual and social stratification

are entwined, the oppression of women providing a means of

differential accumulation among men and serving as the model

for subsequent "legitimation" of exploitation. In the

process of centralization of political authority (correlated

with multiple factors, such as urbanism, regulatory

institutions, productive and military technologies,

accumulation incentives), intensified militarism translated

into war captives, concubinage, and slavery; stratification

increases. Control of newly invented writing significantly

augments elite power in instituting ideologies justifying

gender and class exploitation: altered cosmologies are

author-ized and feed back into the stratifying dynamic.

Secular power with military force and support

spanning aristocratic-clan divisions replaces the

essentially "private" nature of kinship organized

aristocratic rule with "rational" (legal), "political-based"

(citizenship as a function of property claims) class rule.

The state assumes regulation of sexual relations, societal

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organization, and military and economic strategies based on

the patriarchal household's exploitation of women's

productive and reproductive labor as the primary societal

unit. The liberty of propertied males is purchased by the

exploitation of all others; the domination relations so

constituted are obscured by elite male author-izing of

justificatory ideologies, the deep assumptions of which

enter Western political theory as "naturalized"

mystifications of power relations.

Implications

My inquiry focuses on historicizing social hierarchy

preceding Athenian state formation in order to substantiate

more accurately the instituting and legitimating of social

relations of domination in the Athenian context. It does

not, therefore, extend its historical analysis beyond the

Athenian institutionalization of the public-private

dichotomy. I would like to clarify here why I deem this

historical analysis of the public-private dichotomy so

important for the subsequent Western tradition.

To do so, I refer to the "core-relations" introduced

as heuristic tools enabling the comparison of world-views

across extremely disparate contexts. As articulated in

Aristotle's Politics, the public-private dichotomy separated

the realm of politics— where the free man achieved his

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unique telos as a zoon politikon— from the realm of

necessity— where women, slaves, and children achieved the

production and reproduction that was a precondition of the

public. A dynamic of domination is apparent in the

dichotomy's exclusion of the majority from political

decision-making. But the implications of establishing the

dichotomy as a "given" in the Western tradition extend well

beyond what is traditionally presupposed in reference to

"political" discourse. This is so, I argue, because the

dichotomy established not only the oppressive division of

public and private as a fundamental ordering principle in

the Western political tradition, but established as well

other dichotomous renderings more generally as "naturalized"

ordering principles in Western thought.

The sheer efficiency of dualistic categorizations

and their suggestion of relationships of reciprocity render

them extremely useful and attractive; their pervasiveness in

Western thought is therefore hardly surprising. However,

recent feminist and post-positivist critiques challenge the

alleged neutrality and theoretical adequacy of dualistic

renderings. Examined in their historically specific

contexts, binary oppositions characteristic of Western

thought reveal themselves as hierarchical dichotomies in

which the first component is to dominate— because assumed

prior and superior to— the "other" component. In short, the

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categorization of social practices as dichotomous has

political implications.

I believe that institutionalization of the public-

private dichotomy— given the historically specific context

of that institutionalization— simultaneously established

other specifiable "relations"— not inherently so ordered— as

ranked, oppositional dichotomies. I refer to the three

"core-relations": "intra-subjective," "subjective-

objective," and "inter-subjective." I argue that the

dichotomizing of public and private concomitantly

established these "core-relations" as the hierarchical

dichotomies of: creativity vs. procreativity, culture vs.

nature, and autonomy vs. mutuality.®^ It is in this ranked

dichotomous form then that the "relations" enter the Western

tradition.

The point is that establishing these relationships

as hierarchical dichotomies (only one of numerous

possibilities) precluded other possible constructions having

different social implications. Without further elaboration

here, I submit that the construction of these relationships

as dichotomies is significantly related to dynamics of

domination notable in the Western tradition (in, for

SSgee V. Spike Peterson, "Historicizing the Public- Private Dichotomy (or Dis-covering 'Women's Place' in [Men's] History), Paper presented at the Seventh Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, Wellesley, MA, June, 1987.

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example, the exploitation and social stratification implicit

in the rise and imperialist expansion of "Western

civilization" and the ecological and social consequences of

Western science's privileging of instrumental rationality

over other forms of knowledge®®). Having been established

in the Western tradition as ranked dichotomies, the

possibilities of conceptualizing or constructing the

"relations" were limited to hierarchical and oppositional

dynamics— those particularly conducive to domination,

competition, instrumentalism, and either-or worldviews. On

the one hand, to the extent that the three dichotomized

"relations" are concomitant with (or constitutive elements

of) the public-private dichotomy, they can be seen to order

cosmologies and worldviews whenever the public-private split

is paramount. On the other hand, the oppressive dynamic

implicit in the dichotomized form of these fundamental

"relations" is mystified by their very embeddedness in the

public-private dichotomy which is legitimized by and in the

liberal state. In sum, I believe that the public-private

dichotomy invariably incorporates some historically

®®See, for example, Isaac D. Balbus, Marxism and Domination (Princeton; Princeton University Press, 1982) for a comprehensive critique of the instrumental mode (and synthesis of neo-Hegelian, feminist, and psychoanalytic discourses); and John L. Hodge, Donald K. Struckmann, and Lynn Dorland Trost, Cultural Bases of Racism and Group Oppression (Berkeley: Time Readers Press, 1975) for a critical examination of Western hierarchical dualizing.

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contingent version of these three (also dichotomized)

"relations" and, more significantly, their incorporation

in/as the public-private dichotomy obscures 1) the

ideological significance of the dichotomized "relations"; 2)

their persistence and centrality as unacknowledged ordering

principles; and 3) the powerful constraints they continue to

impose on our thought and action— most importantly, our

understanding of power relations.

For these reasons, historicizing the establishment

of the public-private dichotomy in the Western tradition has

significance for our understanding not only of the

domination relations implicit in the hierarchical division

of public and private, but other domination relations as

well. I return to these issues, and the implications for

contemporary inquiry, at the conclusion of the study.

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COMMUNAL/EGALITARIAN CONFIGURATION

The Configurational Model

Before proceeding to examine the Communal/

Egalitarian configuration, I wish to clarify certain

assumptions made in the model of social systems utilized

here. First, in the absence of literary texts and

sufficient archeological evidence, our models of the

earliest human social systems are necessarily speculative.®?

However, a diversity of investigations— including early

hominid archeology, primatological studies, and

ethnographies of contemporary gathering and hunting groups—

provides a variety of data for constructing models of even

the distant past. I assume that such constructions are

necessary and valuable components of the present project:

pursuing the history of hierarchical social relations.

Second, mono-causal or prime-mover explanations are

®?"Disagreements are to be expected in a field that covers so vast a stretch of human evolution, extending from the birth of our species to the threshold of civilization, and where the available data derived from biology, archaeology, and anthropology is fragmented and uncoordinated." See E. Reed, Woman's Evolution (New York and Toronto: Pathfinder Press, 1975), p. xiii.

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rejected as overly reductionist and universalizing.®® The

range and complexity of factors constituting particular

historical situations warrants not unilineal but systemic

and processual explications.®® I assume that the increased

complexity and flexibility of configurational models is

required in order to move beyond positivist reductionism.®®

®®The prime-mover theories have been widely criticized and generally displaced by more complex explanations stressing the interaction of a number of variables. For a review and critique of state formation theories and the development of an alternative, multifaceted systems- ecological model, see Charles Redman, The Rise of Civilization; From Earlv Farmers to Urban Societv in the Ancient Near East (San Francisco; W. H. Freeman & Co., 1978), chap. 7; also Claessen and Skalnik; Cohen and Service; and Haas (cited in chapter 1 above). For other theories encompassing multiple variables, see also Steward, Theory of Cultural Change; Adams, The Evolution of Urban Societv; Service, Origins of the State and Civilization. Rapp, "Origins" (p. 9) argues: "The refutation of the hydraulic imperative and population pressure models on both theoretical and empirical grounds should make us wary of overly-simpie explanations which pump causes out of correlations." See her note 8 for additional citations of prime-mover critiques.

®®Rapp, "Origins," p. 9. Redman (p. 12) argues for a systemic, ecological approach leading to "a greater concern with variability and interrelatedness in the organization of societies." See also Jane M. Atkinson, "Review Essay: Anthropology," Signs 8 (Winter 1982): 247-48. Whyte argues cogently for and presents a good example of the value of studying variation, especially through a comparative approach looking for social structural configurations. See Martin K. Whyte, The Status of Women in Preindustrial Societies (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978).

®®For a discussion of "configurational frameworks" supportive of the approach taken here, see Robert W. Cox, "Production, Hegemony and the Future," Paper presented to the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Washington, DC, August 1980.

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Third, feminist critiques of androcentric bias in

anthropological theory and fieldwork bring into question the

accuracy and therefore adequacy of many "reigning"

interpretations.®! While anthropologists are generally

conscious of and concerned with the complex issues of

ethnocentrism, androcentric bias is particularly problematic

in regard to the study of hierarchical social relations. I

assume that integrating the feminist critique is crucial to

the project of understanding the development of social

hierarchy. Recognizing the enormity of that task, my

®!The literature is extensive. See, for example, Sally Slocum, "Woman the Gatherer: Male Bias in Anthropology," in Women in Perspective: A Guide for Cross-Cultural Studies. ed. Susan Jacobs (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1971), pp. 9-21; Eleanor Leacock, "Women in Egalitarian Societies," in Becoming Visible, ed. Renate Bridenthal and Claudia Koonz (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1977), pp. 17- 19; Nancy Scheper-Hughes, "Introduction," Women's Studies 10 (1983): 109-16; Dube, "Introduction"; Sharon W. Tiffany, "Models and the Social Anthropology of Women: A Preliminary Assessment," MAN 13 (1978): 38-41; Susan C. Rogers, "Woman's Place: A Critical Review of Anthropological Theory," Comparative Studies in Societv and Historv 20 (January 1978): 142-47; Frances Dahlberg, "Introduction," and Adrienne L. Zihlman, "Women as Shapers of the Human Adaptation," both in Woman the Gatherer. ed. Frances Dahlberg (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1981): 2-6, 75-85. For critiques of male dominance theories, especially that of sociobiology, see, for example, Marshall Sahlins, The Use and Abuse of Biologv (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1976); Stephanie Coontz and Peta Henderson, "Introduction" in Women * s Work. Men's Property: The Origins of Gender and Class, eds. Stephanie Coontz and Peta Henderson (London: Verso, 1986); Elise Boulding, The Underside of Historv: A Veiw of Women Through Time (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1976), chap. 2; Sacks, Sisters, chap. 1; M. Kay Martin and Barbara Voorhies, Female of the Species (New York: Columbia University Press, 1975), chaps. 1-6.

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efforts are necessarily provisional; I provide extensive

citations to document my process and facilitate further

exploration of these issues.®2

The following model posits three overlapping but

distinguishable configurations of societal organization:

Communal/Egalitarian, Lineage/Kin Corporate, and

Archaic/Civil State. The subjects of chapters two, three,

and four respectively, the three types and their

characteristic features were derived from numerous sources

in the anthropological and state-formation literature

(citations appear as appropriate in the text). As ideal

types they do not exhaust the description of human societies

but serve as heuristic tools facilitating an examination of

societies— especially the variability of social organization

within societies— over the span of human existence. Given

my focus on the public-private dichotomy and its

institutionalization in the Athenian polis, I emphasize in

my model those systems and developments most directly

®^Redman's comment (p. 7) in regard to lack of details is apropos: "Past archeological biases and a lack of data preclude an exhaustive evaluation or reanalysis at this time. However, it would be counterproductive to avoid a synthetic approach because the data base is not "complete": trial formulations, which help to focus thinking and redirect future investigations, are at the core of scientific progress."

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antecedent to Western state formation, especially where an

abundance of evidence permits historical specificity.

It will remain unquestioned that the early developments in the Near East had a greater effect on the nature of Western civilization than analogous developments anywhere else in the world. Direct historical connections link the later, historic empires and peoples of the Near East with the early Mediterranean civilizations of Greece and Rome that are acknowledged in many respects to be ancestral to European civilization. The Greeks and Romans were influenced by their Near Eastern predecessors' writing, ethics, science, engineering, art, mythology, architecture, and political administration.®®

Recognizing that available technology, at a minimum,

sets broad limits on socioeconomic organization, I

incorporate mode of production f a c t o r s . ®4 "However, it is

®®Redman, p. 6. See also Stanley Diamond, In Search of the Primitive (New Brunswick; Transaction Books, 1974), pp. 23-24; "The classical civilizations of Greece and Rome that are ancestral to the Western experience are the heirs of the ancient Near Eastern cultures mediated through Crete and the Aegean. Thus actual history— not merely logical, abstract and determined evolutionay sequences— becomes the locus of our concern." Cohen, "Introduction," p. 13: "It is clear that studies of state formation must ultimately bring us back to the classical materials."

®^My emphasis is on variability in societal organization but "maps on to" the widely acknowledged transformations delineated by Lewis Henry Morgan and employed by Engels in Origin of the Familv. Private Propertv. and the State. Their "epochs" are 1) "savagery": the emergence of the first humans, engaged initially in simple foraging and later in gathering and hunting activities for food production; 2) "barbarism" : the introduction of agriculture and domestication of animals, associated with the production of surplus; and 3) "civilization": the development of metallurgy and trade, associated with expansion of urban populations. While willing to acknowledge the parameters set by transitions from paleolithic to neolithic to iron age technology, I disclaim the pitfalls of simplistic evolutionary schema, especially the tendency to assume

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the relations set up among people as they produce,

distribute, exchange, and consume the goods upon which they

live that are crucial'*®® for understanding social relations.

Social differentiation processes can be seen to cluster

around the politics of kinship and citizenship, military

complexes, trade/exchange relationships, and the changing

content and role of cosmological systems and/or

ideologies.®® Although women's reproduction is an aspect of

some of the preceding variables, it is addressed in this

project as a primary factor for consideration in our pursuit

of the history of social hierarchies.

Wherever possible, the model builds upon historical

evidence in order to lend support to its generalizations.

But the intent is to identify similarities, not to suggest

that all societies of a particular configuration evidence

all the characteristics specified.

unilineal, and/or deterministic sequences.

®®Mona Etionne and Eleanor Leacock, "Introduction," in Women and Colonization, eds. M. Etionne and E. Leacock (New York: Praeger, 1980), p. 8.

®®Rayna Rapp Reiter, "The Search for Origins: Unraveling the Threads of Gender Hierarchy," Critioue of Anthropology 3 (Winter 1977): 9-13. Heightened attention to the socio-political significance of symbol systems is an aspect of post-positivist approaches appearing throughout social inquiry. They are especially relevant to our understanding of the processes by which authority and/or hierarchical relations are legitimated. For a discussion of the significance of cosmological systems in archaic civilizations, see Robert McC. Adams, The Evolution of Urban Societv.

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Communal/Egalitarian Configuration

What we know of prehistory (and can infer from studying the few stone-age cultures that survived into our century) indicates that, during the hundreds of thousands of years when the human species lived as hunters and gatherers, women, men and children shared the same experience worlds. They traveled together, learned how to scan new terrains together, and on the whole acquired the same skills. Women hunted as well as men, men did food gathering as well as women, and both cared for small children.®?

My depiction of egalitarian societies draws upon the

study of archeological and fossil records, contemporary

evolutionary theory, and ethnographic studies of

contemporary subsistence societies.®® For prehistory, a

variety of subdisciplines have generated a wealth of

information on human evolution and the earliest allegedly

®?Elise Boulding, Women; The Fifth World (New York: Headline Series, February 1980), p. 8.

®®Those societies most intensively and frequently studied are the Kalihari iKung, Australian Aboriginal populations, Mbuti Pygmies, and North American Eskimos. Elman R. Service's The Hunters (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1966) draws upon these four and Great Basin Shoshone, Algonkian Indians, Tierra del Fuego Indians, Malay Peninsula Semang, and Andaman Islanders. Dahlberg, "Introduction," note 1 (p. 27-28) identifies the "foraging" societies— included in the Ethnographic Atlas and Human Relations Area Files— most frequently employed in "many systematic comparative studies." Eleanor Leacock cites studies affirming the Mbuti, San, and the Montagnais-Naskapi as fully egalitarian gatherer-hunters. See her "Women, Power and Authority," in Visibilitv and Power, p. 110, notes 6, 7, and 8. See also her discussion of evaluating "parity in decision-making between women in men," p. 112.

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egalitarian societies: gathering-hunting groups.®® In

addition to "inferences regarding prehistoric

organization...based on a thorough examination of the

archeological record,"!®® we have ethnographically rich data

on contemporary gathering-hunting groups. While we cannot

assume that these groups are representative of the earliest

human societies,!®! studying people still engaged in

gathering-hunting practices enhances our interpretation of

®®See especially, Nancy Tanner, On Becoming Human (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), on interdisciplinary reconstructions of human evolution. Also, chapter 3 in Boulding's Underside. Please note that my employment of the conventional hyphenation of "gathering- hunting" throughout this study is an exception to my rule of using a hyphen between words to indicate contesting meanings (see note 1, chap. 1).

!®®Redman, p. 201.

!®!such attribution is especially unreliable given that all ethnographic studies necessarily reflect the intervention of western anthropologists. Not only have all studied groups been shaped by exposure to western influence, but the anthropologists studying them have done so from male-as-norm perspectives. As noted above, critiques of androcentric bias in ethnographic studies have revealed the tendency of anthropologists to "miss" significant aspects of women's roles, power, authority, etc. For discussion of these issues see Louise Lamphere, "Review Essay: Anthropology," Signs 2 (Spring 1977): 618-19; Martin and Voorhies, pp. 156-59; Rapp, "Origins," pp. 13-14; Judith Van Allen, "'Sitting on a Man:' Colonialism and the Lost Political Institutions of Igbo Women," in Woman the Gatherer. pp. 163-187; Coontz and Henderson, "Introduction," pp. 14 (and citations in notes 53-55), 24-5 (and citations in notes 94-97), and "Property Forms, Political Power and Female Labour in the Origins of Class and State Societies," in Women's Work. Men's Propertv. p. 125. See also Boulding's discussion around generalizing from contemporary to ancient foragers (Underside) pp. 76-77 and note 7, p. 106.

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archeological data and offers a unique lens on social

relations in pre-class societies.

Egalitarian relations, as the term implies, are

based "on the direct and more or less equal participation of

all adults in the production of basic necessities, as well

as in their distribution or exchange and in their

consumption. The basic resources— the land itself and the

plants, animals, and minerals on it— are available to

e v e r y b o d y . "!®2 w i t h no fixed territories or privatization

of resources, everyone— resident or visitor— has a claim to

basic resources.!®! There is general agreement that, in a

context of production for use only (i.e., absence of

surplus), sharing, reciprocity, and generalized cooperation

prevail and are adaptive social relations.!®4

!®^Etionne and Leacock, p. 9. Similar accounts of communal societies— i.e., commonly held resources, unrestricted access, and lack of hierarchical social relations— are found in Coontz and Henderson, "Property," p. 116; Sacks, Sisters, pp. 41, 72, 112-13; Marshall D. Sahlins, Tribesmen (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1968) ; Service, Hunters; Fried, Evolution; and Adams.

!®!Etionne and Leacock, p. 9; Coontz and Henderson, "Property," p. 116. Service, Hunters. p. 22: "In no primitive band is anyone denied access to the resources of nature— no individual owns these resources."

!®^Lila Leibowitz, "In the Beginning...: The Origins of the Sexual Division of Labour and the Development of the First Human Societies," in Women's Work. Men's Property, eds. Coontz and Henderson, pp. 51, 57; Tanner, Becoming. 139-49, 267; Coontz and Henderson, "Property," pp. 112-16, also citing R. Leakey & R. Levin, Origins (New York: n.p., 1977); Leacock, "Egalitarian Societies," p. 13; Gerda Lerner, The Creation of Patriarchy (New York: Oxford

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In regard to the division of labor, Leibowitz argues

that in simple foraging groups all members— including four

to twelve year olds, "who are already weaned and capable of

feeding themselves, but not yet sexually mature"!®®—

variously engaged in gathering activities.

Short life spans, a relatively [compared to other large primates] late age of sexual maturation, and rates of population growth which suggest that fertility levels were low combine to indicate that early hominid populations were composed primarily of young, [behaviorally] non-dimorphic members. Species survival could not, then, have hinged on the subsistence activities of the few adults in a group, but must have depended on the development of cooperative production by all and for all.!®®

University Press, 1986), p. 29; Sacks, Sisters, p. 41 cites R. B. Lee and I. DeVore, eds., Man the Hunter (Chicago: Aldine, 1968) and M. G. Bicchieri, ed.. Hunters and Gatherers Todav (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1972) in regard to the absence of "social ranking based on strength or wealth" among collecting societies. See Service, Hunters. pp. 14-25 for a discussion of reciprocity and cooperation as the principal "exchange relation" in gathering-hunting groups.

!®®Leibowitz, p. 59.

!®®Leibowitz, p. 55. This is in reference to hominid populations, transitional to homo sapiens. Also, Leacock, "Power and Authority," p. 113: "It is necessary to get beyond the stereotypical assumption that baby bearing and nurturing necessarily 'tie women down' to household chores while men are free to engage in valued social activities....Reproduction of the group is recognized as the primary gocus for both male and female activities in gathering/hunting societies, whether in camp or away from it, and these activities cannot be defined either empirically or theoretically in terms of female housekeeping or male provisioning."

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Examination of the remains ("simple artefacts and

food detritus") associated with early human groups indicates

that simple gathering-hunting techniques, in which all

participated equally, show little change over a period of

several million years.!®? This long period of "cultural

origins"!®® ^^s ushered in with the development of gathering

techniques— an invention increasingly attributed to women on

the basis of their greater need (when childrearing) to

gather a surplus beyond their own daily subsistence

requirements.!®® Rather than the (later) development of

!®?Leibowitz, pp. 62-63, 69. "These remains reflect the use of foraging techniques which are simple, involve both sexes, and call for similar activities on the part of both" (p. 62). This long period refers to the initial and extensive, predominately vegetarian phase of human development, prior to the Middle Pleistocene evidence of projectile weapons and use of fire. See Martin and Voorhies, pp. 172-75; Zihlman, pp. 104-11. Redman (p. 89) also notes that "99% of the time during which humans have inhabited this planet, they lived by hunting and gathering."

!®®Diamond, p. 126.

!®®Tanner, p. 222: "Because of nutritional requirements of pregnancy and nursing and overt demands from hungry children, women had more motivation for technological inventiveness, for creativity in dealing with the environment, for learning about plants, and for developing tools to increase productivity and save time. Males continued to forage for plants without tools as did the ape ancestors and probably also borrowed some of the gathering technology." For positing women as the first tool-makers in their development of carrying techniques, see Slocum, pp. 9- 21; also R. B. Lee, "Subsistence Ecology oflKung Bushman (Ph.D. diss.. University of California, Berkeley, 1965); and "What Hunters Do for a Living, or. How to Make Out on Scarce Resources," in Man the Hunter. ed. R. B. Lee and Irvin DeVore (Chicago: Aldine Publishing Co., 1968), pp. 30-48, both cited by Zihlman, p. 376, note 7. See also Mies, p.

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tools/weapons and social practices associated with hunting,

archeological and fossil data and contemporary ethnographic

studies suggest that food gathering activities were more

crucial than hunting in early human societal development.ü ®

Gathering and not hunting was the initial food-getting behavior that distinguished ape from human. This was an innovation whereby human females used tools to obtain food for themselves as well as to sustain their young through the long period of dependency, walked long distances, and carried food bipedally...[note deleted]. From the beginning of the human adaptation, a woman's role encompassed reproductive, economic, and social components. Furthermore, rather than a leading force.

55; Boulding, Underside, pp. 72 and note 2, p. 105. For a model of human origins presenting women as innovators in tool making, gathering, carrying, and sharing food, see Nancy Tanner and Adrienne L. Zihlman, "Women in Evolution. Part I; Innovation and Selection in Human Origins," Signs 1 (1976), pp. 585-608.

ll®For discussion and documentation rejecting "man-the- hunter" as the paradigm of human evolution, see for example Mies, pp. 56-62; Boulding, Underside, chap. 3; Sacks, Sisters, especially chap. 2; Tanner, passim, especially pp. 22-28; Martin and Voorhies (183-90) review the kinship and residence data in 90 foraging societies in support of their critique of "modern characterizations of foraging societies that embrace the man-the-hunter hypothesis" (p. 186), specifically Steward and Service. Contemporary studies of gatherer-hunter societies indicate that "hunting does by no means have the economic importance which is usually ascribed to it and that the women are the providers of the bulk of the daily staple food." Quotation from Mies, p. 59. Also, on the centrality of carrying and sharing behaviors to hominid adaptation, see Dahlberg, ed., Woman the Gatherer. especially Dahlberg's introduction, and Zihlman's "Women as Shapers"; Jane Lancaster, "Carrying and Sharing in Human Evolution," Human Nature 1, (Feb 1978), 82-89; Jane Lancaster, Primate Behavior and the Emergence of Human Culture (New York: Holt, Rinehard & Winston, 1975), both cited in Rayna Rapp, "Review Essay: Anthropology," Signs 4 (Spring 1979): 502, note 22.

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hunting must have emerged late in human evolutionary history from a technological and social base in gathering [note deleted].ü i

With the development of projectile hunting weapons

and the controlled use of fire, food production patterns

change and a division of labor begins to emerge.Ü 2

Controlled use of fire and projectile hunting had profound

consequences for diet, productivity, and social relations.

First, increases in meat consumption had consequences for

general nutrition, longevity, and fertility. Recent

research!!! indicates that fertility (and infant survival)

are positively correlated with adequate nourishment

("undernutrition slows body growth, delays the time at which

puberty occurs and reduces fertility"), the proportion of

fat in a woman's body ("the age at which puberty occurs and

the maintenance of a regular menstrual cycle are correlated

!!!zihlman, p. 93.

!ÜLeibowitz, pp. 64-75; citing also C. Perles, "Hearth and Home in the Old Stone Age," Natural Historv 90, no. 10, 1981, pp. 38-41. See also Boulding, Underside, pp. 76-81.

!ÜRose E. Frisch, "Nutrition, Fatness and Fertility: The Effect of Food Intake on Reproductive Ability," in Nutrition and Human Reproduction, ed. W. Henry Mosely (New York, 1978), pp. 91-122; "Fatness, Puberty and Fertility," Natural History 89 (1980): 16-27; Rose E. Frisch and Janet W. McArthur, "Menstrual Cycles: Fatness as a Determinant of Minimum Weight for Height Necessary for their Maintenance or Onset," Science 185 (1974): 949-51; as cited in Leibowitz, p. 58, note 31. Sacks (Sisters, pp. 70-71) also cites G. Kolata, "iKung Hunter-Gatherers: Feminism, Diet, and Birth Control," Science 185 (1974) for research on fertility and body fat and nursing.

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with the proportion of a woman's body weight that is

invested in fat"), and reduced activity levels ("maintaining

high activity levels acts as a brake on female

fecundity"!!^). Earlier onset of puberty, increased

fecundity, and a longer lifespan translate into altered

potentials for population growth.

Second, projectile hunting dramatically alters

hunting practices, with implications for the division of

labor not only by sex but also by age.

Injuring or killing game from a distance calls for sustained quiet as the pursuer stalks an animal. One or a few individuals can bring in good-sized animals to feed a number of others....The techniques of projectile weapon hunting demand both training and self-control. Where earlier technologies had called upon large groups of the unskilled for surrounds, drives, or chases, and these participants saw much action and made a lot of noise, projectile hunting calls for silence and stealth and demands skill, experience, patience and strength.!!®

These changes in pursuing game presumably decreased the

participation of (unskilled) pre-adults and women with

infants.!!® Leibowitz argues that new skills, techniques.

Ü4&11 quotations in this paragraph are from Leibowitz, pp. 58-63. "...Women who lead sedentary lives become pregnant more quickly, give birth more often and have more children than women who are highly mobile and engage in strenuous activities." Leibowitz, p. 63, citing Frish, "Fatness," and Nancy Howell, Demoaraohv of the Dobe Area !Kung (New York, 1979).

!!®Leibowitz, p. 64.

!!®Sacks, Sisters, pp. 67-68 states that only projectile hunting is gender-differentiated, women being "integral participants" when "collective game drives are employed." She additionally cites Phyllis Kaberry, Aboriginal Woman;

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and tasks developed in association with processing products

of the hunt, converting skins into clothing and carrying

devices, and making tools for the hunt and for the

processing tasks. The greater complexity of the tasks

required training and experience, thus lengthening the time

it took to "become a fully productive participant in the

progressively more elaborate social setting."!!? Presumably

the supervision and training of dependent pre-adults

occurred less on the hunt and more at the hearth, thus

falling to (or being preferred by) those adults who less

frequently participated in hunting activities. If the

improvement in diet did in fact increase fecundity and

decrease infant mortality, it seems likely that more and

more often the non-hunters would be reproductive women.!!®

Sacred and Profane (London: G. Routledge and Son, 1939), p. 18; C. W. M. Hart and Arnold Pilling, The Tiwi of North Austrialia (New York: Holt, Rinehard, and Winston, 1960), pp. 41-42; Diamond Jenness, The Copper Eskimo (Ottawa: Acland, 1922), p. 149; David Damas, "The Diversity of Eskimo Societies," in Lee and DeVore, eds., Man the Hunter, p. 13. See also, Lemer's (pp. 41-42) discussion of women choosing economic activities other than big-game hunting.

!!?Leibowitz, p. 65.

Ü ® Additionally, as hunting included more dangerous large game, marginal populations could ill afford to risk the loss of reproductive women by participation in risk laden hunting. Mies, pp. 72-73; Coontz and Henderson, "Property, " p. 113. See also Lerner, p. 41: "Obviously, given [their] precarious and short life spans..., tribes which put the lives of their nubile women at risk...would not tend to survive as well as tribes in which women were otherwise employed."

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While a division of labor by sex and age emerges with the

differentiation of hunting and hearth activities, "there is

nothing about such a division of labour that would

necessarily create inequality."!!® Recent investigations of

foraging societies suggest "that there is a great deal more

flexibility to gender roles than we had formerly assumed;

that women's collective work processes and the social

relations built up around them are different from, but not

necessarily considered inferior to, those of m e n . " ! ^ ®

!!®Coontz and Henderson, "Property," p. 116. Karen Sacks, "State Bias and Women's Status," American Anthropologist 7 8 (197 6) argues "that a way of conceptualizing social relations and status which is valid for state societies, particularly contemporary capitalist ones, is being imposed on interpretations of the relative statuses of men and women in the real and/or hypothetical history of non-states....While I agree that this [rejection of gender differentiated roles] is the only form of sexual equality attainable from here (a capitalist state), I think it erroneous and counterproductive to insist it was the only form of equality possible in nonstates" (p. 565).

!2®Rapp, "Origins," p. 15, citing Patricia Draper, "Kung Women," in Rayna R. Reiter, ed.. Toward an Anthropoloov of Women (New York: Monthly Review Press 1975) and Ruby Rohrlich Leavitt, Peaceable Primates and Gentle People (Module, NY: Harper & Row, 1975). Lerner (p. 29) notes: "There is now a rich body of modern anthropological evidence available which describes relatively egalitarian societal arrangements and complex and varied solutions by societies to the problem of the division of labor." See her discussion and the citations she provides (p. 246, note 6). There is also an extensive literature arguing that "separate can be equal." See for example: Martin and Voorhies, pp. 187-90; Etionne and Leacock, p. 10; Colin M. Turnbull, "Mbuti Womanhood," in Woman the Gatherer. ed. Dahlberg, p. 219; Coontz and Henderson, "Introduction," pp. 22-32; and especially, Peggy Reeves Sanday, Female Power and Male Dominance (London: Cambridge University Press, 1981), passim.

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As noted above, in the simplest gathering-hunting

societies, "men, women, and children engage in production

and consume what they produce...There is no need for kinship

structures or for structured exchanges among tribes."!21

This "steady-state" culture presupposes small, loosely

organized groups, the least degree of specialization of

tasks, and exchange based on reciprocity and minimal

intergroup conflict."Residence"— including simply being

present in a territory— adequately establishes one's right

of access to local resources. Later, the demographic

consequences (increased post-pubertal life spans, fertility,

and population size), coupled with the production

consequences (specialization of tasks, increased surplus

production capability, production differentiated by

ü^Lerner, p. 49. Steward's "composite hunting bands" (consisting "of many unrelated nuclear or biological families") (chap. 8) fits this description, whereas his contrasting "patrilineal" bands characterize post projectile hunting groups with exogamous marriage rules (chap. 7). Service, Hunters. (pp. 34-35) recognizes both types within gathering-hunting communities. Service (pp. 43-44) also discusses "sodalities," non-kinship, non- residential associations of people getting together on the basis of shared tasks, rituals, or recreation.

!^^Leibowitz, p. 63; Karen Sacks, "Engels Revisited: Women, the Organization of Production, and Private Property," in M. Rosaldo and L. Lamphere, eds.. Woman. Culture and Society (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1974), p. 208; also. Sacks, Sisters (pp. 112-23): " [P]reductive groups may or may not be divided by sex, but their lines of cooperation are more or less coincident with the residential group...and not with the family." For a discussion of reciprocity in gathering-hunting groups see Service, Hunters. pp. 14-21; also Fried, pp. 715-16.

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locality) of improved gathering, hunting, and processing

techniques provided the basis for expanded inter-group

contact and exchange— and important changes in social

organization.

Chevillard and Leconte note that most

anthropologists regard the earliest kinship organization as

matrilineal and matrilocal,!!® in most cases subsequently

displaced by patriliny and patrilocality. If the male role

in procreativity was unrecognized prior to the domestication

of animals, it seems reasonable to assume that descent along

the maternal line was the most obvious early principle by

which to note kin relations. Chevillard and Leconte go

further; "Since matrilineality is prior to patrilineality,

matrilocality would seem to have preceded all forms of

kinship and even appears to have been the first stable form of human organization."!24

Hunting, fishing or gathering were not in themselves capable of "spontaneously" generating an efficient and lasting socialization process. Indeed, it was only when human beings had established a system of socialization and descent which could be extended to increasingly numerous human groups, that they were able to free

Ü^Nicole Chevillard and Sebastien Leconte, "The Dawn of Lineage Societies: The Origins of Women's Oppression," in Women's Work. Men's Propertv. eds. Coontz and Henderson, p. 95. Recognizing the probability that matriliny preceded patriliny does not commit one to arguing for or believing in a matriarchal phase. See also Boulding, Underside, p. 112 and chap. 4.

!24coontz and Henderson, "Property," p. 99.

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themselves from merely taking from nature...and enter upon a more developed social and economic p r o c e s s . !25

In terms of social "order," observations of

contemporary gathering-hunting societies indicate that, in

the absence of formal codes, "authority is d i s p e r s e d " a n d

informal mechanisms— teasing, ridicule, disapproval, gossip,

ostracism, contests, song-duels, dancing, myth-making,

discussion— are used "to influence people, resolve problems,

and hold groups together."!2? In terms of warfare; "There

is no evidence for any primordial state of endemic warfare;

rather, among collecting societies, organized warfare seems

to have been rare or absent."!2®

War is a dangerous business and to run the risk of death is contrary to basic biological tendencies. In the absence of an organization that can mobilize or draft warriors, direct them, and give them reasons to fight, one does not expect that much real fighting will occur.!29

!2®Ibid., p. 101.

!2®Etionne and Leacock, p. 9.

!2?Etionne and Leacock, p. 11, for quotations; also Sacks, Sisters, p. 73; Service, Hunters. pp. 49-57; Leacock, "Egalitarian Societies," p. 13.

!2®Sacks, Sisters, p. 41. Also Boulding, Underside, pp. 97-100; Service, pp. 57-61; Steward, p. 191. Coontz and Henderson, "Introduction," (p. 19): "A more historically oriented study...[shows] that warfare is frequent in only eight per cent of hunting and gathering societies,..." citing G. Lenski and J. Lenski, Human Societies (New York: n.p., 1974), p. 138.

!2®Service, Hunters. p. 59.

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As a diversity of productive techniques and

expansion of populations occurred, there was a very gradual

transformation in social relations, especially in regard to

the bases upon which claims to resources were determined.

As long as production remained communal and for use only,

all members stood in an equal relationship of "producers-

owners."!!® As groups expanded and the survival value of

stable social relations ("if only to ensure that experience

was transmitted from one generation to the next"!®!)

increased, the production and distribution of resources

became more structured. communal societies developed a

variety of descent and residence rules to systematize social

interaction within and among groups. These included incest

rules and exogamy (the custom of marrying outside of one's

own social group, thus circulating wives and/or

husbands!!2), with the codification of marriage and

residence rules, "for the first time, the possibility of a

contradiction between the role of producer and of owner

arose."!!! This potentially contradictory dynamic between

producer and owner roles is characteristic of the second

configuration of the model— "Lineage/Kin Corporate" social

!!®Sacks, Sisters, p.122.

!!!chevillard and Leconte, "Dawn," p. 105.

Ü^Leibowitz, p. 73.

!!!coontz and Henderson, "Property," p. 111.

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systems— and represents a very significant change in social

relations. Before turning to that configuration, I wish to

review the Communal/Egalitarian configuration in terms of

the core-relations identified previously.

Interpreting the "Core-Relations"

In the absence of direct evidence of their

nonmaterial cultures, we can only speculate about the

cosmologies of Communal/Egalitarian societies. My remarks

will be limited and merely suggestive; they are based upon

the model of their material culture presented here and the

ethnographic material and interpretations of surviving

foraging communities.

To the extent that the configuration presented above

is accurate, I propose that the simplest foragers

experienced a minimal differentiation of their "selves" from

their environment (in contrast to extreme "distanciation" in

late-capitalism). With only rudimentary tools, interaction

with one's habitat was immediate and direct; knowledge about

one's habitat, however, was extensive. Primary needs—

maintaining one's existence— were the focus, without complex

elaborations around maintenance activities. The

"subjective-objective" relation was less that of

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manipulation than interaction with and within a given,

variously accommodating and/or hostile environment.

In terms of the "inter-subjective" core-relation,

absence of age or sex differentiation in food acquisition

suggests minimal social differentiation; once weaned, all

members participate in a similar fashion in the pursuit and

gathering of food. That is, to a significant degree, all

participants shared similar "experience worlds." In terms

of size, composition, and interactive patterns of

individuals in the earliest human "groups," speculations

vary considerably; some authors conclude that "mothers-

children groups were the first social units," without

permanent attachments to adult males."135

In terms of the "intra-subjective" core-relation,

women's reproductive activities were distinguished (from

animal fertility) first, by their literally social context

(of sharing gathered foods and group socialization), and

second, by their conscious appropriation of generative and

reproductive k n o w l e d g e . 136 other words, one of the

134pQr a discussion of Paleolithic "ego demarcations" in relation to world views, see Habermas, p. 104.

135ipanner, especially 219-23; Mies, p. 56 (including citations); and Martin and Voorhies, pp. 170-177.

136gee Rapp, "Review Essay," p. 502 and her citations. Zihlman, p. 93: "From the beginning of the human adaptation, a woman's role encompassed reproductive, economic, and social components." Mies argues that the "first means of production with which human beings act upon nature is their

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earliest and most significant human adaptations was women's

consciousness of their reproductive capacities and their

concomitant appropriation of that knowledge; therefore,

identifying women's fertility with animal fertility (i.e.,

denying conscious influence) significantly misrepresents the

"intra-subjective" r e l a t i o n . 137

With advances in gathering and hunting techniques, a

greater but still quite limited differentiation of

subjective-objective might have arisen. Controlled use of

fire permitted a variety of processing techniques that

extended the range of environments humans could exist in.

The increase in division of labor presumably generated a

greater interdependence of all members, such that the

stabilization of social relations had increased survival

value.

own body" (p. 52) . Given their "qualitatively different" bodies, men and women appropriate nature— specifically their own bodily nature— in qualitatively different ways (pp. 52- 53). Women consciouslv appropriate their bodily nature— "their own generative and productive forces" (p. 54) ; by observation and experiment, women acquire "knowledge about the functions of their bodies, about the rhythms of menstruation, about pregnancy and childbirth" (p. 54). That women in pre-patriarchal societies consciously regulated their reproduction (by contraceptive and abortive techniques and infanticide) is noted in Mies, p. 54; Etionne and Leacock, p. 13; Coontz and Henderson, "Property," p. 117; Sacks, Sisters, p. 70. See also the citations (Lee 1972, Kolata, 1974, Kaberry, 1939, Birdsell 1968) in Sacks, Sisters, p. 70, and in Mies, p. 54.

^3?A denial of "conscious influence" is observed to occur as an attribute of cosmological/ideological reorientation in the transition to state societies.

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In egalitarian band societies decision-making is widely dispersed and leaders do not hold formal authority....Good working relations in a band or camp are maintained by both sexes through serious discussion, sha^ personal criticism in the form of teasing and joking, and often elaborate ceremonies that use song and dance to ritualize interdependence and help dissipate conflict.[note deleted].... The economic structure that underlies egalitarian forms of decision-making is such that individual well being is directly and immediately dependent on group well-being. All produce is shared and no one can be well fed while others go hungry. This generalized sharing is, in turn, based on open access to all basic resources, on universal ability to obtain and process food, and on the direct participation of all able people in the production and distribution of food and other basic goods.[note deleted] Within this structure there is no dichotomy between "public" and "private" sectors of the economy, and the division of labour according to which each sex has its own specialties binds women and men in reciprocal exchange relations without leading to female dependence on males in individual f a m i l i e s . 3-38

ISBleacock, "Power and Authority," p. 111.

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KIN CORPORATE/LINEAGE CONFIGURATION

However tenuous its beginnings, cultivation eventually had a revolutionary effect on the course of human biocultural evolution. For the first time, human communities began to significantly alter their physical environments, and to exert control over the survival or extinction of plants and animals. The higher level of productivity that cultivation eventually guaranteed allowed greater numbers of people to congregate in increasingly smaller eimounts of geographical space. Sedentary villages and greater population density themselves led to new challenges for effective human social organization.139

My categorization of this configuration refers to

changes in social relations arising concomitantly with the

production of food s u r p l u s e s . 140 such surpluses have been

attributed to a variety of factors, here assumed to have

combined in different ways, depending on sociologically.

ll^Martin and Voorhies, p. 212.

140sacks, Sisters, (p. 115) identifies kin corporations as a "productive mode of food producers" (also citing Meillassoux 1972 and Sahlins 1968). Coontz and Henderson, "Property," (p. 118) point out that "kin corporate ownership may have appeared among certain foragers where there were rich and diverse resources which allowed a sedentary lifestyle," if this was also accompanied by some recognition the advantages of "planning." To the extent that production of food surplus is associated with agriculture, this configuration emerges with the "Neolithic Revolution." For an extensive discussion of the origins of agriculture, see Redman, chap. 4; for an additional review of research on the transition from gathering to planting see Boulding, Underside, chap. 4.

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historically, and ecologically diverse contexts. In other

words, no fixed sequence or co-occurrence of herding,

horticulture, animal husbandry, agriculture, trade, and/or

war-plunder is assumed. However, the elaboration of descent

and residence rules (the increase in social structuring

noted above) in conjunction with increased exchange

activities (facilitated by the existence of surpluses)

generated important, patterned transformations in social

relations. The kin corporate/lineage configuration is not

here intended as a class-stratified categorization (kinship

remains the basis of organization throughout its

variability); it does incorporate some "ranking" societies

(patron-client relations, chiefdoms), with various potential

for institutionalizing social inequalities. 1*1

Ranking or transitional societies are highly variable. At the egalitarian end of the gamut, exchange is interpersonal and binds people together in co-

141a s previously noted, no hard and fast distinctions are intended or warranted. See also Etionne and Leacock, (p. 12): "It is hard to draw sharp lines between egalitarian societies and those that are slightly ranked on the one hand, and stratified societies and those that are strongly ranked on the other." In "Power and Authority," Leacock argues that a "focus on exchange and the division of labour" have greater explanatory power (than "competition and warfare") in regard to the transition between egalitarian societies and ranked ones: "As the importance of inter-group exchange increases (a slow development but speeded up by sedentarism under certain ecological and historical conditions), growing economic dependence on products gained from outside groups means that all members of a village no longer have equal access to significant resources and that the basis for unequal relations among them is laid: ranking begins to develop" (p. 119).

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operative networks, while at the other end, exchange is becoming structured in terms of market relations that enable a high ranking elite to gain control over the labour of low ranking people and esteüDlish themselves as a ruling class....[At one end], no marked economic advantages as yet accrue to the high ranking person. At the other end of the continuum, however, high ranking people are surrounded by pomp and circumstance, and, as redistributors of considerable wealth, they have access to plentiful supplies and luxury goods, and are free from onerous c h o r e s . 142

Increasing issues of "resource claims" were met by

"the gradual emergence out of communal societies of a kind

of property held by the corporate kin group, accessible to

all its members and inalienable by any individual, yet

inaccessible to non-members."143 claims were no longer

based upon the communal principle of simple reciprocity

among co-residents, but rather on kin-based rules with

differential effects on residents and non-residents.

The gradation from communal to kin corporate society is gradual,...but the distinction is clear at both ends: in the one, people share and consider themselves related because they live together,... in the other, people live together and share because they are related,...The key difference is the existence or non-existence of discrete lineal corporate groups exercising exclusive control over particular subsistence resources within a given territory,...Clearly, the transition to food production, which created the need for continuity in work and storage, stimulated the more formal assignment of particular rights, obligations and use of resources to distinct kin g r o u p s . 144

142Leacock, "Power and Authority," pp. 119-20.

143coontz and Henderson, "Property," pp. 110-11; Sacks, Sisters, pp. 115-22.

144coontz and Henderson, "Property," pp. 117-18.

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The shift from communal/egalitarian societies— with

"informal" sharing and individual mobility— to kin

corporate/lineage societies— with "formalized" reciprocity

and kinship-based obligations— had tremendous consequences

for processes of social differentiation and possibilities of

social hierarchy. Once an incentive for group regulation of

resources was operative, increased organization of

production and distribution altered accumulation patterns,

permitting an escalation of social differentiation along a

number of dimensions (e.g., age, sex, socioeconomic). In

this chapter I discuss the social consequences of kin-

corporate ownership, arguing that in competitive

environments the subordination of women— the privatization

of their productive and reproductive capacities— is adaptive

for corporate property-owning groups, and that

patrilocal/patrilineal systems are adaptive by virtue of

their greater potential for intensifying surplus production.

Patrilocal societies, where women moved at marriage, had greater potential for expansion because they offered more opportunities and incentives to intensify production beyond the level necessary for everyday subsistence. This was due to the greater value of women's labour and reproductive potential in pre-plow agricutlural systems. The more productive the society, the more expansionary it could become, absorbing or conquering more stable, "steady state" societies. It is important to stress, though, that this analysis implies no value judgment that patrilocal societies were somehow "better". Rather, they were simply more capable of exercising coercive power over their own members (women.

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junior men, children) to intensif/ production than were more egalitarian social s y s t e m s . ^45

Distinguishing social systems based on collective or

corporate property from class systems based on private

property has significant implications for our understanding

of "public" and "private." On the one hand, the concept of

"collective property" is evident in kin corporate/lineage

societies and is suggestive of the notion of "collective

goods" associated with contemporary understandings of

"public." On the other hand, however, the notion of

collective property employed in kin corporate/lineage

societies is based on kinship— not "political" or property-

based— groups which need not coincide with the "societal

collectivity" we associate with the "public" (in contrast to

the "private"). In other words, rather than assuming the

public-private dichotomy is universal, distinguishing

corporate property relations from communal or class

(privately derived) property relations permits a richer

exploration of the contingent development of "public" and

"private."

Marriage and residence rules took on new

significance in kin corporate societies because potential

contradictions between the role of producer and owner were

145coontz and Henderson, "Introduction," pp. 37.

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introduced: "When males moved to their wives' residences

after marriage, they became producers within a kin corporate

group in which they were not owners. When females moved,

the same was true for t h e m . "^46 whether and to what extent

the move was experienced as disadvantageous depended on yet

other factors, including spatial distance from one's natal

[birth] group and resource differentials between kin

corporations. 147 Embedded within a context of varying

productive capabilities (pastoral, horticulture, etc.),

expanding populations, increasing specialization, and

greater out-group contact, kin corporate social relations—

while not inherently unequal— permit the accumulation and

continuity of unequal resource distributions, thus providing

a basis for recurring, structural inequalities.

A specific consequence of kin corporate property

relations is increased interest in the resource strength and

biological perpetuation of the particular kin group:

When access to resources is mediated through a kin corporate owner, group boundary maintenance becomes vital....All kin corporate societies, whatever their residence and marriage rules, need to control and regulate reproduction in a manner different from communal societies. And the need to control reproduction has different implications for women than

14Gcoontz and Henderson, "Property," p. 111.

14?See also Viana Muller, "The Formation of the State and the Oppression of Women: Some Theoretical Considerations and A Case Study in England and Wales," Radical Review of Political Economy 9 (1977): 9.

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In other words, the incentive structures have changed in regard to group interest in regulating reproduction. Women are doubly valucible to the group; as indispensable participants in the cyclical and labor intensive agricultural production process, and as producers

of additional lineage members and l a b o r e r s . 149 % e pattern

of patrilocal ity displacing matrilocality is well

documented, 150 and numerous explanations for its occurrence

are posited.151 Because the shift to patrilocality is so significant for the status of women as a group, I will

summarize a variety of reasons advanced by scholars for the emergence and subsequent expansion of patrilocal systems.

148coontz and Henderson, "Property," pp. 120-21.

14 9II Population control mechanisms among humans (techniques for abortion and contraception are known in most if not all tribal societies) are apparently suspended, or at least practiced more selectively, once nomadic existence has been replaced by a settled agricultural way of life. Children become an asset rather than a handicap." See Boulding, Underside, p. 11.

150Martin and Voorhies, p. 223-24.

151see for example; Sahlins, pp. 65-67; Tiffany, "Models," pp. 34-35, 42-43; Lemer, pp. 47-53; Sacks, Sisters, pp. 116-122; Chevillard and Leconte, "Dawn," pp. 79-107, especially 97-102; Martin and Voorhies, pp. 217-249 regarding horticulturalists and 287-96 regarding agriculturalists; Coontz and Henderson, "Property," pp. 119- 42; Boulding, Underside, chaps. 4 and 5.

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Under matrilocal systems, adult males are dispersed,

moving to the localities of their wives and away from their

own matrilineal groups. Men who are related are thus

distributed among other groups, initially as "strangers."

To the extent that a sexual division of labor is in place,

such that adult males are associated with "warrior"

activities and "political leadership," local communities

then contain "leaders" from several descent groups. Studies

indicate that such matrilocal societies

...have a higher degree of internal political stability. Matrilineal descent groups establish a complex network of kinship ties and kinship loyalties which effectively cut across local corporations and potential special- interest groups. Matrilineal horticulture societies, then, seem to be adaptive in habitats that allow considerable stabilitv in human organization (the same is no doubt true for foraging adaptations as well). Matriliny is ideally an open system that disperses rather than consolidates its potential sources of power— its men. Such an adaptation seems to arise where resources are equal to or exceed those required to accommodate the needs of extant populations, and where competition between communities in the same niche is absent or infrequent. ^52

However, in the face of competitive environments—

correlated with conditions of surplus production (plow

agriculture, herding, specialization, etc.), increased

trade, and/or military expansion— the integrative, "steady-

state" framework of matriliny/matrilocality loses its

152j5artin and Voorhies, p. 222.

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adaptive v a l u e . ^53 Competitive environments increase the

incentive for property owning kin corporations to accumulate

surpluses, "to privatize both female productive and

reproductive capacities, "3-54 and to insure the retention of

goods within the group. This is true not only in the face

of external "social" threats (probably a minimal influence

on early horticultural/agricultural communities) and

ecological scarcity, but also as a function of prestige

competition between local patrilineal groups;

...Patrilocal kin corporations could make better use of the household production needed to transform male or female surpluses into feasts than could matrilocal societies, because lines of authority in external exchange were reinforced by domestic lines of authority. In patrilocal societies the people who provided the ledîour necessary for transforming surpluses into feasts (wives), were not owners within the kin corporation and therefore had less say over the allocation of food and other goods...^55

In terms of internal competition or external

threats, patriliny/patrilocality "not only provides a labor

structure for increased productivity [appropriating the

^53"[A]ny in situ development or external influence that places a premium on the production and accumulation of surpluses...fosters the crystallization of local groups which concentrate both wealth and defensive-offensive power in the hands of related males." See Martin and Voorhies, p. 223. In her examination of 150 societies, Sanday notes that male dominance of women is correlated with "unfavoureible environments" and "cultural disruption," measured by food supply insecurity, societal instability as a function of recent migration, and chronic warfare (pp. 171-83).

154coontz and Henderson, "Property," p. 113.

ISSlbid., p. 131.

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productive and reproductive labor of dispersed women—

multiply so with polygyny] but also the military structure

[clustering rather than dispersing related males] with which

to defend the resources so accumulated. "156 chevillard and

Leconte argue that, however the exchange of women

(patrilocality) became established for some groups, the

expansionary potential of patrilocality meant that "such

groups were subsequently bound to extend their model, either

through force or through e x a m p l e . "157

The shift to patrilocality had implications for

intra-lineage inequalities as well. Senior men of a lineage

controlled the circulation of women, thus holding

considerable power over junior men seeking wives:

The intersection between wealth accumulation and polygyny restricted the access of some groups, and of some men within groups (juniors), to wives, and thus to future as well as present labour. Polygyny created a potential scarcity of women because it allowed some men to monopolize many women. The power of some men over

155Martin and Voorhies, p. 236.

15*7Chevillard and Leconte, "Dawn," p. 100. I note here the parallel between establishing patrilocality and Cohen's explanation of state formation: while a number of "causes" may provide the initial impetus, "whatever sets off the process tends as well to set off other changes which, no matter how different they are to begin with, all tend to produce similar results." See Cohen's "Introduction," p. 8. Lerner also notes (pp. 30-31): "Seen over time, matrilineal societies have been unable to adapt to competitive, exploitative, techno-economic systems and have given way to patrilineal societies."

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other men thus increased as a result of the increase in the power of all men over their w i v e s . ^58

In sum, once kin corporate relations are the

principle for determining claims to resources, and exogamous

marriage rules prevail, the differential consequences of

various descent and residence rules (vis-a-vis the

concentration of strength in particular kin groups) provides

considerable incentive to shift to patrilocality/patriliny.

At the same time, the greater importance of marriage

(necessary for appropriating women's multiple labor

resources) under patrilocal rules generates hierarchy within

the kin corporation. Inter- and intra-group inequalities

become more rather than less likely.

What are the implications for gender relations?

Within patrilineal/patrilocality, it is women who move away

from their natal group upon marriage. Wives are thus placed

at some distance from possible support from their lineage

group and separated from direct control over their kin

corporate resources. However, women retain their claims as

"owners" (sisters) in their natal lineage and as "producers"

(wives) in their husband's lineage. All women embody both

i58coontz and Henderson, "Property," 139. See also, Lerner (p. 50): "The young men must offer labor services to the old men for the privilege of gaining access to women. Under such circumstances women also become the spoil for the warriors, which encourages and reinforces the dominance of older men over the community." Also, pp. 49-53.

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sister and wife roles— and correlative equal claims within

kin corporations— during their lifetime.

Thus, in a woman's life cycle, her relations to the means of production of both her own and her husband's lineage change. Young married women in their own lineage and in their husband's are subordinates, specifically daughters and wives in production relations. With age, they become controllers of labor and productive means— as sisters who control brothers' children's lineage affairs and as mothers who control their own children and their children's productive m e a n s . 1 5 9

In the communal configuration (prior to out-marrying

residence rules), every adult is throughout their life cycle

both producer and owner in relation to productive means and

resources. While kin corporate ownership introduces

temporal fluctuation in one's direct relation to resources

(for out-marrying spouses), it still "allows for a range of

relationships, some of which are sexually egalitarian. "150

There can be little question, however, that the shift from

matrilineal/matrilocality to patrilineal/patrilocality tends

to disadvantage women. First, "postmarital residence that

disperses related women jeopardizes their collective

159gacks, Sisters, p. 120.

15®Ibid., p. 121. Throughout their extensive discussion of the social consequences of kin corporate property relations— patriliny/patrilocality constituing only one of a number of possible variations— Coontz and Henderson, "Property" (pp. 119-26) note the possibilities for egalitarian relations, i.e., that male dominance is not inherent in the relations themselves.

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relationship to land and production."151 As related women

are dispersed from each other and distanced from their natal

support system, "they become economic producers and domestic

appendages of their individual male s p o u s e s . "152

Second, an increasing division of labor occurs with

the distinction made possible by surplus production. As

maximizing production becomes paramount (in contrast to

steady-state societies), production activities begin to

bifurcate into two "spheres"; "One is concerned with the

production of food,...The second is concerned with the

conversion of surpluses into portable wealth and their

strategic exchange for prestige, status, and power."163

15lMartin and Voorhies, p. 228. See also, Coontz and Henderson, "Property," p. 141-42.

152Martin and Voorhies, p. 235. Compare Sahlins, Tribesmen. p. 66: "The fate of a patrilineage hinges on the control men gain over their wives and their wives' productivity. Marriage then must challenge s woman's connections to her natal kinsmen and in some sense capture her for her husband's." And p. 64: "[T]his [patrilineal, patrilocal] family selectively accents certain patterns of relationship: the solidarity of paternal kinsmen, the subordination of junior-generation paternal kinsmen to senior, the detachment of women from their natal groups for procreation of their husbands' heirs. This is exactly the stuff lineages are made of,..."

153nartin and Voorhies, p. 235; see also their discussion of this dichotomy as "inside-outside," pp. 287- 96. See also Etionne and Leacock, p. 14: "...a 'public' sector of the economy concerned with production for accumulation and trade began to be differentiated from a 'private ' household or lineage sector concerned with production for subsistence and sharing. The division of labor between men and women then took on new significance." See also Kelly, p. 12: "The privatizing of child rearing and

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Women under patriliny/patrilocality are structurally

identified with and confined to "domestic"

production/reproduction and less and less participants in

the corporate group activities increasingly associated with

"prestige, status, and power."

Third, as noted above, emphasis on surplus

production is correlated with increased regulation of

women's sexuality. The "rights in women...are more

substantial in strong patrilineal systems. The husband

claims not merely wifely services but the woman as child-

bearer, her p r o g e n y . ..."154 in contrast to matrilineal

societies, the "importance attached to the establishment of

paternity in patrilineal communities" translates into

distinguishably greater regulation of women's sexuality in

the l a t t e r . 155

Thus, the shift to patriliny/patrilocality has

significant structural consequences for social relations:

domestic work and the sex typing of that work are social, not natural, matters. I suggest, therefore, that in treating this problem, we continue to look at prooertv relations as the basic determinant of the sexual division of labor and of the sexual order. The more the domestic and the public domains are differentiated, the more work, and hence property, are of two clearly distinguishable kinds."

154gahlins, Tribesmen. p. 66.

155Martin and Voorhies, pp.246-49, 290-96. Some examples of indicators of control are women's divorce rights and permissiveness in attitudes toward premarital sex and extra-marital liaisons.

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"... in patrilocal rather than matrilocal societies there was

greater potential for corporate property relations to

interact with the sexual division of labour to create

internal stratification, both sexual and socio-economic. "156

Availability of extensive archeological,

ethnographic, and historical data in regard to the kin-

corporate/lineage configuration permits the conclusion;

"There are a few facts of which we can be

certain. ... Sometime during the agricultural revolution

relatively egalitarian societies...gave way to more highly

structured societies....The earlier societies were often

matrilineal and matrilocal, while the latter surviving

societies were predominately patrilineal and patrilocal."15?

I have noted the potential of the latter societies for

consolidating resources and thereby generating inter- and

intra-lineage inequalities. We can better understand how

these inequalities are related to increasingly stratified

societies by examining additional environmental and

155coontz and Henderson, "Property," p. 111. From her examination of more than 150 societies, Sanday concludes: "Fifty-two percent of the matrilineal societies as compared to 19% of the patrilineal societies are sexually equal.... Similarly, 50% of the matrilocal societies as compared with 21% of the strictly patrilocal societies are sexually equal...." p. 177.

15?Lerner, p. 53.

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historical factors. I turn then to issues of

trade/exchange, warfare, and patron-client relationships.

Sahlins characterizes the kin-corporate mode of

production as "domestic" or "familial," referring to "the

strategic position assumed by individual households."158

contrast to the primarily nomadic existence of gatherer-

hunters, the sedentary patterns afforded by agricultural

food production vastly altered the physical and social

environment. The elaboration of kinship structures

permitted the integration of people into larger societies—

an increase in social organization made necessary by growing

populations and concomitant increasing spatial interaction.

To the extent that specialization remains minimal, exchange

within and between kin groups resembles the reciprocity

noted in communal s o c i e t i e s . 159 Additionally, access to the

means of subsistence continues to be guaranteed to all.l^®

However, to address the inevitable fluctuation in fortunes

of individual households, redistribution attains greater

15®Sahlins, Tribesmen. p. 75.

159with the important exception of the structured "exchange of spouses."

l^^Sahlins, Tribesmen. p. 76: "No household is...excluded from direct access to the means of its own survival, any more than it is excluded from participation in the greater social structure."

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significance in kin-corporate societies.1?1 Redistribution

requires that a surplus beyond the household's needs be

produced: "In other words, kinship responsibilities may

force effective producers to extend their output above and

beyond the call of domestic duty. More than an incentive to

charity, kinship gives the spur to productivity.

One very important way in which increased

productivity has been achieved historically is through

concentrating authority within kin relations, thus providing

the mechanism for pooling and reallocation implicit in the

redistributive mode. While the forms such centralization of

authority take vary considerably, the process of

centralization is clearly critical to the development of

hierarchical social relations. I turn then to a

consideration of centralizing structures that have emerged

historically in association with the accumulation of

surpluses, whether due to increasing specialization,

intensification of agriculture, favorable trade relations,

and/or military expansion. I focus on the development of

patron-client relationships— "relationships of service in

exchange for favors and/or protection"^^3— as particularly

17lpried, p. 719: "The move from egalitarian to rank society is essentially the shift from an economy dominated by reciprocity to one having redistribution as a major device."

172sahlins, Tribesmen. p. 78.

173j{aiier, p. 12, also citing Eric Wolf's definition.

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significant in the transition between kin corporate

societies and increasingly hierarchical, exploitative social relations.

Clientage systems, where they developed, had the effect of transforming kin corporate relations of production by freezing them into relations of permanent seniority/juniority. The junior could no longer expect eventually to become an elder and thus to escape exploitation.[note deleted] To the extent that it involved permanent, asymmetrical, institutionalized economic and social superiority/disability, the patron- client relationship had the potential for transcending rank differences, based on differential prestige or ritual, and thus of becoming the basis for assignment of people to true classes. The patron's claim of a right to his client's tribute and services could be the seed of a true class relationship between aristocrat and commoner.

Variously designated as "kinship-based kingdoms,"^^5

"barbarian chiefdoms,"^^5 and "highly stratified prestate

societies,"177 I include clientship and the centralizing of

174coontz and Henderson, "Property," p. 144.

175coontz and Henderson, "Property," p. 142; "These early class systems,...retained many of the prior forms of kinship organization, even while social relations were transformed and class differences were institutionalized in the social, political, economic and religious spheres." They include as examples; Sumer through the Early Dynastic period, Crete, Aztec society in its initial conquest period, the early Inca Empire, and some West African kingdoms.

17 6jiuller, p. 8: "...a society at the chiefdom level...which is in the process of political amalgamation with similar units....The population is, therefore, heterogeneous,...The division of labor has differentiated beyond that of age and sex to include full-time craft specialists, priests, and traders."

177Rapp, "Introduction," p. 5, note 5: "...those in which kinship relations are contradictorily being transformed into relations of domination, as in the

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authority it reflects in the kin corporate "non-class"

configuration. There is "no clear point of division between

classes and nonclass societies with respect to amount of

productive means under corporate kin group" versus ruling

class control.178 While these forms evidence increased

stratification and the disintegration of corporate kin

control, they retain kinship rather" than class-based

organizational principles. Centralization at this level

involves increased status held by the central collector and

redistributor, but this is "neither exploitative economic

power nor genuine political power; rather the two kinds of

authority that people of high status have are familial or

s a c r e d . "179 a slightly more developed form of "ranking" is

manifested in chiefdoms. Here a hierarchal social system

comprises several kin groups centering on a single status

position— that of chief. Because descent continues to

determine relative positions, this is not a class system.

chiefdoms of parts of Africa or Polynesia."

178gacks, Sisters, p. 122. Sahlins, Tribesmen. p. 20; "...barely constituting an advance over hunters, stand tribes socially and politically fragmented and in their economies undiversified and modestly endowed. These are seomentarv tribes proper. But in its most developed expression, the chiefdom. tribal culture anticipates statehood in its complexities.... The chiefdom is a development..., toward integration of the segmentary system at higher levels."

179Redman, p. 203.

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although "some of its members attain social positions that

carry with them enhanced power and privilege."18®

Increasingly powerful lineage heads, paramount

chiefs, or kin-based kings require the services of loyal

assistants: messengers, tribute collectors, warriors,

traders, etc. How extensively clientage is adopted no doubt

varies with how expansive— numerically and spatially—

societal networks are. When it does emerge, the

institution of patron-client relationships is significant in

that it separates productive and non-productive persons, at

the same time that it "separate [s] productive and

reproductive functions of social groups, for neither the

clients...nor the patrons...[involve] themselves in

production."181 This separation of producers from non

producers provides a basis for further exploitative

relations in that, for the first time, a completely non

productive segment of society is established. Muller argues

that "the new material condition, being freed from the

ISOibid., p. 204.

ISlMuller, p. 12. See also Boulding (Underside, pp. 12-13) : "In the egalitarian band society, and in what Fried (1967) calls the ranked societies— tribal societies with special prestige roles which involve responsibility for redistribution of goods, but not personal access to more goods— no individuals, women or men, are removed from the primary producer roles."

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necessity to produce and being supported by the labor of

otliers, produces a crucial change in consciousness. "3-82

At what point we are justified in noting a "change

in consciousness, " it is clear that dramatic changes in

social relations accompany the emergence of non-productive

"classes." The consequences of clientage for women were

mixed. We observe that women in general rarely occupied client rolesl83 and were excluded from those roles gaining

enhanced social prestige. Increasingly stratified

patrilineal/patrilocality

...not only heightened the incentive for households to privatize the subsistence labour and reproductive functions of women, but it attached prestige to wealth- or power-getting mechanisms which were associated with the male side of the division of labour.... Conquered groups were...conceptualized as female because their obligations to the patrilineal central powers were so like those of the wives within its l i n e a g e s . "3-84

Precluded as actors from the increasingly

prestigious and societally significant activities of

administration, warfare, and external trade, women were ever

3-82nuller, p. 13. No longer engaged personally in the production process, rulers desire and attempt to demand ever more surplus from the people; clients, "freed from the daily toil in the fields and serving the person of greatest prestige in the society, come to expect a more luxurious (and prestigious) way of life than other members of the group."

183This exclusion was not due to biological differences but to the social construction of women's roles.

3-84coontz and Henderson, "Property," pp. 144-45.

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more vulnerable as "dependents."185 A generalized

devaluation of women is noted as the roles women occupied

became associated with subordination, dependence, and

h u m i l i t y . 186 Additionally, women and their labor were

increasingly perceived as reified wealth (a process

intensified by patrilocal "exchange of women" and

acquisition of women as war booty). Leacock describes the

developments as follows:

When high ranking people begin to relate to low ranking people not only as kin and affines but also as embodied labour, as abstract labour in Marxist terms, labour from which extra wealth can be derived, women's production of children becomes a resource to be controlled by a budding elite. However, this elite includes women as well as men. In its early stages competition for control of women and their children occurs not only between women and men but also among men, among women, and among l i n e a g e s . ^87

185^jQmen were the primary and crucial food producers in horticultural and early agricultural systems, and women's labor was both valued and appropriated. The development of plow agriculture, however, is correlated with increasing male participation in agricultural production and, because of related changes in family type and size, an intensification of women's "nonproductive" domestic roles. For a discussion of this shift based on comparative data, see especially Martin and Voorhies, pp. 276-297.

186«jijj^g increasing significance of (and evidence for) transformations in cosmologies as legitimations of exploitation are taken up in more detail in the following chapter. For case studies documenting the devaluation of female deities, women, and their roles (internally) as elements of subjugating external groups, see June Nash, "Aztec Women: The Transition from Status to class in Empire and Colony," in Women and Colonization, pp. 134-48; and Irene Silverblatt, "Andean Women: Gender and the Origin of the State," Feminist Studies 4 (October 1978): 37-61.

187Hpower and Authority," p. 124.

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For example, wives of rulers shared in some of the

prerogatives of aristocracy in terms of control over "lower"

strata. As stratification allowed aristocratic clans "to

look beyond their own family and kin for labour,...some

elite women may actually have gained privileges and

influence...Thus noble women of the ruling class could, and

did, exercise unprecedented power over both men and women

below them even though— and indeed because— they were

subordinate to their fathers or h u s b a n d s . "188 The continued

reliance on kinship principles thus provided some women

access to power: in their capacity as wives in marriage

alliances or in the role of female h u s b a n d s . 189 The

emerging pattern is one of some women "gaining," while women

as a social category lose.1^0

188coontz and Henderson, "Property," pp. 145-46.

189coontz and Henderson, "Property," p. 144-47; Muller, pp. 14-15. For a discussion of female husbands, see Sacks, Sisters. pp. 77-80 and Tiffany, p. 17. Elite marriage alliances have often given individual women "enormous power both in terms of personal influence and in terms of control over land and labor." Muller, p. 14. See also Rapp, "Origins," p. 10. Strategies for marrying into upper strata are discussed in Irene Silverblatt, "'The Universe Has Turned Inside Out...There is No Justice for Us Here': Andean Women Under Spanish Rule," in Women and Colonization, pp. 149-85; and Sherry Ortner, "The Virgin and the State," Feminist Studies 4 (October 1978): 19-36.

ISOHgiite women are pawns as well as important links in male alliances. The power and privileges of individual aristocratic women are exceptional, while the labour of the majority of commoner women is increasingly privatized and stripped of its social content. Nevertheless, the fact

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In an ecologically constricted space, growing populations [attending agricultural and herding advances] can be supplied only by increasing agricultural production or by expansion. The former leads to the development of elites, the latter to the development of militarism, first on a voluntary, then on a professional b a s i s . ^ ^ 1

Patron-client relations, "big-men, " and chiefs

exemplify the process of elite formation in the kin

corporate configuration. ^52 warfare remained infrequent as

long as specialization was minimal and spatial interaction

non-competitive. However, differential concentrations of

wealth and expanding inter-group contact create the

potential for raiding and plunder— with profound

consequences for social relations. While warfare becomes

increasingly significant with the centralization of

authority evidenced in these ranking societies, I place the

important discussion of militarism in the next

configuration.

remains that aristocratic kin-based kingdoms, even though they subject the majority of women to increased exploitation, allow special opportunities for elite women that disappear with the rise of a civil state." Coontz and Henderson, "Property," p. 148. Boulding rejects the image of "woman as pawn," arguing that women's mediating, social bonding, and alliance building roles were important elements in social structuring and in which women were essentially active, not passive, participants (Underside, pp. 52-57).

IS^Lerner, p. 56.

192j-Qr a discussion of big-men and chiefs, see Sahlins, Tribesmen. pp. 21-27, 87-95.

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In terms of social "order," internalized and

informal sanctions suffice in societies "not disrupted by

institutional conflicts."^83 Minimal resource

differentiation prompts few hostilities and personal

conflicts are addressed with the variety of informal

techniques noted for communal societies: teasing,

disapproval, contests, etc. Socialization embeds each

individual in a matrix of kin relations that structure and

give meaning to social interaction. Diamond identifies the

immersion in kin relations as "personalism," arguing that

"...people live in a personal, corporate world, a world that

tends to be a 'thou' to the subjective 'I' rather than an

'it' impinging upon an objectively separate and divided

s e l f . "194 Because of the greater diversity in kin corporate

societies, there is "more diversity in power and authority

channels, including so-called big-men,...associations, age

groups, and secret societies...; and socially designated

authority positions based on position in kin groups,

locality, or age g r o u p s , . . . " 1 9 5 on the one hand, women do

"fill positions of social authority, as well as acting as

193Diamond, p. 1 3 7 .

194ibid., pp. 1 4 5 , 2 6 8 .

195gacks, Sisters, pp. 7 3 - 7 4 .

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patrons."196 on the other hand, with the shift to

patriliny/patrilocality, there is increasing evidence (at

least within androcentric studies) of the subordination of

women within the householdl9? and a decline in the

legitimation of their individual and collective power. In

other words, while women retained and exercised influence

and power, especially vis-a-vis interpersonal relations,

"authority" as collectively constituted was increasing in

importance and doing so as a male prerogative.

Interpreting the "Core-Relations"

I turn then to a consideration of the kin

corporate/lineage configuration in terms of the core

relations identified earlier. There is considerably more

archeological data for these societies, especially those

historically antecedent to western civilization. While the

^96ibid., p. 8 3 ; see also her discussion of such positions, pp. 7 6 - 8 4 .

197consider the misogyny implicit in this description of the household as political entity: "A little chiefdom within the chiefdom, it is mainly self-regulating, as it is self-organized by the niceties of respect and authority embodied in family relations. Indeed, a father usually has greater power to keep his house in order than has any community leader in his domain: at least a man can take a stick to his own child (and perhaps his wife), but the village tyrant who lives by the club risks dying by it." Sahlins, Tribesmen. p. 1 7 ; see also pp. 6 3 - 6 7 . Diamond also describes the primitive household as patriarchal while maintaining that no systemic inequities flaw primitive societies. See especially pp. 1 4 1 , 1 3 6 .

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configuration as a whole spans the literature on segmentary

societies, my emphasis here will be on interpreting core

relations of kin corporate societies as evidenced in the

Near East food production system as it existed prior to

state formation (up to approximately the sixth millenium

B.C.).

Agricultural food production is correlated with

increasing permanence of settlements, population growth,

technological innovations, symbolic representation, and more

complex social organization. In terms of the subjective—

objective relation, it is appropriate to refer to the

agricultural "revolution." The ability to produce food

constituted a fundamental transformation in the degree of

control humans exercised over their habitats. No longer

simply collectors and predators, agriculturalists alter

their habitats to suit human needs. Similarly, the security

of stable food production permits human exploitation of an

increasing variety of environments. As farming becomes the

primary subsistence activity, human "shaping of nature"

includes 1) improvements in tools and techniques related to

processing and storing ("The modeling of clay exemplifies

human control of the earth itself."198); 2) physiological

improvements in domesticates (saving the largest seeds;

198Quotations in this paragraph from Redman, pp. 86, 178, 179, 179.

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selecting more productive animals); and 3) more elaborate

housing construction and village settlement ("Domestication

and cultivation disrupted the natural ecological balance,

resulting in an inexorably and irreversibly altered

landscape."). Significantly, the form domestication took

"made any reversal of the process practically impossible."

In contrast to gathering and hunting activities,

temporal and spatial measurement become crucial with the

dependence on farming. The need for calculating the seasons

accurately was especially great in the Near and Middle East

cultivation zones (compared to the predictability of

planting times in monsoon systems). This might be seen as

an initial spur to scientific pursuits and the abstraction

required by spatio-temporal measurement. However, evidence

of ritual celebrations suggests that a unity of humans and

nature was the operative metaphor, rather than human

separation from— or domination over— nature that is typical

of later s c i e n c e . ^99 The engagement with nature remains

199por example. Diamond, p. 141; "The land cannot be alienated...because the primitive living within the system views the earth as the dwelling place of his ancestors." And also Sahlins, Tribesmen. pp. 79-80: "Indeed, the tribesman's relation to productive means and finished products...mov[es] beyond mundane possession to a mystic attachment. The land is a spiritual value, a beneficent Source." Additionally, Ann Barstow states that there is no evidence that Neolithic people shared the mind-body dualism of later Western thought. See her "The Uses of Neolithic Archaeology for Women's Prehistory," Feminist Studies 4 (October 1978): 11.

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direct and concrete; the natural environment is appreciated

for its bounty and even perceived aesthetically;

participants have not "formed a distinct consciousness of

the normative reality of a society standing apart from

obj activated nature— these two regions have not yet been clearly separated.00

The inter-sub]active core-relation assumes a wider

variety of forms within kin corporate societies. As

populations become more sedentary and their numbers

increase, membership rules take on new significance.

Descent and residence rules are developed that permit the

coordination of local groups into larger societies.

Communalism is retained in that "material means essential to

the survival of the individual or the group are either

actively held in common [kin corporate property] or, what is

equivalent, constitute readily accessible economic

goods."201 In contrast to gathering-hunting groups, kin

corporate societies rely more on redistribution than simply

reciprocity: the production of surplus permits collecting

and reallocating goods in order to insure everyone's

subsistence, and therefore the group's stability.

200nabermas, p. 104; also Diamond, p. 171.

201oiamond, p. 131.

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Collective rituals "instill a sense of the collectivity and

of the dependence of every man upon every m a n . "202

As noted above, the production of surplus— made

possible by animal and plant domestication— was further

stimulated by redistributive principles. As production

assumes increasing importance, each kin corporate group has

an increasing incentive to accumulate more wealth and women-

-a process facilitated by patriliny/patrilocality. At the

same time, patrilineal/patrilocal principles tend to

concentrate wealth and power, with concomitant structural

inequalities and implications for the intra-subjective core-

relation. One effect of these positive-feedback

relationships was an increasing privatization of women's

labor: the maximization of household production for the

husband's lineage in order to enhance that lineage's

standing in a competitive environment. The point is that an

initially non-hierarchical division of labor by sex was

transformed in the shift to patrilineal/patrilocal descent

and marriage rules. The incentive structures henceforth

discouraged women's production for their natal group (where

they retained ownership claims and therefore resources and

power) and encouraged augmented appropriation of women's

productive and reproductive labor by senior males with the

greatest interest in lineage prosperity. From this

292sahlins, Tribesmen. p. 12.

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perspective the emerging subordination of women— vis-a-vis

appropriating their labor, regulating their sexuality,

restricting their participation in collective decisions— is

inextricable from emerging social differentiation.

In terms of religious institutions, there is

evidence of rituals connected with burials and rooms

apparently used for ritualistic purposes. Representational

figurines are prolific, suggesting fertility veneration

during the Neolithic A g e . 203 This makes sense if we

consider some of the correlates of settled agriculture.

First, hunting was displaced as a major food source, so that

2 0 3 Lerner, pp. 146-48, reviews contemporary interpretations of the "profusion of archaeological finds of female figurines" from sites "in the Don valley of Russia, in Iraq, Anatolia, in Nineveh, Jericho, and in Southern Mesopotamia," including 30,000 miniature sculptures "from a total of some 3000 sites in southeastern Europe alone." She notes that "James, Gimbutas, and others have asserted unequivocally that these figurines are evidence of a widespread fertility cult." Interpreting the meaning of material remains is always problematic. However, the pervasiveness of the figurines and "the historical evidence from the fourth millennium forward derived from myths, rituals, and creation stories" of Mother-Goddess worship as virtually universal, strengthen the case for positing fertility veneration (p. 148). The existence of "matristic" societies (where "femaleness was interpreted as the social paradigm of all productivity, as the main active principle in the production of life," in Mies, p. 53) does not imply or require the existence of matriarchies. See also Boulding's discussion of figurines (Underside, pp. 93-97); for extensive discussion of prepatriarchal and patriarchal myths, see Kittye D. Robbins, "Tiamat and Her Children: An Inquiry into the Persistence of Mythic Archetypes of Woman as Monster/Villainess/Victim," in Face to Face: Fathers. Mothers. Masters. Monsters— Essavs for a Nonsexist Future, ed. Meg McGavran Murray (Westport, ON: Greenwood Press, 1983), pp. 47-70.

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women were the major suppliers of food for the community,

and presumably well regarded as s u c h . 204 second, given

women's own reproductive capacities, the association of the

"earth's fertility" (a notion assuming particular

significance as humans discover agriculture) with women is

not surprising. Third, to the extent that early Neolithic

groups had developed initial kinship structures, they were

initially matrilineal/matrilocal, affording women and their

activities an influential centrality substantially

diminished in the shift to patriliny/patrilocality.

2 04This statement is applicable to horticultural production; with the introduction of plow agriculture, men's participation in food production is correlated with enhanced male status. The effectiveness of farming and its displacement of less reliable hunting practices is widely acknowledged. See for example, Redman, p. 178. On the other hand, this is perhaps a key example of unreflectively associating growth with success, rather than identifying the problems engendered by increasing problems of scale. Boulding (Underside, p. 11) reminds us that "steady state" gatherers do not encounter ecological crises; there is "always more food in the environment than a given band uses, and in times of drought there are ample resources to fall back on."

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ARCHAIC/CIVIL STATE CONFIGURATION;

MESOPOTAMIA

The process by which scattered Neolithic villages became agricultural communities, then urban centers, and finally states has been called "the urban revolution" or "the rise of civilization." It is a process which occurs at different times in different places throughout the world;...205

For the "Archaic/Civil State" configuration I turn—

as do most Western civilization or state formation

theorists— to Mesopotamia, widely recognized for both its

significance as an early and pristine development of

urbanism and its relevance to subsequent, and especially

Western, civilizations. 206 while there is debate over

specific definitions of the " s t a t e , "207 many authors agree

on their identification of patterns constituting the urban

revolution and archaic state formation. Most fundamental is

205Lerner, p. 54.

206Redman (pp. 5-7) makes these points forcefully. I draw upon his extensive documentation and analysis of urbanism in the Near East throughout this section. Boulding focuses on women in early civilizations in chap. 6 of Underside; pp. 216-26 specifically address Mesopotamia.

207see, for example, the discussions in Claessen and Skalnik, especially chapters 1, 2, and 4; and Cohen, "Introduction."

124

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the change in scale of settlements and concurrent

qualitative changes in the complexity of social

organization: entirely new forms of integrating instutitions

were established. Given the primacy of kinship as the mode

of organization in prestate societies, "...kinship

structures were the great losers in the civilizational

process....With the rise of state structures, kin-based

forms of organization were curtailed, sapped of their

legitimacy and autonomy in favour of the evolving sphere of

territorial and class-specific p o l i t i e s . "208 Clientage

systems, chiefdoms, and aristocratic clans were limited in

their ability to organize and legitimize the increasingly

demanded surplus production:

Personal ties were transitory and could be undermined by distance, time, or the frequent feuds that stemmed from the personal nature of political and judicial relations....Thus those elements of the ruling class that required a more permanent, stable power base from which to organize production and extend their rule in both time and space, often supported by dispossessed or debt-ridden members of the lower classes, sought to replace the essentially private nature of aristocratic rule with a more objective, rational form of class rule....A secular power with military force at its disposal began to challenge the hegemony of the

20®Rapp, "Origins," p. 9. Similarly, Adams (p. 14) defines state societies as "hierarchically organized on political and territorial lines rather than on kinship or other ascriptive groups and relations." In Marxism and Domination Balbus (p. 329) notes agreement among political anthropologists "that the growth of the state is coeval with the decline of kinship." See also Habermas, pp. 148-66, especially p. 158, 161; "The function of social integration passed from kinship relations to political relations." Also Diamond, chaps, l and 8; Muller, pp. 7-22.

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priesthood and the aristocratic clans, eventually creating a much more highly centralized s t a t e . 209

Other processes generally identified with state

formation include: "...the emergence of property classes and

hierarchies; commodity production with a high degree of

specialization and organized trade over distant regions;

urbanism; the emergence and consolidation of military

elites; kingship; the institutionalization of slavery; a

transition from kin dominance to patriarchal families as the

chief mode of distributing goods and power.210 The

intensification of social differentiation and spiralling

demand for surplus wealth production required ideological

justification. In recognition of this, many scholars note

the importance of ideology in state formation, whether

identified as a "structural change in world view,"211 the

209coontz and Henderson, "Property," p.148.

210Lemer, p. 54. Compare Redman (p. 5): "Social stratification with differentiated access to strategic sources became the primary structure within a community. Hierarchical political authority and administrative systems often utilizing written legal codes emerged as organizational mechanisms. Craft specialization, mass- production industries, and large-scale trade characterized the economy. Organized warfare in the form of both massive defensive works and long-distance offensive campaigns played an increasing role in the survival of cultures." For a review and critique of the standard state formation theories, see Redman, pp. 216-29; Claessen and Skalnik, chapters 1-4 and 25-28; Cohen and Service, passim; and Haas, Part I.

21lHabermas, p. 151; "In all evolutionarily successful civilizations there was a noteworthy structural change of world view— the change from a mythological-cosmogonic world

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rationalization of r e l i g i o n , 212 ^ revision of

cosmologies,213 or development of a "national r e l i g i o n . "214

I provide a brief outline of these processes as they were

played out in Mesopotamia, culminating in the formation of

the Akkadian state under Sargon (ca. 2350 B.C.) and the Ur

III empire under Ur-Nammu (ca. 2130 B.C.).

The earliest-known occupation of the Mesopotamian

plain was approximately 5500 B.C., but development of cities

and a civilizational network was relatively rapid from that

point. Within two thousand years, traits of urbanism were

present: writing, craft specialization, religious elites,

monumental public works, and representational art all appear

in the archeological r e c o r d . 215 During the fourth

millennium, a number of significant developments occurred;

expanding populations moved into the lower river valleys

view to a rationalized world view in the form of cosmological ethics."

212ciddens, Nation-State. pp. 71-79.

213Rapp, "Origins," pp. lO-ll.

214gteward, p. 202: "...in all cases a national religion and a priestly class developed because increasing populations, larger irrigation works, and greater need for social co-ordination called upon religion to supply the integrating factor."

215After Redman, p. 245; I rely on his text throughout this section, especially chaps. 8 and 9; also Adams, passim; and Lerner, passim. It should be noted that representational art preceded urbanism, as evidenced in Paleolithic cave paintings in Europe.

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where irrigation techniques were necessary; the development

of irrigation both enabled and was conditioned by denser

settlement patterns that, in turn, necessitated different

societal organization; plow agriculture greatly increased

productivity, integrated animal husbandry and crop

cultivation, and altered gender relations in regard to

production; use of the wheel in pottery and transportation

had significant social and economic impact ; and the

development of writing transformed communiciation

possibilities.216 Together these developments permitted the

emergence of territorially defined communities,

specialization of labor, and sufficient production of

surplus to support a managerial class.

During the fourth millennium, that managerial class

was the religious elite centered in the temple-complexes

that had notably expanded with population concentration:

"Given the heritage of Neolithic religion as the integrating

institution, the ritual leaders became the managers, and the

temple, evolving out of the Neolithic shrine, became the hub

216The social consequences of the development of irrigation are widely acknowledged, as in Wittfogel's "hydraulic hypothesis" regarding state formation, set out in Oriental Despotism. Social and demographic changes associated with the introduction of plow agriculture are also widely acknowledged— including its significance for gender issues. See, for example, William H. McNeil, The Rise of the West: A Historv of the Human Community (New York and Toronto: The New American Library, 1963), pp. 40-44; Martin and Voorhies, pp. 276-86. The significance of writing is addressed later in this section.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 129 of the expanding city as a complex of sanctuary, warehouses, and workrooms."217 The large quantities amassed at the temples supported a diversity of tasks: craft specialists, textile workers, masons, potters, scribes, and, of course,

the temple elites as adminstrators. Initially directed toward appeasing the deities in hopes of ensuring their cooperation (in regard to minimizing natural disasters and maximizing productivity), surplus production for temple use became the accumulation base necessary to support the elaboration of religious hierarchy. As diviners of the deities' will and central administrators of the social

order, temple elites had encompassing authority: they advised on agricultural techniques and schedules, managed sectors of the town or city economy, supervised large-scale construction (related to irrigation works, temple complexes, and city fortifications), and controlled the long-distance trade critical to urbanism in the Mesopotamian plain.

Anthropological evidence confirms that the production of surplus (appropriation and storage of material

resources beyond immediate needs) is not spontaneous but coerced— whether by physical force or through the

ideological justification of expropriation. 218 Early

21”^Rohrlich, "State Formation," p. 81.

218The discovery of numerous societies technically capable but culturally indifferent to the production of surplus argues for the necessity of particular social

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accumulation (prior to and enabling later state formation)

was mediated by temple elites, who in their formulation of

belief systems provided "mythical justification and

ritualistic reaffirmation of the civilizational order as it

was developing."219 A fatalistic theology positing humans

"created specifically to relieve the gods of tedious

w o r k " 220 formed the core of early religious teachings;

rituals centered on fertility, food production, and

apparently burial practices. Probably the most important

by-product of temple administrative practices was the

development of writing: "Functioning as the center for the

reception and redistribution of the surplus wealth of the

community, it was in the temple that writing was invented to

keep records of community contributions that became

compulsory, and to take a census of the population."221 The

mechanisms to generate and promote surplus production. Even with the existence of surplus, hierarchical appropriation is not automatic, as witnessed in potlatch redistributive practices. While differing in their identification of the specific mechanisms promoting or institutionalizing hierarchical appropriation, most contemporary analysts agree that ideological justification was essential to the process. See, for example: Diamond, chaps. 1 and 8 , especially pp. 1 2 - 1 5 ; Adams in regard to the evolution of urban society; Cameiro, pp. 7 3 3 - 3 4 ; Habermas, pp. 1 5 8 - 6 6 ; McNeil, p. 5 1 ; Mies, pp. 6 5 - 6 6 ; Redman, p. 3 2 2 ; and Claessen and Skalnik, "The Early State: Theories and Hypotheses," p. 1 4 .

219Redman, p. 3 2 2 .

220ibid., p. 2 7 5 .

22 Ipohrlich, "State Formation," p. 8 1 . The significance of writing is taken up below.

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development of writing— closely related to the evolution of

ideologies— has almost without exception accompanied the

r i s e of s t a t e s . 222

During this period, true cities emerged,

periodically serving as magnets for people seeking

protection in times of war or famine, or migrating to the

towns for work. With increased concentration of goods in

well-favored cities, the incentive to regular raiding was

increased; towns responded with defensive fortifications and

their own armies. Organized warfare is unambiguously

evident for the first time at the beginning of the 4th

millennium, and the steady increase in militarism during the

next millennium is a central, almost over-riding, element in

state formation.223 Military leaders were village (lineage)

chieftains who extended their dominance over previously

communally held lands. The strongest "would set themselves

up as kings, usurping power over the temples and treating

temple property as their own. In the ensuing centuries of

intercity warfare, the strongest of these rulers would unite

222rphe Incas are the notable exception. See the discussion of writing and its relations to surveillance and administrative power as an aspect of state formation in Giddens, Nation-State. pp. 41-49. See also Redman's discussion of writing, pp. 270-75.

223gee Redman, passim, especially pp. 212, 320-21: "the effect of organized militarism cannot be overestimated." On militarism as crucial to state formation, see also Carneiro, Steward, Adams.

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a number of such city-states into a kingdom or a national state."224

Organized militarism profoundly effected the

processes of state formation; all other aspects (demographic

changes, religious power, centralization, stratification,

gender relations, political authority, etc.) were deeply

influenced by high levels of militarism. 225 The predominant

pattern in the Near East was the displacement of religious

elites by military leaders, who imposed instead a secular-

based political authority as the centralizing societal

structure.

The extent of social transformation accompanying

state formation can be seen by comparing social relations at

the beginning of the Early Dynastic period (ca. 2900 B.C.)

with those prevailing under Ur-Nammu of the Ur III dynasty

(ca. 2130). Although there was a specialization of labor,

the accumulation and administration of surpluses at temple

complexes, and a shift toward "politically organized units

based on residence," archeological evidence suggests that

224Lerner, p. 57. Adams (pp. 19, 58-60) and others note the cyclical interaction— both cooperative and conflictual— of herders and settled agriculturalists in the Mesopotamian system.

225gee, for example, Redman, pp. 320-21. Steward, p. 207; "Extreme militarism brought about the formation of armies, the installation of warrior-leaders, and in some cases the development of classes of warriors. Social life was regimented by strong political controls backed by legal systems and sacntioned by state religion."

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social stratification remained modest at the beginning of

the 3rd millennium. 226 slavery was present but not

institutionalized (see below); crucial issues were decided

by general assemblies; temple complexes administered a

redistributive economy; and women continued to occupy

positions of authority and were engaged in long-distance

trade and b u s i n e s s . 227

By the time of Ur-Nammu, militarism had increased

from intermittent raiding to chronic, organized warfare.

"The creation of a standing army with its own administrators

shifted the primary base of power in early cities from the

religious leaders to the commander of the army."228 General

assemblies that had earlier met to confer temporary

authority on -kings were displaced by kings recurrently

holding power who, with a standing army as power base.

226Redman, p. 277; also Adams, pp. 59-119.

227&fter Redman, chap. 8 passim; Rohrlich, pp. 84, 90; Ruby Rohrlich-Leavitt, "Women in Transition; Crete and Sumer," in Becoming Visible, pp. 53-54; Lerner, pp. 59; Boulding, Underside, p. 180.

228jiedman, p. 321. In the transition period, secular rulers (usually in control of the military) and religious elites (increasingly appointed by the king but retaining considerable power) sometimes contended with the additional power base of the wealthy (the source of wealth presumably being commerce and/or the control of rich agricultural land). Whether these power bases cooperated or competed, the overall trend was a concentration of power and authority in secular, centralized government.

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usurped all democratic authority of the assemblies. 229 The

institionalization of kingships was accompanied by legal

codification, presumably intended to gain popular support

(by protecting some of the poor), to consolidate central,

secular authority, and to constrain alternative power

groups. Redman notes: "The legal code and the military

power to enforce it were among the primary resources at the

disposal of Mesopotamian k i n g s . " 2 3 0

Some kings went so far as to claim the status of

"God," indicating their "increasing control of the religious

hierarchy and the assumption by the palace of many temple-

related activities, such as legal jurisdiction,

administrative authority, and trade. "231 Many kings

utilized the appointment of wives and daughters as

priestesses to enhance their control of the religious order.

At the same time, "lower-class women were filling a great

variety of economic roles as both artisans and domestic

industry workers, while foreign slave women provided a large

part of the labor force of the t e m p l e s . "232 Social

stratification was now extensive, with greater numbers of

229Rohrlich ("State Formation," pp. 94-95) notes an intermediary step: the exclusion of women from the assembly around 2700 B.C.

230Redman, p. 307.

231ibid., pp. 312-13.

232Lerner, p. 66.

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slaves, but there was also evidence that they represented

only the most extreme form of exploitation. Differentiation

occurred along a number of factors, so that dependence or

subservience was simply a matter of degree for a wide range

of w o r k e r s . 233

The palace control of economic activities

encompassed the long-distance trade that was critical in the

survival of Mesopotamian valley cities. Standing armies

were the force enabling the state to collect tribute;

related to collecting tribute was the state's control over

sources of raw materials and trade relations. Managing

these extensive activities was facilitated by the

introduction of private ownership of land; while "most

property remained under the control of the palace or

temple,...some tracts were sold or given in return for

services rendered to the k i n g . " 2 3 4

In addition to elaborate administrative

bureaucracies, early empires were held together by

establishing a system of provincial governors with military

garrisons, continuing long-distance campaigns to suppress

revolts, and forming alliances through diplomatic marriages.

233gee Adams, pp. 102-05; also, the discussion of slavery below.

234Redman, p. 313. He notes (p. 318) that the concept of private ownership of property only became fully developed in the following. Old Babylonian period.

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In the role of dynastic wives, upper-class women continued

to exercise power and influence, and were therefore often

given the best available education. However, ruling class

daughters and wives were not representative. For most

women, the institutionalization of civil authority worsened

their position. These points are taken up below.

There are three aspects of state formation I wish to

examine in greater detail: slavery as a consequence of

militarism (and its legitimation in relation to the

exploitation of women), the invention of writing and

development of legal codes, and transformations in belief

systems. The illumination they provide on

institutionalizing social hierarchy is of particular

relevance when we come to consider the public-private

dichotomy.

Militarism and Slavery

One of the important corollaries of increasing

militarism was slavery. There appear to have been a variety

of ways in which slavery occurred and in how slaves were

integrated societally, i.e., the degree of subordination and

exploitation had considerable r a n g e . 235 while most agree

235iphe following is based primarily on the extensive study and documentation in Lemer, chap. 4 and passim; and Nicole Chevillard and Sebastien Leconte, "Slavery and Women," in Women's Work. Men's Property, pp. 156-69.

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that slavery derives from war and conquest, as a later

development it also occurs as a punishment for crimes, as

sale by family members, and as self-sale for debt and debt

b o n d a g e . 236 Because it represents the institutionalization

of hierarchical dominance— alienating persons from their kin

groups for the purpose of exploiting their productivity

elsewhere— we need to examine its occurrence within the

process of stratification associated with Western state

f o r m a t i o n . 237 while i t is unclear precisely to what extent

the Mesopotamian states economically depended upon slave

labor, there is no question of its presence throughout the

economy.

Those enslaved as a result of capture— from raids

explicitly for that purpose or as a consequence of warfare—

were initially integrated into the captor's social

structures. That is, prior to notions of individual

property, slaves were the property of the lineage such that

women slaves and their progeny were incorporated into the

kin structures; offspring did not inherit slave s t a t u s . 238

Once again, women's double productivity (their labor and

progeny) rendered them more likely to be taken as captives,

and differently vulnerable to the exploitative situation:

236Lej-ner, 76.

237gee Muller, p. 14; Lerner, pp. 76-78.

238chevillard and Leconte, "Slavery," pp. 157-58.

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Physical terror and coercion, which were an essential ingredient in the process of turning free persons into slaves, took, for women, the form of rape. Women were subdued physically by rape; once impregnated, they might become psychologically attached to their masters. From this derived the institutionalization of concubinage, which became the social instrument for integrating captive women into the households of their captors, thus assuring their captors not only their loyal services but those of their offspring.239

Slavery does not reproduce itself in this context;

for it to become a stable system requires a transition to

individual appropriation, the slave being defined as an

exchangeable good, and progeny denied social incorporation.

...In lineage society, captivity may be resolved through integration based upon assimilation to female status; it then withers away on its own from one generation to the next....For such a transition [to slavery] to occur, the captive, instead of being collectively appropriated within the lineage, must be individually appropriated by a chief or warrior....For slavery fully to develop its potentialities, the very structure of the lineage system had to be challenged. Slavery developed as a coherent system only when the ancient structures disappeared, when there was individual appropriation of goods and of the human beings who produced them, when individual rights of domination replaced collective o n e s . 240

Not only must there be a development of the notion

of private ownership, but institutionalized slavery requires

a notion of "out-group" such that total exploitation of

persons so branded is deemed acceptable. Having noted the

egalitarian social relations preceding stratified societies.

239Lerner, p. 87.

240chevillard and Leconte, "Slavery," p. 158.

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it is clear that the notion of human exploitation explicit

in institutionalized slavery is a historical— in no way

"natural"— development. Where then did it originate?

Lerner notes that, preceding slavery, the model of

human subordination and labor appropriation availeible for

emulation .was .that of patrilineal/patrilocal kin corporate

control over women.

We have seen how the confluence of a number of factors leads to sexual asymmetry and to a division of labor which fell with unequal weight upon men and women. Out of it, kinship structured social relations in such a way that women were exchanged in marriage and men had certain rights in women, which women did not have in men. Women's sexuality and reproductive potential became a commodity to be exchanged or acquired for the service of families; thus women were thought of as a group with less autonomy than m e n . 241

Lerner presents extensive documentation for her

depiction of the enslavement and sexual abuse of women as

the model for subsequent institutionalization of slavery and

the psychological enslavement that that institutionalization

required. Historic records for the third millennium B.C.

unquestionably indicate that women were the first to be

enslaved and continuously comprised a high proportion of all

slaves throughout the Early Dynastic period, males being

killed rather than controlled. 242 The facts that warfare is

24lLerner, p. 77.

242gee for example, Redman, p. 303; Adams, pp. 96-97, 117; and the citations in Lerner, chap. 4. This pattern is similarly documented in the Greek case.

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acknowledged to be increasingly endemic in the Near East

from this period onward, and that women captives as war

booty is evidenced in all records and epics, suggest that

the enslavement of women was substantial and significant in

the development of social stratification. 243

To sum the argument being developed here briefly: a

variety of interacting factors led to the predominance of

patrilineal/patrilocal kin structures, wherein women's

productive and reproductive labor was appropriated by their

husbands' lineages. This transfer of control over the

products of labor from the producers to the appropriators

marked the first exploitative human r e l a t i o n s . 244 in

243The significance of warfare on state formation is widely acknowledged. See for example, Redman, p. 321: "...there is widespread evidence for organized warfare and an elite whose primary purpose was to conduct armed campaigns. Archeological and written evidence indicates that militarism played a major role in the formation of early cities and states." Having noted that "most slaves seem to have been female," he suggests that slavery "was probably an additional incentive for offensive military campaigns because it was a source of supplementary labor for the growing mass-production industries...." L e m e r (pp. 76- 87 documents the consistency with which warfare is associated with taking women captives, including its depiction in The Iliad and in Thucydides's History of the Peloponnesian War.

244gee especially Mies, pp. 66-71. Mies emphasizes the male monopolization of weapons and the implicit threat of violence that ultimately backs up male appropriation of women's productivity. She argues that "the various forms of productivity which men developed in the course of history could not have emerged if they could not have used and subordinated the various historic forms of female productivity" (p. 58). Coontz and Henderson, "Property," emphasize the shift to patriliny/patrilocality as critical

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expansionary and exploitative environments, there was a

competitive incentive for lineages increasingly to acquire

both the labor and new lineage members that women produced.

The entrenchment of patriliny/patrilocality generated

internal stratification— both sexual and socioeconomic (male

lineage/husband control over wives, clientage favoring

individual, elite women, and hierarchy of senior-junior

males)— and in the context of environmental pressures,

external confrontations. The doubly-productive value of

women (as productive and reproductive resources) rendered

them especially attractive as raiding or war captives;

additionally so because their acquisition as booty, in

in the loss of women's control over the products of their labor. They note that women, as a corollary of that shift, come to identify their own interests with those of their residence (i.e., husband's) lineage. To the extent that wives identify with and share the interests of their husbands' lineage, contributing to the success of that lineage is the "rational" strategy— however much it costs "women as a whole," viewed retrospectively. Lerner's position is more in line with Coontz and Henderson, emphasizing the adaptive advantages of patriliny/patrilocality (pp. 51-52): "...one must conclude that such systems have an advantage in regard to the expansion and appropriation of surpluses over systems based on complementarity between the sexes. In the latter systems there are no means available for forcing producers to increase production....Thus, the first appropriation of private property consists of the appropriation of the labor of women as reproducers.... (Wje must conclude that in the course of the agricultural revolution the exploitation of human labor and the sexual exploitation of women become inextricably linked." And, in terms of women's complicity (p. 52) : "I have tried to show how it might have come to pass that women agreed to a sexual division of labor, which would eventually disadvantage them, without having been able to foresee the later consequences."

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contrast to their acquisition through kin-organized

marriages, incurred no costs or obligations on the part of

the captor's lineage toward the women's lineage.

Additionally, the rape of captured women not only coerced

and "subdued" the women but "by implication served as a

symbolic castration of their men. Men in patriarchal

societies who cannot protect the sexual purity of their

wives, sisters, and children are truly impotent and

dishonored."245 Thus, by subordinating first their own

women, then captive women (who were additionally raped),

"men learned the symbolic power of sexual control over men

and elaborated the symbolic language in which to express

dominance and create a class of psychologically enslaved

persons."

With the institutionalization of slavery (i.e., as a

reproducing system), some men joined the ranks of all women

in terms of being

...totally subordinate to the power of another;....But for women, enslavement inevitably also meant having to perform sexual services....Similarly, from the earliest period of class development to the present, sexual dominance of higher class males over lower class women has been the very mark of women's class oppression. Clearly, class oppression cannot ever be considered the same condition for men and w o m e n . 246

245Lerner, p. 80 for quotations in this paragraph. Also: "The practice of raping the women of a conquered group has remained a feature of warfare and conquest from the second millennium B.C. to the present."

246Lerner, pp. 88-89.

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To be noted here is not simply the subordination of

women to men as a function of patrilineal/patrilocal and

subsequently patriarchal social structures, but the

consequences for differential status among women themselves.

While sharing the condition of being "sexually and

reproductively controlled by men," women varied in regard to

other measures of obligation and privilege. The slave woman

was totally commodified; the slave-concubine might be able

to improve her or her children's status through sexual

performance; the "free" wife retained her entitlement—

through sexual services to her husband— to property and

legal rights so long as she broke no sexual r u l e s . 247 in

concluding this section, I note two (of the many) important

consequences of this differentiation of women.

First, the "purity" of "free" women must be

protected. A byproduct of capturing and commodifying women

was commercial prostitution; a byproduct of pauperization

was the sale of female family members as debt p a y m e n t . 248

The marriage availability of "free" women, required for the

24?ibid., p. 215.

248berner documents the development of prostitution in chap. 6; see especially pp. 133-34: "Military conquest led, in the third millennium B.C., to the enslavement and sexual abuse of captive women. As slavery became an established instutition, slave-owners rented out their female slaves as prostitutes, and some masters set up commercial brothels..." This pattern is repeated in Greece.

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legitimate social reproduction of free men, was ensured by

ever greater regulation of "respectable" women. Ultimately,

the "purity," i.e., virginity, of "respectable" women became

a financial asset, further increasing the incentive to

control the sexuality of these women and, especially, to

institutionalize the distinction between them and impure women.249

Second, the corollary division of women into

"respectable" and "not respectable" has deeply effected the

class relations of women. Class for all women is determined

by their sexual ties to a man; but the vividness of class

stratification— promoted by upper class women's interest in

maintaining distinctions--obscures women's shared

exploitation within male dominated structures. Women are

pitted against each other for the s p o i l s . 250 Finally, the

249gee Chevillard and Leconte, "Slavery," pp. 162-68; Lerner, pp. 134-40. This distinction is literally codified in the Middle Assyrian Laws. Law 40 legally classified women in terms of their sexual activities: "Domestic women, sexually serving one man and under his protection, are here designated as 'respectable' by being veiled; women not under one man's protection and sexual control are designated as 'public women,' hence unveiled." The punishment for passing oneself off as respectable was savage and— specifically— public. Thus, the even deeper significance of this law is that "the matter of classifying women into respectable and not respectable has become an affair of the state." Lerner, pp. 134-36; also 112-15. Lerner documents the regulation of women's sexuality in chap. 5, in an examination of three Mesopotamian collections of law and Biblical law.

250The "rational choice" for women of all but the lowest classes, and who are "under the protection of a man," is to "accept" the "reciprocal agreement": "in exchange for your

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differentiation of "good" and "bad" women imposed in early

legal codes will take on new significance when we examine

them in light of the public-private dichotomy.

Invention of Writing

From a post-positivist appreciation of social

reality as inter-subjactively constructed, the invention of

writing cannot be other than revolutionary. I attempt here

only a brief review of the implications— for human

consciousness and social relations— of temple elites

developing this transformative technology.

First, abstraction. There appears in myths of the

third and second millennia, evidence of a new concept of

creation: naming. "The gods receive their existence through

name-giving, as do h u m a n s . "251 concurrently, record-keeping

and the development of symbol systems "demonstrate the power

of abstraction. The name recorded enters history and

becomes immortal... The elaboration of various symbol

sexual, economic, political, and intellectual subordination to men you may share in the power of men of your class to exploit men and women of the lower class." "Free" women learn early that individual rebellion is no option (they will simply be cast out) ; thus, the toleration and even perpetuation by women of practices patently serving male rule. See Lerner, pp. 218-19. For a devastating indictment of practices and rituals oppressing women, including the mystification of women's "choice" in participating, see Mary Daly, Gvn/Ecology (Boston: Beacon Press, 1978), especially "The Second Passage," pp. 107-222.

25lLerner, pp. 150-51 for both quotations.

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systems altered people's perception of their relation to

time and space." Abstractions introduce a shift in

temporal-spatial orientations, expanding the possibilities

of comparison and critical scrutiny by providing a "form"

for thought or consciousness. With writing, classification-

-the process of identifying what counts as difference—

assumes new significance. One result was the development

and accumulation of systematic knowledge and expanded

possibilities for transmitting that knowledge.

Second, durability. Writing endures across time and

space. The immediacy of face-to-face communication is no

longer the primary mode of communication. 252

Texts also become separated from the moorings that "ostensive reference" provides for spoken discourse. The communication of meaning in situated action depends in a basic way upon shared awareness of elements of the context of that action. This is lacking in the case of texts, and is substantially responsible for the hermeneutic issues which their existence immediately brings into b e i n g . 253

Because they make possible communication between

people and groups separated by distance and also by time,

texts permit the "authority" of history. "Written signs

supplant memory; an official, fixed and permanent version of

252(3oody, p. 15: "A face-to-face group has no great need of writing." His book addresses many important issues in regard to literacy and power.

253Giddens, Nation-States. p. 42.

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events can be m a d e . "254 Additionally, "no longer did the

problem of human memory storage dominate man's intellectual

life; the human mind was freed to study static 'text'

(rather than be limited by participation in the dynamic

'utterance'), a process that enabled man to stand back from

his creation making and examine it in a more abstract,

generalised, and 'rational' w a y . "2^5

Third, codification. Writing facilitates

formalization or codification. Durable records formalize

economic transactions, contractual agreements, and codes of

conduct. Sumer evidences the earliest documented

establishment of legal codes; the last king of Lagash,

Urukagina (ca. 2350 B.C.), "promulgated legal reforms that

are preserved in inscriptions on buildings....[They mark] a

milestone in political history....promulgating a legal

system that explicitly established rights, authority, and

punishments. "256 writing was a crucial factor in enabling

the revolutionary shift from personalist, kin-based

"customary rule" to the abstract, de-personalized "rule of

law. "

Fourth, control. As a means of coding information,

writing greatly expands the

254Diamond, Primitive. p. 4.

255(3oody, p. 37.

256Redman, p. 306.

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...range of administrative control excercised by a state apparatus over both obj ects and persons....Storage of information allows both for the standardizing of a certain range of happenings and, at the same time, allows them to be more effectively co ordinated. ...[making] possible the stretching of social relations across broader spans of time and space than can be accomplished in oral c u l t u r e s . 257

In the context of growth and centralization of

Mesopotamian cities, writing made possible military,

economic, and political coordination not possible with the

limitations of face-to-face communication. Unquestionably,

those who control symbol systems have power; to administer

larger domains; to impose— by author-izing— their world

view; to structure time and space orientations; to supervise

and regulate; and to organize, store, and dispense valuable

knowledge.

The power constituted by writing is in all of these

cases double-edged: writing permits texts that create their

own "orthodoxy," at the same time that literacy enables and

encourages criticism and commentary.258 To understand the

interaction of writing and social relations, we need to

examine historically who is permitted, encouraged, and/or

prohibited from achieving literacy, how access to

information is regulated, and who controls the "content" of

257giddens, Nation-States. pp. 44-45. See also Redman, p. 274.

258gee Goody, p. 37; Diamond, Primitive. pp. 125-26.

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the symbol systems. In the civil state configuration, the

general pattern is that of increasingly powerful military

leaders taking over the administrative powers and knowledge

resources generated originally by the temple e l i t e s . 259

As noted above, an important consequence of writing

was codification. In the process of displacing traditional

social structures, secular rulers came increasingly to rely

on legal codes and the military power to enforce them.

These codes were attempts by secular rulers to impose a new

social order— one no longer based upon kin corporate

responsibility and traditional customs but the codification

of rules as law, identifying sanctions backed by the power

of the state. Establishing the "rule of law" is always

noted as a milestone in political authority, and usually

included as a feature of state formation. To the extent

that laws reflect and address problematic social conditions

and shifting values, the emphases we note in the earliest

codes are not surprising; regulation of property crimes.

259j note here that appropriation of writing and literacy by military and secular elites is to render it almost exclusively under male control. See Giddens, Nation- States . pp. 71-79, for a discussion of ideology and the non modern state. See also Redman, pp. 275-77, 280-81, 304-07 for historical documentation of this transition in Mesopotamia. Also Adams, pp. 126-35, on the relationship of temple and military activities.

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rights and obligations of debtors, control of slaves, and

regulation of the sexual conduct of w o m e n . 260

The earliest evidence of codified law is the "legal

reforms" promulgated during the reign of Urukagina (ca. 2350

B.C., last king of the Early Dynasty period). Urukagina had

not only proclaimed himself king but a "divinely endowed"

king. His "reforms" apparently increased certain

protections of the poor and working class, while

strengthening his central, hierarchical authority. Whether

the edicts relating to women mark a deterioration in their

status— an issue of debate— their presence in the code

evidences state regulation of women, with no parallel

regulation of m e n . 261

260Lerner, p. 103. In interpreting the emergence and content of legal codes I subscribe to the methodological assumptions discussed in Lerner (pp. 102-03) and Diamond (pp. 258-59), that laws follow or reflect social conditions rather than cause them: "...legislation does not precede the conditions of life with which it is intended to deal, but arises out of actually existing conditions and situations which it seeks to guide and control." J. M. Powis Smith, The Origin and History of Hebrew Law (Chicago: n.p., 1931), p. 3, cited in Lerner, p. 102. Or, as L e m e r (p. 102) states: "The enactment of a law always indicates that the practice being commented on or legislated for exists and has become problematical in the society."

26lThe contentious edicts were 1) "The women of former days used to take two husbands (but) the women of today (if they attempt this) are stoned with stones (upon which is inscribed their evil) intent"; and 2) "The woman who has sinned by saying something to a man which she should not have said...must have her teeth crushed with burnt bricks upon which...her guilty deed has been inscribed." (Translation as used in Rohrlich, citing Kramer, The Sumerians. pp. 322 and 83.) Lerner (pp. 62-65) argues

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For an encompassing look at social conditions as

reflected in systematic laws, we have the Code of Hammurabi

(ca. 1750 B.C.). Not simply a collection of his own edicts,

the Code of Hammurabi was "a series of amendments and

restatements of parts of the law in force when he w r o t e . "262

Apparently Hammurabi, reigning over people of diverse ethnic

and cultural origins, wished to compile and amend previously

existing law in order to authorize his own collection

throughout his large empire. To the extent that his code

reflects the operative law existing in Mesopotamia in the

third and early second millennium, it provides valuable

insights on social conditions.

Seventy-three of the 282 laws in the Code of

Hammurabi address subj ects pertaining to marriage and sexual

against interpreting the edicts as "denot[ing] a sharp and decisive deterioration." Rohrlich (pp. 96-97) interprets the code as part of institutionalizing the gender hierarchy of patriliny/patrilocality; "Urukagina's Code contained a regulation imposing monogamy on women only, converting polyandry, formerly customary, into the crime of adultery, punishable by death...."

262q , R, Driver and John C. Miles, Babvlonian Laws. edited with Translation and Commentary. 2 vols. (Oxford; n.p., 1952, 1955), vol. 1, p. 45, cited in Lerner, p. 89. The following is based on Lerner's examination (chap. 5) of "the three major preserved collections of Mesopotamian law": Codex Hammurabi, Middle Assyrian Laws, and Hittite Laws. See also Boulding's (Underside, pp. 220-21) discussion of Near East law codes in relation to increasing regulation of women.

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m a t t e r s . 263 The death penalty was exacted for "certain

kinds of theft; housebreaking; connivance in slave escapes;

faulty building construction which results in fatal

accidents; black magic; kidnapping; brigandage; rape;

incest; for causing certain kinds of abortion; and for

adultery committed by w i v e s . "264 ^ particularly revealing

aspect of the Mesopotamian law codes is the notion of

substitution; "a man may substitute members of his family,

his servants and/or slaves to suffer the punishment for a

crime he has committed." It is noteworthy that this

principle— previously residing only in divinely endowed

monarchs— is here extended to non-royal heads-of-families,

who are, in this case, exclusively male.

In terms of stratification, the Code recognizes

three classes (patrician— including priests and government

officials— burgher, and slave), with punishment more severe

for damages to higher-ranking persons. The Code offers

greater protection to debtors than was previously the case.

This includes an improvement for women (by limiting the debt

service of a wife of a debtor to three years), while

protecting the rights of husbands (the debtors) against the

rights of creditors. "Two basic assumptions underlying

263Lerner, p. 103; and "Out of 112 surviving Middle Assyrian laws, some 59 deal with the same topics."

264ibid., pp. 103-04 for quotations and analysis in this paragraph.

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these laws remained untouched; that male kin have the right

of disposal over their female relatives and that a man's

wife and children are part of his property to be disposed of

as s u c h . "265 The patriarchal family is both presupposed and

legitimized in this, and other, Mesopotamian codes. (We

will observe almost identical protections and patriarchy

codified in early Greek laws.)

Other edicts relating to marriage, inheritance, and

divorce institutionalized patrilineal and patrilocal

principles, apparently requiring specification because of

residual non-patrilocal practices. With increasing private

property and stratification, exchange of women in marriage

became an economic transaction, their sexual services being

turned into marketable commodities. For upper-class women,

marriage was contractual; for lower-class, marriage was

domestic enslavement— daughters being sold in order to

purchase wives for s o n s . 266 For either class, women were

legally obliged to perform— sexually and economically— to

their husbands' satisfaction; this included virginity at

marriage and absolute fidelity for its duration. Men, not

under these restraints, could have sexual liaisons with

harlots and slave women. The punishment for adultery was

265ibid., p. 90.

266ibid,, pp. 106-12. Note again the class division of women embedded within patriarchal structures.

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usually death; increasingly, determination of guilt and

punishment were matters of state regulation.

The laws regarding rape all presuppose that the

injured party is the husband or father of the raped woman;

punishments were severe, but the consequences were

especially devastating for the innocent women, who were no

longer of value to their family, and were treated

accordingly. For example, if a married man raped a virgin,

the father of the virgin 1) takes the wife of the rapist and

"dishonors'* her (by raping her, from which situation a life

of prostitution is imposed upon her), and 2) gives his

daughter to the rapist in indissoluble marriage. If the

rapist is unmarried, he must "pay the price of a virgin" to

the father and enter indissoluble marriage with his victim.

Of the two women, the raped virgin must face indissoluble

marriage with her rapist; the innocent wife faces

prostitution. 267 The power of men to dispose of women, and

their status as "property," is here painfully explicit.

The state regulated miscarriages and abortions as

well, punishment varying according to the class of the

victim, i.e., the class of the man who had property rights

in the victim. By the time of the Middle Assyrian Laws, the

punishment for a self-induced miscarriage is being impaled

26?After Lerner's discussion of the Middle Assyrian Law 55, pp. 116—17.

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and refused burial— the severest penalties possible, and

"they are public penalties for high c r i m e s . "268 The power

of the state (king) and the power of the family patriarch

over his wives and children are here connected. As is

evidenced throughout the developing legal codes, "the

control of female sexuality, previously left to individual

husbands or to family heads, had now become a matter of

state regulation."

Anthropologists and historians "agree that the rise

of kingship was associated with a profound increase in the

power of the father within the nuclear, conjugal f a m i l y . "269

The formation of states in the Near East clearly exemplified

this pattern of increasing paternal authority. Men as well

as women were "domesticated" by the institutionalization of

class societies: they were liable for taxes, vulnerable to

conscription, and subject to an imposed legal system.

Ensuring the inviolable authority of all men "within the

family" compensated them for their loss of autonomy vis-a-

vis the state: every father could at least reign within his

private "castle." The legal code was what made that

compensation— i.e., domination— secure.

268ibid., pp. 120, 121.

269Baibus, pp. 329-30.

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Transformations in Meaning Systems

I turn finally to consideration of change in

cosmologies attending state formation. From the 4th

millennium there is archeological evidence of the

continuation of monistic and animistic Great Goddess

worship. "There was unity among earth and the stars, humans

and nature, birth and death, all of which were embodied in

the Great G o d d e s s . "270 Fertility was a crucial aspect of

Mesopotamian survival and appears as a central theme in

religious belief systems. Believed to be the "one who

creates life," the fertility goddess was frequently depicted

with the tree of life and its fruit, and as the dispenser of

life-giving water. The Sacred Marriage (widely celebrated

in the 4th and 3rd millennia) was an annual rite expressing

the all-encompassing fertility of the Goddess: "Not until

the Goddess had mated with the young god and his death and

rebirth had taken place, could the annual cycle of the

seasons begin."271 Texts indicate that these fertility

rituals were embedded in a fatalistic theology: people had

no free will but were created to serve the gods and

270Lemej-^ p. 14g.

271ibid., p. 150; also Redman, p. 276. L e m e r (p. 150) notes that similar rites "flourished in classical Greece and pre-Christian Rome," citing Thorkild Jacobsen, Toward the Image of Tammuz and Other Essays on Mesopotamian History and Culture. ed. William L. Moran (Cambridge, MA: n.p., 1970), pp. 73-101.

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goddesses who were the owners of cities and temples; through

their human representatives (priests and priestesses), the

deities directed day-to-day activities. 272

With the introduction of "naming" (see above in

relation to the invention of writing), the concept of

creation takes a revolutionary turn: "...from being merely

the acting out of the mystic force of female fertility to

being a conscious act of creation, often involving god-

figures of both s e x e s . "273 The shift to greater recognition

of the male role in fertility (the fertility goddess having

a male consort to initiate her fertility) appears to have

coincided with the development of kingship, as kings "assume

some of the services to the goddess and with them some of

her power, and have themselves depicted with symbols

associated with h e r . "274

Creation myths undergo a very significant

transformation with the consolidation of archaic states

272After Redman, p. 275, and Lerner, p. 62.

273Lerner, p. 151.

274ibid,p p. 195 ; "This shift is particularly striking in the panels from the palace of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh, which reveal the changes in gender definitions quite dramatically. The king and his servants are huge; they are depicted as warriors in full armor, with bulging muscles and carrying weapons. Yet the king carries a watering-pot, doing homage to the fertility principle symbolized in the tree of life. Clearly, the locus of power has shifted from female to male, but the realm of the goddess cannot be ignored; it must be honored and pacified."

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under strong kings. The figure of the goddess "gives way to

a male god, usually the god of wind and air or the god of

thunder, who more and more, as time progresses, comes to

resemble an earthly king of the new kind....The former

Earth-Goddesses now appear as daughters and wives..."275

That is, not only do the goddesses lose their supremacy but

they are "domesticated"— transformed into the "dependent"

categories of wife and/or daughter. In these roles women

are divested of their own power and left with only the

"delegated" power of husbands or fathers. But the more

incredible— and for that reason noteworthy— change is the

transfer to the male god of the power of fertility and

creation i t s e l f . 276 Not simply the male consort required

for fertilization, or one among a pantheon of gods— the new

god is the One God, supreme over all others and embodying

the principle of generativity in both its creative and

procreative aspects.

We can trace changes in societal organization that

parallel the changes in cosomological systems. As noted

275ibid., p. 152.

276There is considerable literature on the relationship of early goddess and god transformations; Leimer cites (p. 274, note 8) "for a full discussion and overview" [of the transfer of procreativity to a male god] Edwin O. James, The Cult of the Mother-Goddess: An Archeological and Documentary Study (London: n.p., 1959), pp. 228-53. The entire body of literature addressing "creation" and genesis stories is also relevant. See especially the extensive documentation and survey of myth interpretation in Robbins.

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above, the earlier centrality of the temple complex and

power of its elite was progressively challenged by the

secular power of successful military leaders. Initially the

military elites developed alongside the temple elites, but

as they consolidated their power, and united city-states,

they made claims not only to kingship but ultimately to

divinely endowed k i n g s h i p . 277

The relationship between political developments and

changes in religious belief systems is explicit in the Enuma

Elish (written ca. 1100 B.C.). In this epic, "chaos, in the

form of the life-giving Tiamat, is confronted by rebellious

primitive gods, who wish to create order. A terrible battle

ensues, in which the rebellious gods are led by a young god

[Marduk], who then physically destroys Tiamat and creates,

out of her carcass, the earth and the h e a v e n s . "278

Significantly, the slayer, Marduk, had only first emerged—

and not as a supreme power— under the reign of Hammurabi

(ca. 1700 B.C.) in Babylon. That is, in a pattern repeated

throughout history, older mythical material was altered "in

277gee Lerner's discussion of Urukagina, pp. 62-63. Rohrlich (pp. 95-96) notes the transition to "divine" appointment of kings as a breakdown in previously democratic assembly elections.

278Lerner, p. 153.

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such a way as to serve political e n d s . "279 ^ particular

pattern is the dethroning of the goddess— it occurs in many

cultures at many different times, but appears to coincide

with the transition from matrilineal kinship to

patriliny/patrilocality.280

In sum, there is a clear pattern in the

transformation of belief systems accompanying state

formation. "First, the demotion of the Mother-Goddess

figure and the ascendance and later dominance of her male

279ibid., p. 153, citing Samuel Noal Kramer, "Poets and Psalmists; Goddesses and Theologians: Literary, Religious and Anthropological Aspects of the Legacy of Sumer," in Denise Schmandt-Besserat, The Legacy of Sumer (Malibu: n.p., 1976), p. 14. Lerner (pp. 153-54) documents parallel "displacements" of female creator goddesses by male gods in the Assyrian creation myth and Canaanite mythology about Baal. Rohrlich (pp. 95-96) describes the Enuma Elish as "the first historical use of the equation 'woman is to man as nature is to culture,' the ideology which rationalizes the subordination of women in patriarchal societies by presenting it as a universal necessity....In contrast to Inanna's [Goddess] leadership in the early assembly of the gods, in this epic the female deities play an entirely minor role as consorts to the male deities, reflecting 'the masculine, cosmic, political nature of the occasion.' [citing N. K. Sanders, Poems of Heaven and Hell from Ancient Mesopotamia (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books, 1971), p. 30] Marduk demands as his reward for defeating Tiamat unequivocal supremacy over the assembly and all the gods, as well as total power as lawmaker" [citing ibid., pp. 81-82]. On Enuma Elish. see also Robbins. On religious ideology changing to reflect centralizing and hierarchical political power in third millennium Mesopotamia, see also T. Jacobsen, The Treasures of Darkness (New Haven: n.p., 1976), cited in Coontz and Henderson, "Property," pp. 151-52.

280Lerner (p. 154) notes this pattern in Elam, Anatolia, Crete, Egypt, and Greece, then (pp. 154-60) extensively documents the transition for the Hittite society.

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consort/son; then his merging with a storm-god into a male

Creator-God, who heads the pantheon of gods and goddesses.

Wherever such changes occur, the power of creation and of

fertility is transfered from the Goddess to the G o d . "281

There are several identifiable elements in relation to the

historical recurrence of this pattern.

First, the personification of "sacredness" (however

loosely defined) as female appears in the archeological and

historical record prior to its appearance as m a l e . 282 is

not necessary to posit matriarchy, formalized goddess

religions, or psychoanalytic depictions of maternal power in

order to acknowledge the probable impact of women's

procreative power on the earliest belief systems. That

these initial human attempts— to "explain reality as it is"-

281ibid., p. 145, also citing James, pp. 228-53.

282iijjj bis famous work Mutterrecht (Mother Right), J. J. Bachofen first voiced the insight that mankind in the early phases of its social development worshiped the female principle as the source of life, nutrition, and prosperity. Since Bachofen's time, archaeology has confirmed that view a thousand times, unearthing numerous artifacts from man's prehistoric past that show adoration of the female genitalia. There can be little doubt that this uterine worship harks back to a phase in man's history when the male role in reproduction was not recognized, though it probably continued long after paternity was discovered." See Eva C. Keuls, The Reian of the Phallus (New York: Harper & Row, 1985), p. 65.

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-acknowledged, celebrated, and/or sanctified the visible

reproductive power of women is, in itself, unremarkable.283

Second, and similarly, there is a prima facie case

for the temporal precedence of matrilineality. That humans

live in some form of groups, that mother and offspring

relations are fundamental and obvious, that obvious

relations are reasonable candidates for group

identification— these observations are uncontroversial.

Stable and recurrent social interaction was presumably a

requisite for the recognition of the male role in

procreativity. To the extent that such stability was a

function of social structure based upon mother-offspring

relations it was by definition matrilineal, and by

definition, preceded (the possibility of) patriliny. We

have examined, archeologically and historically, the pattern

of patrilineal/patrilocal displacement of

matriliny/matrilocality. The predominance of that pattern

of displacement has been attributed to interacting

historical, cultural, and environmental factors that, in

specific contexts, favored the development of patriarchal

structures.

283j believe that it can only be "remarkable" to the extent that the reality of women's lives— in this case, specifically their reproductive capacity— is rendered "invisible" by the androcentric lens.

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Third, the factors favoring the development of

patriarchal societies are inextricable from (but not

necessarily the same as) those of state formation. Crucial

here is the intensification of militarism attending the

concentration and consolidation of centralized authority.

The specific social structuring engendered in

patriliny/patrilocality (i.e., the privatization of women's

productivity and reproductivity, hierarchical

differentiation, and concentration of related males)

afforded critical advantages in intensely competitive

contexts.

Fourth, the increased social stratification

accompanying state formation requires ideological

justification. That justification is, by definition, in the

interest of the centralized, administrative elite and

typically generated by it, but posed in terms of religious

beliefs. In their capacity as administrative elite, those

with an interest in generating justificatory ideology are

typically also those engaged in the development of writing.

The transformations in consciousness and social relations

attending the development of writing are inextricable then

from the power relations constituting centralized authority.

As noted earlier, the development of writing is

mutually influenced by a powerful new notion of creation:

not the creation embodied (literally) in human reproduction-

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-the exclusive domain of women— but creation bv

conceptualization. This is related in turn to emerging

notions of human agency: no longer "acting out"

fatalistically, but "acting upon" the world, with

intentionality. This altered notion of creative power— the

power of conceptualization, a power not "within nature" but

"outside of nature," a power of creation no longer

exclusively female— coincides with the centralization of

material power in the form of the patriarchal state.

We observe then the following interactive processes:

the historical devolution of women's power in the transition

from matriliny to patriliny; the progressive demotion of the

mother-goddess as sole principle of creativity; the

increasing concentration of material power in the form of

kingships; the emergence of writing and new concepts of

creative power and human agency (almost exclusively under

elite male control) ; the need to justify the social

stratification constituting the patriarchal state. Arising

at different times and in different places, these

transformations should not be conceptualized

deterministically, but as a series of interacting processes,

triggered by specific cultural and environmental conditions,

and tending— because of their mutual reinforcement— to head

in the same direction.

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ARCHAIC/CIVIL STATE;

GREECE

Polis is a term of distinction. It denotes a political form that is equally distant from the primitive tribe and from the' civilized monarchic state of the ancient East. The polis, the form of political organization prevailing in the Greek world during its greatest period (roughly the eighth to the third century B.C.), was an independent state organized around an urban center and governed typically by formal laws and republican political institutions. It is in important respects the forerunner, if not the direct ancestor, of the constitutional democracies of the contemporary West.^®^

Greece from the Bronze Aae to the Archaic Period

By the beginning of the second millennium B.C.,

Greeks had migrated into the Mediterranean area, whether

overland from the north or by way of the sea from Asia

Minor.285 Little is known about the political organization

284Lord, Aristotle, p. 1.

285The following reconstruction is based on Michael Grant, The Rise of the Greeks (New York; Charles Scribner's Sons, 1988); Victor Ehrenberg, From Solon to Socrates (London: Methuen & Co., 1967) and The Greek State. 2nd ed. (London: Methuen & Co., Ltd., 1969); Moses I. Finley, Earlv Greece: The Bronze and Archaic Ages (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1970); Sarah B. Pomeroy, Goddesses. Whores. Wives. and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity (New York: Schocken Books, 1975) ; Michael H. Crawford and David Whitehead, Archaic and Classical Greece: A Selection of Ancient Sources in Translation (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983);

165

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of the populations absorbed or expelled by the Greek

invasion (except for the powerful kingship existing in

Crete). However, the invading Greeks themselves were

initially "tribally" organized. In approximately 1600 B.C.

Mycenae, on the Greek mainland, entered a prosperous period,

apparently advancing under the strong influence of Minoan

Crete.286 This Mycenaean period (ca. 1600-1100) of Greek

civilization had a lasting influence:

It was the age in which Greek mythology was born, the tales of gods and heroes, which were bound to the main sites of Mycenaean Greece,...the age when the gods of the invaders shared the pantheon with Cretan and Asiatic gods, and above all goddesses; the age from which the oral tradition of epic poetry sprang which culminated in Homer.287

During this period, walled citadels, encompassing

the royal palace, were attached to external settlements of

town-like development, the combination forming an economic

and political system. Social stratification was

substantial: "the gigantic buildings prove that a very

numerous section of [the people]...were bound to forced

labour. Kingship,...had grown beyond tribal chieftainship

into a strong monarchy, and often, it seems, into supremacy

Boulding, Underside, chapter 6.

286por descriptions of Minoan Crete, with attention to the role of women, see Rohrlich-Leavitt, pp. 42-50; also Boulding, Underside, pp. 244-50.

28”7Ehrenberg, From Solon, p. 4.

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over numerous vassal k i n g s . "288 spite of apparent unity

in language and shared cultural traits, it is doubtful that

a Mycenaean "empire" existed, or that "the Greeks of that

age felt themselves to be a single people, still less a •nation*."289

The picture that emerges from such an analysis of the tablets and the archaeology combined is one of a division of Mycenaean Greece into a number of petty bureaucratic states, with a warrior aristocracy, a high level of craftsmanship, extensive foreign trade in necessities (metals) and luxuries, and a permanent condition of armed neutrality at best in their relations with each other, and perhaps at times with their subjects. Nothing points to an over-all authority on the part of M y c e n a e . 290

From the fifteenth century B.C., Mycenaeans pushed

outwards, occupying Crete and settling throughout the Aegean

area. By the eleventh century, the Mycenaean civilization

was no more: whether the result of invasion, internal

revolt, or climatic conditions, many of the sites were

abandoned, their fortresses destroyed, and the people

dispersed. Whatever the causes, the Bronze Age in Greece

appears to have terminated relatively abruptly.

With the demise of Mycenaean civilization and the

fall of Hittite rule in Troy (ca. 1190 B.C.), we enter the

Dark Age of Greek history (ca. 1200-800 B.C.). This period

288Ehrenberg, Greek State, p. 8. 289ibid., p. 8.

290Finley, pp. 55-56.

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is so identified because of its apparently impoverished

communities, the low quality of artistry and technology, and

the disappearance of the art of writing.

That may seem incredible, until the point is grasped that the sole function of writing in the Mycenaean world.. .was to meet the administrative needs of the palace. When the latter disappeared, the need and the art both went with it. And the palace disappeared so completely that it never again returned in the subsequent history of ancient G r e e c e . 291

While we know little about the eleventh-ninth

centuries which followed, it is during this period "that the

historic Hellenic people took shape, and the foundations

were laid for a new beginning, the very beginning of

European h i s t o r y . "292 Economic, political, and cultural

transformations combined to mark this as an important

transitional period.

The introduction of iron technology (ca. 1200 B.C.)

into Greece permitted widespread changes in production and

social relations. "Improved iron tools, the bellows, the

handmill, the potter's wheel, the making of oil and

wine,...wagons and war chariots, shipbuilding with planks

and beams, the beginnings of architecture as an art,..."

were some of the consequences of the new techology.293

291ibid., p. 66.

292Ehrenberg, From Solon, p. 5. 293prederick Engels, The Origin of the Familv. Private Property, and the State, intro. Evelyn Reed (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1972), p. 43.

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During the Dark Age, increasing technical skills (presumably

associated with the new iron techonology) and increasing

wealth are archeologically evident; these in turn are

accompanied by evidence of gradual population growth.

In terms of societal organization, palace-centered,

bureaucratic states were replaced in the Iron Age by a

revitalized tribal order, but one now adapted to the demands

of urban community. Reminiscent of earlier Near Eastern

institutions, the tribe's political order--its

"constitution"— rested on three elements;

At the head of the tribe stood the chieftain or warlord... ; he was the military leader and was also priest and judge....It is probable that the original Greek leader,...was something very different from the Mycenaean king....The tribe itself was composed of its warriors, free men capable of bearing arms, who met in the assembly...of army or people, and by acclamation chose the warlord, and whose agreement must at least have been needed for all peaceful transactions of importance. Between these two the Council of the Elders... intervened at an early date....[The Council] was at first probably summoned by the king from the heads of the great families to advise him on important matters. It grew independent and embodied some limitation of the power of the king, and at the same time represented the class of nobles that rose above the ordinary free men. These three political factors...for all time to come...determined the structure of the Greek state.294

As tribes settled and became identified with a

specific territory, tribal chieftainship gave way to an

emerging aristocracy of wealthy and independent clans. The

new ruling class— monarchy having been gradually eliminated

294Ehrenberg, Greek State, pp. 13-14.

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in most, but not all, communities— was the nobility, their

wealth based on concentrated land-holdings or breeding

horses. In an age of scarce and expensive metals—

increasingly essential to successful combat— the wealthy

also monopolized military power, single horseman combat

being the tactics of the age. The predominance of nobility

in military affairs signalled a decline in the power of the

army assembly; those whose vote was earlier significant now

had only a passive right of approval or disapproval.

It was this expanding and powerful nobility that

tended to concentrate in the cities: "The power to rule was

still bound to military valour and landed possessions; but

the city....was now a living centre, where government was

carried on and justice administered, where the 'Agora'

developed from an occasional assembly into a permanent

market, where the economic isolation of the household and

the class isolation of the individual noblemen were slowly

but steadily undermined. "295 j-j. also in the cities that

new developments in Greek religion were most obvious.

Greek communities were also religious communities;

each tribe and state established cults in which every member

took part. A connection with the land was an essential

element in religious belief and ritual, signified by deities

of nature, special locations, earth, hearth, and clan. But

295ibid., p. 19.

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in an age of migration, many kinship groups had cults not

tied to specific places. Instead, once a kinship group

settled, there was a tendency to adopt the cult of the

leading local deity. These initially included female

deities, presumably a continuity from Mycenaean times when

the goddesses of Cretan cults predominated.

Accompanying state formation was a "merging"— at

least ceremonially— of cult deities and rituals with the

Olympic pantheon of gods depicted in the Homeric epics. In

contrast to the cults, the Olympians, especially popular

with the nobility in the cities, were a "divine

family.. .completely divorced not only from soil and nature

but also from all local human groups; it is most intimately

connected with the social sphere of the epic, and thus is

part of the concept of the world held by the Ionian

n o b i l i t y . "296 ^ merging of rural and tribal based cults

(favored by the non-nobility) with the Olympian deities

(favored by the nobility and identified with the polis),

enabled the extension of political units as people

identified with shared cult beliefs and rituals. Yet there

remained a lasting tension between the people settled

296ibid., p. 16. The Olympians appear more like combative aristocrats than fertility deities; this contrast may have contributed to the greater interest in them shown by the nobility. The fertility cults (sometimes referred to as the "mysteries" in distinction from the pantheon of Olympus) were very much tied to the natural order— harvest, weather, soil, etc.

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outside of the urban concentrations— working with the soil

and retaining kin-based cults and social relations— and the

urban-dwellers whose primary identifications were decreasing

in terms of kin-structures and developing instead toward

more civic and "rational" expressions. 297

What we know of gender and class relations during

this period is primarily derived from interpreting the

Homeric epics and some references appearing in Herodotus'

works. The world depicted is one of petty kings,

chieftains, and nobles: rulers with the powers of judge,

lawgiver, and commander. The household of the clan was the

center of activity and power. There were no administrative

centers, legal codes, or powerful religious elites. A

variety of marriage and residence patterns appear in the

epics; matrilineal and matrilocal patterns were key in the

frequent pursuit of elite women for the prize of

participation in ruling their fathers' r e a l m s . 298 Typical

of aristocratic kin corporate systems, alliance marriages

were common among the upper classes.

Generally, in the context of extreme militarism

depicted in the Heroic Greek society of the epics, men were

297gee, for instance, Ehrenberg's association of the "tendency to think things out rationally" with the tendency that "enabled men to emancipate themselves more decisively from the social and political traditions of the tribe" (Greek State, pp. 19-20).

298See Pomeroy's chap. 2, which I rely on here.

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expected to be warriors, providing the defense of their

families and citadels, and women were expected to reproduce

and raise future warriors; some individual elite women had

significant power in their roles as mother, wife, and

marriageable daughter. "In an atmosphere of fierce

competition among men, women were viewed symbolically and

literally as properties— the prizes of contests and the

spoils of conquest— and domination over them increased the

male's prestige."299 There are repeated references to

marriage by capture or by contest, in which the bride's

preference was minimally or not at all considered.

Herodotus refers to the colonizing Greeks [males] as

bringing no women with them but "tak[ing] Carian women,

whose kinsmen they m u r d e r e d . "300 slaves were primarily

captive women, a standard corollary of raids and conquest

(the men most often being killed).301 A sexual double

299pomeroy, p. 25. She cites instances (p. 26); a skilled slave woman as prize in a footrace, Eurymedousa selected as a special trophy for King Alcinous, allotting the women of the Trojan royal family as prizes to the heroes of the Greek army. See also Finley, p. 82.

300pinley, pp. 75-76, citing Herodotus I. 146.

301gyidence in Greece conforms to the pattern noted in the Near East; most slaves were initially women, the booty of raids and warfare. See, for example, Finley, p. 76, 82, 85, 101-02. On the presence of woman slaves in the Mycenaen world (derived from linear B texts), see Monique Saliou, "The Processes of Women's Subordination in Primitive and Archaic Greece," in Women's Work. Men's Prooertv. pp. 176- 77.

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standard prevailed, exacerbated by the presence of so many

captive women; men kept concubines without recrimination;

but a woman's infidelity might politically threaten an

entire kingdom. Virginity was prized, and therefore women

were strictly regulated; rape was considered a crime against

the husband, father, or the male with rights to the victim.

The destruction of the Mycenaean civilization led

...to a period of migration, the decline of economic activity through the disruption of Mediterranean trade, and the disappearance of writing. The world that re- emerged between the 8th and 6th centuries B.C., that of Homer and Hesiod, was almost exclusively dependent on the land. There was simultaneously an acute agrarian crisis, caused by the lack of land and its unequal distribution, from which the aristocratic classes benefited."302

For several centuries intensive migration and

settlement of Aeolic, Ionic, and Dorian Greeks occurred

throughout the Aegean, ultimately converting it "for the

first time into a Greek waterway."303 The incredible

mixing— of people, dialects, technologies, and customs—

greatly complicated the evolution of societal organization

302galiou, pp. 183-84.

303pinley, p. 75. Perry Anderson emphasizes the significance of the Aegean zone; "Water was the irreplaceable medium of communication and trade which rendered possible urban growth of a concentration and sophistication far in advance of the rural interior behind it....The specific combination of town and country that defined the classical world was in the last resort only operational because of the lake at the centre of it." See his Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism. (London; Verso, 1974), pp. 20-21.

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in the period of state formation. There was no simple

progression of culturally (e.g., in terms of marriage and

residence rules, religious practices, etc.) similar units

environmentally compelled into a centralizing dynamic.

On the contrary, [the Greeks] inherited a complex and contradictory web of systems for the inheritance of possessions and power. This web is acceptable when the unwritten laws of lineages are the rule, with the relationship of forces between clans who adopt this or that solution depending on the interest of the most powerful clan. But when it becomes a matter of writing laws, of making them applicable to all, it is evident that an exclusively patrilineal kinship system, compulsory exogamy, and the rupture between the woman and her family expressed by the dowry appear much simpler and above all much more beneficial to the male community.304

The end of the Dark Age is marked by the

réintroduction of writing, the Greeks taking over and

adapting to their purposes the alphabetic script of the

Phoenicians. The Greeks, at that point unaware of the

existence of writing in Mycenae, believed that they were

becoming literate for the first t i m e . 305 This development

is of crucial significance: generally, because of the

304gaiiou, p. 192. I do not mean to suggest that developments, for example in the Near East, were uniform or uninterrupted; there were dynamic exchanges between pastoralists and agriculturists that engendered their own complexity. But, no doubt greatly shaped by its location and topography, Greece appears to have experienced an intensity of invasions, migrations, disruptions, etc., involving culturally disparate systems, that is noteworthy for the social and historical complexity it introduced.

305crawford and Whitehead, pp. 35-36, including excerpts from Herodotus V. 57-58.2 crediting the lonians with the adaptation of the alphabet.

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changes (noted above) in thought and communication

associated with the development of writing; and

particularly, in terms of Greek (and subsequently European)

'History.' Quite literally, "Greek History may be deemed to

begin in the eighth c e n t u r y . "308 To the extent that

European history is a legacy of Greek antecedents, our

"understanding of ourselves" is very much conditioned by the

History written at this juncture in the Western tradition.

I believe that the disappearance of writing— and therefore

the History it constituted— had significant consequences for

subsequent Greek self-understanding. These points are taken

up below.

The Context of Archaic and Classical Greek Literature

During the seventh century B.C., there developed a

new military tactic of historic importance: the closed

phalanx of hoplites. So organized, the infantrymen had such

an advantage that by the end of the seventh century the

phalanx displaced single combat— the monopoly of the

nobility. Because each soldier furnished his own arms and

armor, only the well-to-do commoners could participate, but

this alone was significant. Engaged in a life-and-death

306jbid., p. 5. I here utilize Lerner's distinction (p. 4) between 'history': "the unrecorded past— all the events of the past as recollected by human beings— and History— the recorded and interpreted past."

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situation that demanded team-work, hoplites (including

nobility) participated in a new notion of equality, which

translated to some extent into demeinds for shares in

political authority. While the hoplite success fostered

democratic notions, undermined previous aristocratic

primacy, and gained the hoplites citizenship, the extension

of citizenship on these grounds necessarily, once again,

excluded w o m e n . 307 indeed, we observe that the militarism

accompanying state formation has been systematically costly

to women: for example, they were taken as captives and

treated as war booty; their sexuality was regulated for the

purpose of producing more warriors; and they were excluded

from the power, status, and citizenship accorded warriors.

During this period, the increasing wealth of a

middle class and impoverishment of non-propertied citizens

and small farmers led to demands for land redistribution and

debt cancellation. The popularity of tyrants during the

seventh and sixth centuries attested to the chronic conflict

pervading archaic Greece, the dissatisfaction among various

sectors, and the support for challengers to aristocratic

r u l e . 3 0 8

307&fter Finley, pp. 101-102; Ehrenberg, Greek State. p. 20; Lerner, pp. 202-03.

308pinley also (p. 105) warns against our associating tyranny with despotism; initially the term 'tyrant' simply referred to holding power without 'legitimate' authority— not necessarily a judgment of one's quality as a ruler. See

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These autocrats [tyrants] broke the dominance of the ancestral aristocracies over the cities: they represented newer landowners and more recent wealth, accumulated during the economic growth of the preceding epoch, and rested their power to a much greater extent on concessions to the unprivileged mass of city- dwellers....The tyrants themselves were usually comparative upstarts of considerable wealth, whose personal power symbolized the access of the social group from which they were recruited to honours and position within the city....The tyrants, in conflict with the traditional nobility, in effect objectively blocked the monopolization of agrarian property that was the ulitmate tendency of its unrestricted rule, and which was threatening to cause increasing social distress in Archaic G r e e c e . 309

Generally, tyrants put a temporary end to crippling

conflicts; used dynastic marriages to secure political

alliances not only within their own states but also with the

families of other tyrants; furthered peasant independence;

and strengthened the sense of community through public works

and festivals favoring the major cults. Their great

weakness was, of course, their reliance on personal loyalty

and their tendency, in a generation or two, to despotism.

One response to the threat of uprisings was

corrective legislation to decrease class antagonism and

thereby protect the state. Solon's legislation (ca. 594

B.C.), is a clear example.310 These reforms attempted to

also Ehrenberg, From Solon, pp. 21-27.

309&nderson, p. 30.

310The following draws upon Ehrenberg, From Solon. chap. 3; Finley, pp. 122-26; Mary O'Brien, The Politics of Reproduction (London and Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul,

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remedy the desperate situation of the indebted peasantry

and— through regulation of slavery, marriage, and

inheritance rules— generally improve the unstable economic

s i t u a t i o n . 311 Solon cancelled all debts and forbade any

future return to debt-enslavement: i.e., the practice of

mortgaging free men or women as security for debts or

l o a n s . 312 While establishing a free peasantry in Attica,

Solon did not take the more radical step of providing a

means for their livelihood in the form of land

redistribution. Solon's constitutional reforms recognized

the altered class relations accompanying the phalanx

military tactics : he formalized a citizen-body,

hierarchically based on wealth alone, and therefore no

1981), pp. 106-08; Pomeroy, pp. 57, 60, 86; Grant, pp. 46- 53; Keuls, pp. 206-09; Anderson, chapter 2.

311"By limiting the possibilities the rich had of exploiting the poor, Solon's reforms may well have stimulated the demand for imported slaves at Athens; and this contributed to the development of the slave/free polarity, since henceforth no citizen could be made a slave, and every slave would have to be an imported foreigner (or his descendant)." See Thomas Wiedemann, Greek and Roman Slavery (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981), p. 37. Anderson (p. 36) also notes a "steep increase in the use of slave-labour" as a result of the reforms; Grant (p. 48) also acknowledges the "massive importation of slaves" to meet the labor shortage created by the reforms.

312irhere was one exception: the right of the male guardian to sell into slavery an unmarried woman who had lost her virginity. See Pomeroy, p. 57; Keuls, p. 208; Grant fails to acknowledge this exception. As noted in the previous chapter, the Code of Hammurabi similarly contained provisions limiting the exploitation of debt-slaves.

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longer purely aristocratic. 313 The (male) middle classes

gained a role in government for the first time. While

citizenship was expanded to include non-noble men and some

foreigners, women (and slaves) continued to have absolutely

no standing in the polis.

Solon regarded "as one of his most urgent tasks the

establishment or re-establishment of what was the very

foundation of Athenian society, the permanence of the

f a m i l y . "314 order to understand the state's interest in

protecting the "family," consider the economic context and

significance of the individual household that constituted

the "family" : aristocratic clans monopolized large

landholdings; a growing middle class of traders, artisans,

independent peasants, etc. (associated with altered

production methods made possible by iron technology)

constituted a larger and more diverse class than the

aristocracy; the small household was the productive unit of

society— with landowning heads of households acquiring

citizenship.

The more inclusive and more egalitarian state that resulted from these shifts in political and economic

313iigy setting up wealth (timocracy) instead of birth as the framework of his hierarchy, he created the concept of an impersonal state, as opposed to arbitrary noble leadership, and thus opened up a decisive breach..." See Grant, p. 52.

33-4Ehrenberg, From Solon, p. 69; my discussion is drawn from his chap. 3.

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strength.. .was thus bound up with the increasing importance of the oikos. or household, which was a small holding corporation composed of its male head, his wife, their children, and the slaves who served it and worked the land that was its economic base. The legal rights over this property were vested in the male head and transferred to his son to assure the continuity of the individual oikoi. The whole of the productive output of this small corporation was appropriated by its male head as the basis for his claim to participate in the state.315

In the interest of political stability, the state

protected the inviolability of the individual oikos in order

to ensure an economically stable and substantial middle

class. Solon's inheritance laws freed individual— actually,

household— property from clan, i.e., kin-based, control.

The pattern becomes that of the state acting to weaken

older, kin-based linkages between households, while at the

same time acting to establish and fortify individual

household " f a m i l i e s . "316 The state intervened economically

315jjarilyn Arthur, "'Liberated Women' in the Classical Era," in Becoming Visible, p. 67.

316ijhis transition from kinship as a principle of social organization ("either insofar as kiship ties operate in structuring a society per se or because a larger society is broken down into units organized by kin relations, i.e., as clans or lineages") to kinship as co-residence (i.e., "families") is a critical one. The "family"— in the sense we have come to identify with it— only comes into existence as a function of this process. That is, the state formation process of weakening kinship as the principle of social organization, in favor of a "citizenship" (property based) principle of social organization, is what "forces" the "nuclear family" into being. Or: the "family" does not precede the state, but is constituted by it. These issues are taken up below. See Nicholson, pp. 114-15, for the above quotation and further discussion of these points.

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households317; through the regulation of slavery318. and by

codifying laws to protect "family property."

Marriage especially was to be regulated by the state: "adultery and unchastity of women [only] were

severely p u n i s h e d . "319 Once again in the process of state

formation we observe the institutionalization through legal codification of the "respectable vs. non-respectable woman" dichotomy, the division being particularly evident in

Athenian s o c i e t y . 320 Solon's laws were notable for

institutionalizing the "good women vs. whore" distinction; one element being his establishment of state-owned brothels

31?Anderson, p. 32.

318giavery "was a mechanism for ensuring that services would be guaranteed to the primary economic unit, the household: a household would not have to rely upon kin, friends or contract labour...." See Wiedemann, p. 5.

319Ehrenberg, From Solon, p. 70. And Arthur, "Liberated Women," p. 69: "Adultery was punished more severely than rape or seduction because that crime threatened the preservation of the household by casting doubts on the legitimacy of its heir." 320por a discussion of the polarization of women, the double standard, and the Athenian "rift between the notions of sex for procreation and sex for pleasure and release," see Keuls, chap. 8. Pomeroy addresses this duality throughout her book.

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staffed by slave w o m e n . 321 Ehrenberg draws the following

conclusions in regard to the status of women during this period:

The decline,...of the position of women since Homeric times is remarkable. From Hesiod onwards there was a great deal of misogynie poetry, while the great figures of Penolope or Nausicaa, or of the Phaeacian queen Arete, or the overwhelming if evil part played by Helena or Clytaemnestra, survived in Greek myth and memory. There are indications that the Greeks in pre-historic times lived in a matriarchal society; its remnants can still be traced in epic poetry. The great change must have happened by the time of the invasions, during or after the Mycenaean age. When the polis arose, in the eighth century, Greek society was completely dominated by masculine s t a n d a r d s . 322

The reforms of Solon paved the way for subsequent

law-givers to further establish democratic principles in

Athens. Cleisthenes followed in this direction, being

recognized especially for bringing "the local principle to

complete victory over the kinship p r i n c i p l e . "323 By

revising (ca. 508 B.C.) citizenship qualifications,

Cleisthenes hoped to resolve some of the ongoing tension

between kinship, cult, and neighborhood affiliations.

The ancient social and religious bodies were preserved, though they were deprived of all political power. It was this union of different elements [affiliations], the combination of theory and tradition, of a new division of the people, based on the villages and boroughs, with

321pomeroy, pp. 57, 80, 86.

322gbrenberg, From Solon, p. 73.

323gbrenberg, Greek State, p. 29. See also Ehrenberg, From Solon, pp. 64-99; Finley, p. 128; Crawford and Whitehead, pp. 152-67.

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essential old institutions, that gave Cleisthenes* new order the chance of keeping city and rural population together and building up a new democratic society. He was to provide the framework within which the Athenian community was to live for c e n t u r i e s . 324

The new order was secular and rational, registering

men as citizens on the basis of affiliation with a deme—

local communities both ancient and newly created.

A man was to belong to his deme for all time to come, and his descendants kept the same demotikon. whether he or they were still resident in that deme or not....If a man still belonged to his deme, no matter where he lived, the neighbourhood principle was no longer in full force, but neither had it been replaced by new bonds of kinship."325

We here observe the legal institutionalization of

patriliny, completed after centuries of transition. "The

definition of a citizen passed historically from the child

of an Athenian mother, through two Athenian parents, to the

need for a citizen father o n l y . "326

324gbrenberg, From Solon, p. 88.

325jbid., p. 92.

326oiBrien, pp. 108-09. Also, p. 108: "One can acknowledge the achievements of this great statesman without losing sight of the fact that the net result of his new political organization was the exclusion of the old tribal and cultic communities from polticial activity, and the absolute exclusion of women from politics, both as persons and as mothers." In a subsequent period, the legislation of Pericles (451-50 B.C.) reformed the citizenship law, again requiring both parents to be full Athenian citizens. Pomeroy identifies the changes in citizenship qualification as a function of the state's interest in regulating the number of citizens (that is, not a reconsideration of patrilineal principles). Her position is supported by evidence of "too rapidly increasing" citizen rolls at the time of Pericles' laws; in contrast with a greatly

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Increased regulation of women's sexuality is implicit in

establishing exclusively patrilineal descent as the

certainty of paternity is required for sons to gain the

privileges of citizenship. In other words, the legal

reforms of Solon and Cleisthenes did not destroy kinship per

se, but weakened regional and clan-based affiliations while

institutionalizing and legitimizing patriarchal "family"

relations.

In summarizing this section, we can observe in the

state formation of Athens a number of parallels— especially

in terms of patriarchal social relations— with the Near East

formations. The pervasiveness of militarism imposed certain

patterns in both cases. First, chronic warfare was

accompanied by a high number of war captives and,

eventually, chattel-slavery. While the slavery of women is

acknowledged throughout the archaic period, most

commentators attribute no economic (or other) significance

to this slavery. Most agree in identifying a dramatic

increase in slavery with the classical period, after the

sixth-century.

Slavery first gained in the Polis, and through the economic development of the sixth century B.C., that great importance which is suggested by the numbers given....Before that, as Homer shows, we find domestic slavery on a modest scale in which women were more numerous; it rested on exposure of children, kidnapping.

diminished citizenry during the period of "relaxing" those laws. See Pomeroy, p. 65-70.

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and prisoners of war. Its form and spirit were essentially patriarchal,... Later on, owing to the changes in economic conditions and methods, the slaves as a cheap form of labour became a very important part of property....It comes out clearly that the slaves were an indispensable element in the structure of the state....Slaves were needed through the growth of trade and manufacture as well as by the increasing share of all citizens in political l i f e . 327

The elimination of debt-bondage (see above), while

primarily a political-economic move, also reflected Greek

notions of appropriate privilege and status: Greeks should

enslave "outsiders" rather than constrain the independence

of its citizens328 (perhaps, especially, of its increasingly

significant "middle class" citizens). The classical

Athenian disdain for manual labor— especially non-

agricultural leibor— is widely acknowledged; having to work

for or under others was especially d e s p i s e d . 329

Once the extremes of social polarization were blocked within the Hellenic communities [by eliminating debt- bondage] , recourse to slave imports was logical to solve labour shortages for the dominant class. The price of slaves...was extremely low,...so their employment became generalized throughout native Greek society, until even the humblest artisans or small farmers might often possess them....By the 5th century, the apogee of the classical polis. Athens, Corinth, Aegina and virtually every other city of importance contained a voluminous slave population, frequently outnumbering the free citizenry. It was the establishment of this slave economy...which permitted the sudden florescence of Greek urban civilization. Naturally, its impact...was not simply economic [but social and political]. The

327Ebrenberg, Greek State, p. 34.

328wiedemann makes this point, p. 2.

329(3rant, pp. 28-29.

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classical polis was based on the new conceptual discovery of liberty, entrained by the systematic institution of slavery: the free citizen now stood out in full relief, against the background of slave labourers.330

Although disagreeing on the numerical extent of

s l a v e r y , 331 all authors considered here note the

significance of slavery during the classical period in

Athens. The presence of so many slaves clearly influenced

the economic configuration of classical Athens, but is noted

for its significance socio-politically as well:

The Ancient World as a whole was never continuously or ubiquitously marked by the predominance of slave-labour. But its great classical epochs, when the civilization of Antiquity flowered...were those in which slavery was massive and general, amidst other labour systems....In

330anderson, pp. 36-37.

331por Athens in the fifth-century, Anderson (p. 22, note 7) cites the figures of 80,000-100,000 slaves to 45,000 citizens, referencing A. Andrewes, Greek Society (London: n.p., 1967), p. 135; and the figures of 80,000-100,000 slaves to 30,000-40,000 citizens, referencing W. L. Westermann, The Slave Svstems of Greek and Roman Anticmitv (Philadelphia: n.p., 1955), p. 9. For another summary and citations regarding slavery in Greece, see Crawford and Whitehead, pp. 294-96. They conclude (p. 295) "that chattel-slavery was a basic and integral feature of Greek, and especially Athenian, life:...In fact slaves were to be found, to a greater or lesser extent, in virtually every area of Athenian economic life:...It seems equally certain that all but the poorest families will have had one or two [slaves]." Grant suggests that the "numbers of slaves before the classical period cannot even be conjectured. Estimates for fifth-century Athens vary between 20,000 and 400,000, with a preference for 60,000-80,000. Similarly, they have been regarded as forming either a quarter or nearly half of the Athenian population" (p. 337, note 60). Wiedemann does not consider any of the available sources adequate for reliable estimation of either the number or economic productivity of slaves.

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classical Greece, slaves were thus for the first time habitually employed in crafts, industry and agriculture beyond the household scale. At the same time, while the use of slavery became general, its nature correspondingly became absolute: it was no longer one relative form of servitude among many, along a gradual continuum, but a polar condition of complete loss of freedom, juxtaposed against a new and untrammelled liberty. For it was precisely the formation of a limpidly demarcated slave sub-population that conversely lifted the citizenry of the Greek cities to hitherto unknown heights of conscious juridical freedom. Hellenic liberty and slavery were indivisible: each was the structural condition of the other,...332

Anderson's argument is that it was the slave mode of

production (in conjunction with geographical setting and

silver mines) that was decisive in permitting Athens to

achieve "metropolitan grandeur in the absence of municipal

industry": that is, by freeing the (rural) landowning class

participate in an urban citizenry. 333 This is, of

course, related to the points made above regarding the

classical Athenian disdain for manual labour: the

"unemployed leisure" required for a citizen's participation

in the life of the polis precluded being otherwise engaged

in "production."334 "The fact that slaves, metics, and the

332anderson, pp. 22-23. 333ibid., p. 24.

334There are a number of related issues here, only some of which can be addressed in this paper. One debate centers around the implications of the Athenian failure to be technologically innovative— for economic productivity, lateral (imperialist) expansion, and the subsequent decline of the polis. Another important issue is the division of intellectual over manual labor— in relation to abstract intellectual thought, abstraction in terms of commodity

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rest played such an active and independent part in the

state's economic life, made it largely possible for the

citizen to devote his life to the state,..."335

Anderson's argument does not apply to the whole

Athenian citizenry— only the wealthy elite enjoyed

"unemployed leisure." The lowest property class, the

Thetes, were day laborers. Thus, active participation in

government was difficult for most citizens (day laborers and

small farmers) until Pericles introduced pay for jury duty

and other government jobs (ca. 450 B.C.).

What are the implications here for evaluating the

significance of women's labor? First, and most obviously,

many slaves were women; they apparently outnumbered male

slaves prior to the classical period, and in the classical

period presumably contributed, proportionally, to the

economic significance of slave labor referred to by all

authors. In regard to the period of "domestic slavery,"

most authors (as noted above) either disregard altogether

the economic significance of the gender and class relations

of this form of slavery,336 qj-— if they do differentiate

exchange, and in terms of class dynamics. I do not attempt to address these here.

335gbrenberg, Greek State, p.38.

336&nderson never acknowledges a sexual differentiation of the effects or modes of slavery. Grant notes all of the following without suggesting the economic or political significance of any of them for enabling a male supremacist

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"domestic slavery"— deem its economic significance

negligible— apparently on the basis of according domestic

labor in general minimal economic significance. 337

Second, I would like to point out that, while

scholars have recognized the importance of chattel-slavery

for the Athenian state— economically and politically

(providing the "leisure" for some to be active citizens)—

there has been no parallel recognition of the importance of

women's labor. There are several points to be made here.

First, to disregard totally the economic

significance of domestic labor— free and non-free— would

appear on the face of it to distort our understanding of

important economic elements of the social formation. This

would appear to be especially true for pre-industrial,

primarily rural-agricultural economies, as exemplified by

Athens.

Athenian state: that in Athens "women seem to have enjoyed less freedom than almost anywhere else in Greek lands" (p. 30); that a woman's wedding "amounted almost to a symbolic death" (p. 31) ; "the general debarment of women from making decisions about their own matrimonial destinies" (p. 31) ; that women "were regarded as incapable of a self-determined act" (p. 32) ; that Solon's measures showed a "clear appreciation of the precious indispensability of women— in their capacity as transmitters of property and thus of the social order" (p. 49).

337uaving earlier stated that from the archaic period "we find domestic slavery on a modest scale in which women were more numerous," Ehrenberg (Greek State) proceeds to judge its economic significance as "almost negligible," and explicitly rejects referring to this as a "slave-holding" society (p. 34).

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Second, domestic labor— free and non-free— was a

precondition of the participation of male heads-of-

households as citizens. Domestic female labor no less than

agricultural slave labor was indispensable for enabling the

"leisure time" the elite wealthy devoted to citizenship; the

public-private dichotomy is nowhere more, explicit than in

articulating the realm of "freedom" requiring a subordinate

but essential realm of "necessity." The dependence of the

public sphere on the adequate functioning of the private,

productive (and reproductive) sphere is usually couched in

economic terms. We might also note that the extended

absence of citizen males for military purposes— the

expansion and success of which were critical to the Athenian

state— depended upon the domestic sphere being ably

maintained in their a b s e n c e . 338

Third, the appropriation of women's labor— free and

non-free— meant reproductive as well as productive

resources. For citizen women that included biological

338Again, slavery, militarism, and citizenship are seen as interrelated elements of the state. The extent of male absence is suggested by Anderson's figures: the hoplite class providing the infantry numbering "some 13,000— a third of the citizenry," plus an equal number of rowers, "on service eight months a year" (p. 40). There are many aspects of recognizing the "domestic/private" sphere as an absolutely necessary precondition of the "democratic" practices of the "public" sphere. Some of these are treated throughout this paper; an important issue not addressed specifically here is the sexual (ab)use of non-free women and its relation to misogyny and sexual relations in general in Athens. See Keuls, passim.

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reproduction ("The principal duty of citizen women toward

the polis was the reproduction of legitimate heirs...."339)

and the labor invested in raising and socializing either

future male citizens or female wives/mothers. For captive

and slave women, that included (externally controlled)

biological reproduction and the labor invested in raising

future l a b o r e r s . 340 The letter's exploitation would appear

to have been especially significant if, as some references

suggest, the large number of male migrants throughout this

period relied upon capturing women for wives, rather than

obtaining them through kin-structured marriages.341

I return here to the impact of militarism on state

formation, and note a second parallel: the mutual

constitution of military and state structures is confirmed

in both cases. "In class-divided societies,...there is

339pomeroy, p. 60.

340jji the context of controlling slaves, Wiedemann notes: "There is widespread evidence for the sexual abuse of slaves" (p. 10); this included that "the owner had the right and power to prevent his slaves from forming lasting relationships" (p. 178). Pomeroy notes: "Married Athenian men were allowed to copulate with prostitutes. Of course, female slaves were also available to their masters or their masters' friends for sexual purposes" (p. 90). State-owned brothels were "staffed" by slave women; the extensive prostitution so pervasive in Athens was primarily "staffed" by slave women.

34lAdditionally, whenever adult laborers are acquired by capture, the costs of labor formation have been externalized.

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always a distinct 'military* agency— although supplemented

in various ways for the actual engagement of war— and a

development both of administrative power and weaponry."342

Chronic warfare— or threat of warfare— as a pervasive

element in state formation shaped economic, political, and

cultural choices. In the Athenian case, the impact on class

relations differed from that of the Near East kingdoms. In

Athens, the interaction of technology, military tactics, and

class relations resulted in an historic shift from

aristocratic, single horseman combat to the hoplite phalanx.

This is usually identified as a critical factor in the

Athenian development of democratic rule, hoplite tactics

having demonstrated on the battlefield the value of shared

responsibility. But we have also noted that citizenship

(how the sharing of responsibility and privilege was

acknowledged in Athens)— based upon military participation—

necessarily excluded women.

So, while the political organization of kingdoms and

democracies differs, their patriarchal foundations yield

consequences for women that are similar in terms of: women's

treatment as war captives, their exclusion from the power

and status of warrior activities, their domestic labor

exploitation to meet the war-economy needs of the state, and

their subjection to state regulation of reproductivity.

342Giddens, Nation-State. p. 53.

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That is, women in both cases are subordinated to the

patriarchal authority embodied in the state and also within

the household.

However, there is an additional loss of power for

elite women in the transition to democratic rule: "The

advent of the city-state did not mark 'the historical defeat

of the female sex', which had occurred a long time before.

But it marked a pronounced deterioration in the status of

noble women, and hence of all women as a result of the

ideology that accompanied it."343 This is not to argue for

aristocracy but to point out the differential consequences

for women of various patriarchal systems.

The nuclear family, which in tribal and aristocratic society had existed only as a biological and social unit, now became a political and economic reality. The functions of the wife and mother that women had always [sic] performed were now construed as a necessity and a duty, and their failure to perform them had legal and moral consequences....The laws of the new democratic state therefore imposed restrictions on women's freedom designed to insure their subservience to the needs of the state. The patriarchal orientation of Greek society is nowhere more clearly demonstrated than by the legal system, which prohibited women from ever achieving the status of fully autonomous b e i n g s . 344

As the nuclear household increased in importance,

inter-household linkages— typical of kin-based social

relations— were weakened, further undermining the diffuse

systems of authority (and support) that women previously had

343galiou, p. 193.

344&rthur, "Liberated Women," pp. 67-68.

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rights in. It was in the interest of centralized authority,

i.e., the state, to break up the potentially rival authority

of extended kin corporations; separate, "inviolable"

households were much easier for the state to deal with in

terms of labor mobilization, taxation, military service,

politics, and l a w . 345 ^o that end, there was a new emphasis

on the husband-wife bond and the civil institution of

marriage. Instead of uniting kin groups, civil marriages

"now broke them up, as husband and wife were urged— and

often legally obliged— to identify with each other rather

than with their k i n . "346

The establishment of the individual household as the basic social unit of state society increased the power of the husband as the family's public representative and deprived women of a second place of reference and refuge in their natal kin group....Women's social status was undermined by the separation of public and private spheres and the association of women with the newly isolated and powerless domestic arena, less prestigious than the public sphere because so thoroughly subordinant to state c o n t r o l . 347

Also lost under Athenian democracy were "the

informal and delegated powers that aristocratic women had

exercised by virtue of their family p o s i t i o n . "348 This

included the loss of access to education and the valued

345coontz and Henderson, "Property," pp. 150-51. I draw upon their discussion throughout this section.

346ibid., p. 150.

347ibid., pp. 152-53.

348ibid., p. 151.

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arts: no longer exercising even delegated power, there was

no incentive to invest in the schooling of even individual

women. Thus, Pomeroy notes that "there are no traces of

literary activity among Athenian w o m e n . "349

In sum, the formation of the polis required the

subordination of men's individual interests to the interests

of the state; the state compensated (some) men for the loss

of autonomy by conferring citizenship upon them. By denying

citizenship to all women, the state institutionalized

patriarchy— conferring absolute legal and economic power on

the male head of h o u s e h o l d . 350 in other words, the

"compensation" of citizenship preferred to a small

proportion of men came— literally— at the expense of all

women; men (both citizen and metic) gained authority in the

household only to the extent that women were denied it. To

be denied citizenship in Athens was to be without recourse:

349p, 5 6 , In regard to education in Athens, she notes: "Since citizen girls were not to look forward to the public careers that brought status to men, it was sufficient for them to be instructed in domestic arts by their mothers. While her male contemporary was living in his parents' house and developing mental and physical skills, the adolescent girl was already married and had young children" (p. 74). She cites the ideal marriage age for girls as fourteen— to a man of about thirty (p. 64). See also Keuls, pp. 103-07.

350Lemer, p. 238.

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"It was to the citizens only that the entire legal system was adapted."351

35lEhrenberg, Greek State. p. 80; also, p. 38: "Constitutionally, the Polis was the state of the citizens and none other; only the express conferment of citizenship could break through the barriers that existed for everyone who was not a citizen." But citizens could and did seek legal redress for wrongs done to non-citizens.

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THE PUBLIC-PRIVATE DICHOTOMY

IN CLASSICAL ATHENIAN TEXTS

The state mystifies its patriarchal base by not only constructing but also manipulating the ideology describing public and private life. The state is said to be public (by definition) and therefore divorced from the private realm, which is the area of women's lives. The state can appear, through its own ideology, to be unrelated to the family as the private sphere, when in actuality this sphere is both defined and regulated in relation to the state realm. As such, patriarchy becomes mystified on the state level whereas it is at this level that patriarchy, in fact, becomes institutionalized. Unable to see how patriarchy has set itself into motion, we are left with explanations of male supremacy as natural and/or inevitable. Rather than depend on a biogenetic inevitability, the state institutionalizes patriarchy by establishing the public and private domains of sexual hierarchy between men and women as an ideology at the same time that the ideology erases the existence of patriarchy. Part of the power of patriarchy is this capacity to mystify itself. Its ideology masks its political b a s e . 352

In the Near East we saw that state formation was

accompanied not only by intense militarism, social

stratification, and the codification of law, but also by a

transformation in cosmological systems serving to justify

the new order. Greek states evidenced a similar pattern of

militarism, stratification, and codification of law. The

3522iiiah Eisenstein, The Radical Future of Liberal Feminism (New York: Longman, 1981), p. 26.

198

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transformation in cosmological systems accompanying the

formation of the Athenian state is amply depicted in the

numerous classical texts that survive. From a reading of

these texts, I argue that the public-private dichotomy

serves to justify the exploitative dynamics of the Athenian

state.

The articulation of separate public and private

spheres, and the explicit subordination of the latter, did

not emerge full-blown in Aristotle's Politics, but followed

upon centuries of social and cultural transition. With the

(re)appearance of writing in the eighth century B.C., Greek

literature and History begins, and it is to further

consideration of that critical juncture that I now turn.

First, as with the development of writing elsewhere,

human consciousness and social relations were transformed.

The facilitation of abstraction and categorization, and the

notions of "naming" and "idea-making" that writing permitted

had profound effects on human thought and therefore social

reality. This is not to suggest pre-literate people lack

reflective, "rational," or systematic thought; rather, that

they lack a technology— one with particular significance for

systematic, critical thought.

It is not so much skepticism itself that distinguishes post-scientific thought as the accumulated scepticism that writing makes possible; it is a question of establishing a cumulative tradition of critical discussion. It is now possible to see why science, in the sense we usually think of this activity, occurs only

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when writing made its appearance and why it made its most striking advances when literacy became widespread.353

Because of the "type of thinking" it can facilitate

and the power relations implicit in its "technology," the

re-introduction of writing is a critical variable in the

Greek "pre-polis" context.

Second, the symbols and History that become "author

ized" by being written down are necessarily embedded in, and

therefore reflect, specific historical contexts. Those

contexts have been— in both the Eastern and Western

development of writing— male dominated. The very fact that

writing is developed as a function of the centralization of

political authority, and the centralization of authority—

due to its military dynamic— is a male-dominated process,

means writing at its origin is under the control of men.

History-making (capitalized 'H') has been the monopoly of

men: "Until the most recent past, these historians have

been men, and what they have recorded is what men have done

and experienced and found significant. They have called

this History and claimed universality for it."354 Not only

353(3oody, pp. 46-47. See his chap. 3 for an eloquent elaboration of the difference writing can make, without falling into a simple dichotomization between pre-literate and literate.

354Lerner, p. 4. I would also like to note her rejoinder (pp. 4-5) to the argument that "possibly the majority of men, have also for a long time been eliminated from the historical record": She responds: "One error does

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has History been distorted by the assumption of a male

viewpoint— omitting the past of half of humankind— but

patriarchal relations have "kept women from knowing their

History and from interpreting history, either their own or

that of m e n . " 3 5 5 That is, although women have always "made

history" ("Women are and have been central, not marginal, to

the making of society and to the building of

civilization"356j ^ they have been excluded from the meaning-

giving process of interpretation and explanation, excluded

from the increasingly politically significant activity of

"author-izing."

I consider this background of particular importance

in the present project. The public-private distinction

emerges in the archaic and classical Greek period, a period

of social transformation recognized by all as the transition

to a new order that is, in many senses, constitutive of the

Western tradition. As noted in the depiction of

not cancel out another; both conceptual errors need correction. As formerly subordinate groups, such as peasants, slaves, proletarians, have risen into positions of power or at least inclusion in the polity, their experiences have become part of the historical record. That is, the experiences of the males of their group; females were, as usual, excluded. The point is that men and women have suffered exclusion and discrimination because of their class. No man has been excluded from the historical record because of his sex, yet all women have."

355ibid., p. 5 .

356%bia,p p, 4,

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archaic/civil state formation, the transition to state

organization is always accompanied by ideological

justification of the new order and its altered social

relations. In order to examine that process for the

Athenian state, I interpret selected works of archaic and

classical literature, as they emerged historically.

To organize this task I utilize the following

general distinctions, reflecting literary genres and historical contexts.357 First, epic compositions. The

Homeric epics (the earliest extant works of European

literature) may not have been written down until the sixth

century, B.C., and "are ultimately poetic legends...,but

they are also poetic reflections of the evolving societies and cultures of Greece."358 Crawford and Whitehead date the

world depicted in the epics as tenth or even ninth century

B.C., making the "sources of prime importance for the

evolution of archaic Greek society out of the preceding Dark Age."359

357gased upon Crawford and Whitehead, pp. 4-19; Finley, chap. 11; Pomeroy, chaps. 1, 2, 6; Arlene W. Saxonhouse, "Classical Greek Conceptions of Public and Private," in Public and Private in Social Life, passim; Saliou, 169-206; Lerner, pp. 201-11; Nancy Hartsock, Money. Sex and Power; Toward a Feminist Historical Materialism (New York; Longman, 1983), chap. 8.

358pomeroy, p. 16-17.

359uuch work since the 1950s, including decipherment of the Linear B script, has confirmed the need to revise earlier acceptance of the epics as depicting Mycenaean

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Second, poetry from the seventh and sixth centuries.

In contrast to the impersonal, collective epic composition,

the "rest of archaic Greek poetry, or what survives of it,

is very much a matter of distinctive personalities and

individual viewpoints. "360 Hesiod's Works and Pavs is an

"idiosyncratic miscellany of moral advice and practical

wisdom, and our first direct insight into the problematical

social conditions of the early archaic p e r i o d . "361

Third, the Greek tragedies (and comedies) of the

fifth century. These were produced at the great religious

festivals organized by the state and must be understood as

"poetry of and for the pel is. "362 "Many plots of tragedy

are derived from myths of the Bronze Age preserved by epic

poets....The royal women of epic were powerful, not merely

within their own homes but in an external political

sense."363 These plays, being performed during a period of

Greece (ca. 1400-1200 B.C.). See the discussion in Crawford and Whitehead, p. 6.

360crawford and Whitehead, p. 7.

361ibid., p. 7. Ehrenberg, From Solon. p. 11; "...Hesiod, the last of the great epic poets and the first to write about himself and about his class, the hard-working poor farmers who suffered injustice and oppression....[H]e produced in his Works and Days a documentary of humanity and at the same time a picture of society."

362crawford and Whitehead, pp. 7-8; Saliou, pp. 194-95. On the festivals see also Ehrenberg, From Solon, pp. 82-83.

363pojnej-oy^ p. 9 3 .

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intense transition, portray the painful conflicts between

the demands and benefits of the old order and those of the new.

Fourth, fifth-century prose. Prose-writing emerged

as part of the intellectual revolution taking place during

the sixth century. "A range of enquiries into the

observable phenomena of the world had begun to be

undertaken, all of them written in prose rather than verse,

as almost a declaration in itself of the supremacy of

rational thought...This progressive climate had given rise

to what the Greeks called historia— asking q u e s t i o n s ."364

This literature is further distinguished: in its earliest

and most austere form as philosophy, combining natural

science and metaphysics; in the fifth century, it extended

into ethical and political philosophy; and finally, the

development of "genuine historical research and exposition."365

Fifth, fourth-century prose. The two famous figures

of philosophy— and "fathers" of Western political thought:

Plato and Aristotle.

364crawford and Whitehead, pp. 8-9.

365ibid., pp. 9-10.

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The Homeric Epics

We have already noted the interrelationship of

writing and state formation. The expansion of abstract

thought facilitated by the invention of writing is also

correlated with the transition from passive acting out of

mystic forces— the fatalist world view typical of pre-state

formations— to conscious acts of "creation," both in the

sense of naming, conceptualizing, etc., and in the sense of

doing and making. The latter reflects an emerging awareness

of human agency: consciousness of human action having causal

efficacy within a world of o b j e c t s . 366 we can observe the

emergence of this shift in consciousness in the Homeric

epics— providing a clear example of the transition occurring

during this period. This transformation in world-view is

fundamental:

So long as the world was one in which no agentic imperative was thinkable, human beings resigned themselves to fatalism and saw the world through a prism of magical thinking in which capricious forces might, at best, be placated or tricked... .When the conviction emerged that men did have control over— a portion of their lives, a revision of what it meant to be a member of the category human...followed or was coterminous with the conviction. It became necessary to characterize more accurately altered human realities and possibilities. Man's gain of partial autonomy, his emergence from the imbeddedness of 'natural'

366jean Bethke Elshtain, Public Man. Private Woman: Women in Social and Political Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981, p. 13.

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determinism, meant that henceforth an individual could be seen as praiseworthy or could be b l a m e d . 367

The Iliad relates events of the Trojan War,

depicting especially the warrior-heroes Achilles and Hector

and the contrasting concerns motivating their participation

in the b a t t l e . 368 is within Hector that the conflict

between heroic fighting for the continuity of the

collectivity and the responsibility for the private domain

of the family and household is most apparent. The community

"exists only on the battlefield, where the collective good

can be the primary concern of the hero. The community both

sustains and provides for the warrior-hero and sends him to

possible d e a t h . "369 At the same time, "the warrior-hero was

also the head of a household made up primarily of women and

was a carrier of the private and particular interests of

that household. The ethic of warrior and householder

conflict: The warrior-hero must be prepared to achieve fame

undying through glorious victory or glorious death; the

367Ibid., p. 13. Alasdair MacIntyre, A Short History of Ethics (New York: Macmillan, 1966), pp. 8-10, traces a parallel transition, between Homer and the Theognid corpus, in regard to moral philosophy.

3 68jiy interpretation here relies heavily upon Saxonhouse and Hartsock. For additional explication of the Homeric epics and specific historical evidence of the social practices— including marriage/kinship relationships— of this period see Pomeroy, chapter 2.

369Hartsock, p. 188.

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householder must preserve or perhaps cautiously expand his property."370

The Iliad can be seen as portraying a significant

shift in conceptions of personal honor. Achilles initially

evidences an individualistic notion of honor— fighting only

for personal fame and the attendant immortality, not for the

principle of protecting the collectivity. 371 Hector is

portrayed throughout as recognizing the conflictuel yet

interdependent demands of family and city, with his

ultimately life-surrendering commitment to the protection of

the community uppermost. The conclusion of the Iliad

portrays Achilles' as recognizing "the dependence of one on others and his ties to something greater than himself."372

That something, of course, is the embryonic polis. We see

then the threads of the public-private distinction taking

shape as the ancients faced the challenge of altered social

formations.

The later [post-Homeric] assertions of order in the universe reflect not a structure that is, but one that was, or one that is struggling to survive. They are conservative protests against the disintegration of the older forms and the transition to the city-state. 373

370ibid., p. 188.

371gaxonhouse, p. 366-369.

372ibid., p. 369.

373jjaclntyre, p. 10.

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Seventh and Sixth-Centurv Poetry

Hesiod's Works and Davs was described eibove as

offering "direct insight" into the social conditions of the

transition from aristocratic, clan-based social organization

to settled, class-divided states.

Hesiod in his Works and Davs expressed the individualism of a poor man, who no longer relies on his clan or tribe for protection but expects by hard work and prudent management to increase his wealth...Hesiod's misogyny is both prescriptive and mythical...In his recasting of the myth of Pandora, he achieves what Hebrew myth achieved in the story of the Fall— he places the blame on woman and her sexual nature for bringing evil into the world.374

The misogyny so pervasive in Hesiod's works is also

reiterated by "Semonides, a poet-philosopher of the seventh

century B.C., and by Phocylides in the sixth century B.C.,

who both compare women to species of l i v e s t o c k . "375 The

374Lerner, p. 204. See also Okin, p. 15. For an extensive discussion of the Pandora myth see John A. Phillips, Eve; The History of an Idea (San Francisco; Harper and Row, 1984), chap. 2. Recent work on Hesiod's poetry suggests that he was presenting "as historical fact" the ancient Greek "representation of the human condition as the 'female' condition," that is, our ancestry from an original "tribe of women descended from Pandora." This, of course, has suggestive implications for our understanding of the myths associated with the Amazons. On the Hesiodic poetry see Marilyn Arthur, review of The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women by M. L. West, Signs 12 (Spring 1987), pp. 589-93; on fascinating insights about the role of Amazon myths in Athenian gynophobia, see Keuls, passim.

375pomeroy, p. 49; see also Grant: "The attitude of Hesiod and Semonides is far more customary. A great amount of the literature of the Greeks echoes their poisonous hatred of women— or rather reflects a deeply anxious fear of them.... Despite their obvious indispensability for

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only praiseworthy woman was the industrious and,

interestingly, asexual wife— who must not evidence any

interest in sex, lest she be led astray and embarrass her

h u s b a n d . 376 in these depictions we encounter "the male-

female antithesis [that] provides a central theme for Greek mythology.377

Hesiod's "views of gods and humankind not only

shaped but probably corresponded to the ideas held by the

population as a whole [sic], and thus the Theoaenv became

the standard Greek version of divine evolution. Hesiod

details the divine progression from female-dominated

generations, characterized by natural, earthly emotional

qualities, to the superior and rational monarchy of Olympian

procreation, women seemed a mysterious, dangerous, polluting, 'other' element, and the Greeks [sic] were acutely afraid that they might get out of step, might break out from their appointed and domesticated place" (pp. 30-31).

376pomeroy, p. 49. It was essential, however, that wives produce sons; the asexuality was a matter of not being "interested in sex." We see here another example of distinguishing "good" from "bad" women: the former is for producing sons; the latter is for men's pleasure. See also, Marilyn Arthur, "Early Greece: The Origin of the Western Attitude Toward Women," in Women in the Ancient World: The Arethusa Papers. eds. John Peradotto and J. P. Sullivan (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1984).

377coole, Political Theory, p. 14. See also Saliou, passim. Saliou points out that "women's fecundity" and the "earth's fertility," previously fused (as in the Demeter myth), are separated in Hesiod's works, rendering both women and the land as "objects of domination, exercised through masculine labour" (pp. 174-75).

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Z e u s . "378 This rendering of the birth of the male gods and

their displacement of female fertility goddesses mirrors the

transformation in cosmologies we observed in the Near East.

[The Theoconvl tells of the evolution of the gods and of a cosmos personified in deities. Thus Hesiod begins with the Earth, who is mother of all and gives birth parthenogenetically to Sea and Sky. She needs no sexual partner; she is the first and supreme matriarch. However, she subsequently mates with Sky, thereby initiating the line of the gods. In the fourth generation the Olympians, headed by the patriarchal Zeus, appear. While early male gods had played only a hazy role compared with the more significant mothers, it is they who come to the fore once Zeus claims ascendency. The divine hierarchy now moves from female to male dominance and also, with the passing of power from Mother Earth to Sky God, shifts from material to non-material hegemony. Zeus is himself equated with the law as opposed to an original chaos. The poem thus tells how the earth goddesses, associated with fertility cults and nature, were defeated by the Olympian patriarchs, who represent reason, order and w i s d o m . 379

Not only do we observe the shift from female to male

deities, chaos to order, and material to non-material, but

we have the male assumption of procreativity itself: Zeus

gives birth.

[Having swallowed Metis, goddess of wisdom,] Zeus ends threats to his sovereignty by giving birth to a female. She has no mother to ally with and is also sufficiently androgynous both to identify with him and to remain impotent. By swallowing Metis he appropriates wisdom, rendering it a male prerogative. And finally, the myth achieves a further erosion of female power by reversing the natural order of generation. It is now the male who gives birth to the female and reproductive capacity is transferred from womb to head, suggesting that the male

378pQjjjgj-oy, pp. 1-2; see also Arthur, "'Liberated' Women," pp. 61-64.

379coole, pp. 14-15.

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version is of a superior kind, rooted in reason rather than in the dark recesses of the f l e s h . 380

Fifth-Century Tragedies

Similar themes occupy the classical Greek tragedies

of the fifth-century. These texts have been studied from a

variety of perspectives, with diverging— though not

necessarily mutually exclusive— conclusions. As in all

interpretation, much depends on the questions asked and the

extent of contextualization. There is little dispute over

characterizing the subject matter as constituting

"classical" conflicts:

The values of Greek tragedy express the conflicts of Greek society as much as the values of Plato and Aristotle express or attempt to depict Greek society as a unified structure. In the Oresteia tribal and urban values conflict; in Antigone those of the family and those of the state; in The Bacchae those of reason with those of the passions.38T

There is considerably more controversy in

interpreting the historical significance of these conflicts.

Of interest in the present case are those interpreting this

literature as the articulation of a new ideology during the

transition from kin-based, aristocratic societies to

380ibid., p. 16. See also Lerner, p. 205.

38lMacIntyre, p. 99.

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are suggestive regarding the relationships between public-

private, men-women, and the dualizing of culture and nature.383

Drama flourished in classical Athens during the fifth century BC. The three major playwrights, Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, all produced plays which enacted conflicts related to the male-female opposition. In the tradition of the Theogony, the male order is associated with reason and the polis; with political and legal relations, justice, progress and good organization. The female is correspondingly aligned with the old world of kiship bonds and family honour; with a certain madness that threatens the impersonal relations of justice, with chaos and prejudice. Thus in Sophocles' Antigone. the heroine opposes the rational laws of Creon's polis in favour of the traditional duties owed to blood relatives...In Euripides' Bacchae. failure to reconcile male and female elements ends in disequilibrium and disaster when the irrational forces associated with the women are left to run their course. But it is Aeschylus' Oresteia which offers the most resonant account of sexual contradiction across a variety of levels.384

382Arthur, p. 66; Hartsock, p. 190. Specifically, Hartsock argues that the plays of Aeschylus "can be read as a fifth-century representation of a mythic founding of the polis and (in the process) an important development of Western understandings of politics and power. Most fundamentally, the establishment of the polis takes place through a process of domesticating and subordinating the dangerous and threatening female forces that surround what is to become the political community."

383At this point, I am more interested in the significance of the tragedies in terms of reflecting the transition between worldviews, less interested in asserting their accuracy as depictions of the status of Athenian women— a different, though related, issue. For a clarification of the issues in assessing women's status see Pomeroy, Goddesses. Whores. pp. 57-60.

384Coole, p. 17.

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Aeschylus' Presteia has been the focus of a number

of interpretations regarding the transition from Mother-

goddess cosmogony to patriarchal supremacy mythically

rendered in the t r i l o g y . 385 The narrative of the trilogy is

drawn from Homer's Odyssey, while the theogony is from

Hesiod. The final play. The Furies (Eumenides), relates the

trial of Orestes, who justifies his matricide as appropriate

revenge for Clytemnestra ' s crimes against patriarchal

authority. The issue is decided in Orestes' favor on the

basis of denying the primacy of mother-right, climaxed by

reference to Athena's non-matemal creation (from the head

of Z e u s ) . 386 The maternal claims and clan-based justice

represented by Clytemnestra in avenging her daughter's death

are displaced by patriarchal claims (literally, to

exclusively male procreativity and therefore patrilineage),

385gee the brief interpretation by Lerner, p. 205; also Hartsock's, p. 190-95, drawn upon here; Simone, de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, trans. H. M. Parshley (New York: Knopf, 1952), pp. 73, 133; Kate Millet, Sexual Politics (New York: Avon 1970), pp. 156-60; Saxonhouse, p. 370; Arthur, "Liberated Women," pp. 63-64; Pomeroy, pp. 98-99. Hartsock cites the following additional Oresteia interpretations: Philip Slater, The Glorv of Hera (Boston: Beacon Press, 1968), pp. 161-93; G. Thompson, Aeschvlus and Athens (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1941), p. 288; and F. Zeitlin, "The Dynamics of Misogyny," Arethusa 11, nos. 1, 2 (Spring and Fall 1978).

386Miiiet provides a documented version.

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and establishment of justice as public authority, i.e., law,

administered through the s t a t e . 387

The polis is mythically founded on the new, explicitly patriarchal religion of the Olympian gods; . . . The Athenian jury that decides Orestes' fate is the institution that replaces the blood feud. The conflict . . . can be seen as a poetic restatement of the real historical process of moving from tribe to s t a t e . 388

Hartsock argues that the establishment of Athens "as

a polis, a political arena, depended in a vital way on the

domestication of female forces of d i s o r d e r . "389 These

"female forces" included the older, clan-based ethic of the

blood-feud; religious practices tied to the forces of earth,

nature and fertility; activities associated with the Mother-

Goddesses; and most important; women's "instinctual,"

disruptive s e x u a l i t y . 390 The pattern here is the

association of female-identified principles (matrilineal

kinship, maternal potency, women's sexuality) with disorder,

disruption, unpredictability. The assumption is that for

the stable community of the polis to survive, these "forces

3 Arthur, "Liberated Women," p. 63.

388Hartsock, p. 193. Compare Barrington Moore’s description of the "transformation" as a "glorification of Athenian justice" based on public— as against private, blood feud— authority; Privacy Studies in Social and Cultural History (Armonk, NY: M. C. Sharpe, 1984), p. 270.

389ijartsock, p. 192.

390ibid., pp. 192-93; Arthur, "Liberated Women," pp. 64-65; see also Lerner, pp. 141-60 regarding the worship of the goddesses.

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of disorder" must be restrained; the judicial procedures of

"law" and "order" must displace kin-based justice; marital

relations must take precedence over extended kinship bonds.

Significantly, it is not only "unruly female forces" but

nature "herself" that requires restraint.391

Antigone appears as the protagonist of an older and higher morality that enjoys widespread support. .That is what makes her potentially dangerous to Creon. He in turn is the spokesman for a new rationalist and secular morality, the morality of public order, partly for its own sake and partly for reasons of s t a t e . . . 392

Fifth-Centurv Prose

In the sixth and fifth centuries B.C. historical scholarship of a secular nature developed and flourished in Greece. With the writings of Thucydides and Herodotus the recording and interpretation of hisory became separated from religious thought, as did science and philosphy. But the construct of history was a male product and would so remain for another 2500 y e a r s . 393

By the end of the fifth-century, the mythical and

heroic worldviews of Homer and Hesiod were no longer

adequate for making sense of the altered Athenian world. In

the absence of an adequate religious ordering of the

universe, Greek thinking about "the nature of things" turned

from religious myth to philosophy, from poetry to prose.

3®^Hartsock, p. 193; Arthur, "Liberated Women," p. 65.

392j5oore, pp. 150-51.

393i^l^ej., p. 201.

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Within the Homeric mythology the notion of human

agency was emerging, but the natural order and the moral

order remained unified: "the most important judgments that

can be passed upon a man concern the way in which he

discharges his allotted social function."394 it is to the

period between Homeric and classical Greek literature (ca.

700-480 B.C.) that we can trace a revolution in (or to)

moral philosophy associated with the notion of human agency.

The natural and moral order are no longer unified: "The

myths themselves cannot but open up the question of the

difference between the order of the universe and the order

of society."395 once the notion of individual agency was

introduced, the corollary notion of responsibility emerged,

as well as the question of justice: in assigning

responsibility, the Greeks generated categories susceptible

to evaluative comparison.

We can better appreciate the magnitude of this

transition by placing it in historical context.

Technological and social changes associated with the

introduction of iron occurred in conjunction with

demographic shifts resulting from military conquest,

extensive migration, and increased agricultural production.

394jiaclntyre, p. 5. 395ibid.p p, 10. Also Habermas, Communication. pp. 151-52, 165.

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The historically new "city-state" or polis emerged, distinct

from but with increasing awareness of "radically different

social orders."398

The impact of the Persian invasions, of colonization, of increase in trade and therefore in travel, all these bring home the fact of different cultures. The result is that the distinction between what holds good in Egypt but not in Persia, or in Athens but not in Megara, on the one hand, and what is the case universally as part of the order of things becomes overwhelmingly important. The question asked about any moral rule or social practice is. Is it part of the essentially local realm of nomos [custom, convention] or of the essentially universal realm of phvsis [ n a t u r e ] ?397

Developed here is the distinction between particular

and universal, a dualism with lasting impact on the Western

tradition. Its exploration by classical Greek thinkers is

widely acknowledged as crucial to the emergence of

scientific thought, associated with the sixth-century

intellectual revolution. Closely related was the

exploration of distinguishing the social (conventional),

i.e., non-material, from the natural (necessary), i.e,

material— the culture and nature d u a l i s m . 398 Finally, the

396jjacintyre, p. 10. An important development was the increase in a "middle class," with considerably different interests than the aristocracy. Clearly, much of the literature "reflects" the changes in world-views accompanying this transformation. See especially Arthur, "Early Greece."

39?MacIntyre, p. 10-11.

398gee Hodge, Struckmann, and Trost for an extensive examination of these and other dualisms as uniquely Western and profoundly significant.

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transformation in worldview generated new questions

regarding "justice" and the nature of the "good."

What to earlier generations, from Hesiod to Solon, from Anaximander to Aeschylus, was the divinely determined 'justice' was largely replaced by new, rational, and secular theories....Thus a new kind of philosophical thought was created, which was Greek to the core, the pure product of the polis.399

In the fifth century B.C., the Elder Sophists were

significant for the answers they proposed to these questions

and the effect they had on setting the subsequent structure

of the debate. Coming from the East and Sicily, these

teachers followed earlier nature philosophers in approaching

the external world naturalistically (as opposed to the more

traditional presumption of both natural and supernatural

explanation), and in positing the possibility of "getting

outside of the object."^®® The Sophists separated

nature/physis— the realm of necessity and unchanging laws—

from convention/nomos— the realm of the particular as

distinctively political. In addressing the question of "how

to live morally" (i.e., effectively, in a city-state), they

identified success with making the best impression— by

appropriate use of rhetoric— in the assembly. Doing so

399Ehrenberg, From Solon, p. p. 335.

400sheldon Wolin, Politics and Vision (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1960), p. 30. On the Sophists see also Ehrenberg, From Solon, pp. 330-43; MacIntyre, especially chap. 3; and Eric A. Havelock, The Liberal Temper in Greek Politics (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1957).

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required knowing the conventions— necessarily particular to

each polis— and applying them appropriately.401

The Elder Sophists were not scientists primarily interested in laws of historical growth and patterns of structure. They all use anthropology— they accept its fundamental naturalism— but what they specifically attend to is the process of verbal communication between men and between groups of men which made the democracy workable; and that fierce play of ideas and emotions of which words were media....The Elder Sophists sought to rationalize the process by which opinion is formed and then effectively expressed, and by which leadership is imposed and followed, sentiment is crystallized, and common decisions r e a c h e d . 402

The "rhetorical conception of political theory"

associated with the Sophists was antithetical to Plato's

vision; the political theory we inherit from the latter was

shaped by its oppositional s t a n c e . 403

Platonism collided head on with this whole philosophy at every point. The laws of discourse, it said, are not historical but mathematical; the criterion of its effectiveness is not political utility but logical integrity. Its proper content, if practised at the educated level, is always scientific not pragmatic. It is carried on fully in the private soul, when that soul is properly disciplined and brought into contact with

48lMacIntyre, p. 14. I draw upon his and Havelock's treatment of the Sophists in this section.

402jjavelock, p. 156.

403pQj- recent discussions of the "rhetorical tradition," see John S. Nelson, "Political Theory as Political Rhetoric," in What should Political Theory Be Now?, pp. 169-240; Brown, pp. 123-57. Plato's rejection and negative presentation of the Sophistic tradition is frequently cited as a turning point in Western thought. See especially Havelock.

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the formal laws, cosmic and moral, which lie outside historical process though they may control it.404

We observe in the tragedies and in the philosophical

and moral discourses a series of dualisms that will resonate

throughout the Western tradition. We also observe the

struggle between the old and the new reflected in the many

fundamental conflicts treated in the literature. At the

close of the fifth century, the effects of the long and

ruinous Peloponnesian War (431-404 B.C.) were depicted by

Thucydides as the struggle of the polis to "preserve itself

against the centrifugal force of individualism."405

Pericles' funeral oration early in the war had emphasized

the participation of the free men of Athens in the highest

glory: "to be united with the polis through self-

sacrifice. "408 In this speech the family was clearly

secondary to the needs and glory of the p o l i s . 407 However,

the degrading experience of the war and the even more

terrible plague tarnished this sentiment so thoroughly that

in his final speech Pericles had to exhort the Athenians to

greater sacrifice. No longer was the glory of the polis so

404navelock, pp. 194.

405saxonhouse, p. 373.

408ibid., p. 373.

40?Byt see O'Brien's discussion of Pericles/Thucydides' appreciation of the dependency of the public upon the reproductive aspects of the private realm (pp. 104-05).

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much obviously greater than the importance of the private

and personal interest— prominently demonstrated by

Alcibiades. The Homeric ideal of "preserving an impossible

balance between public and private" was finally surrendered;

the dichotomization and its tensions were accepted, to be further developed by Plato and Aristotle.408

Plato and Aristotle

[Political theory in the West] has always used a set of intellectual frameworks, a series of leading concepts dealing with man and society, which have been employed as archetypes of explanation. As these have slowly changed and evolved, they have exhibited their own laws of intellectual progression. The originals were all, or nearly all, seeded in the writings of Plato and Aristotle. One can say that whenever western man has directed his thinking towards those problems created by his relation to his fellowmen, problems of society in general, of the state in particular, of government and law, or rights and responsibilities, of duties, of constitutions, of citizenship, he has consciously or otherwise used the political and often the moral vocabulary supplied to him by the two masters. This has meant that where he forms his own vision of what the political problems are, when he selects the issues which he thinks need treatment, his mind and hand are still guided under their remote control.409

Plato— "the first great systematic political

theorist"4l0— was resolvedly critical of the political

system--specifically, the democratic assembly— that

408gaxonhouse, pp. 3 7 3 - 7 4 .

409Havelock, pp. 11-12.

410Michael Curtis, ed., The Great Political Theories (New York: Avon, 1 9 6 1 ) , p. 2 6 .

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 222 sentenced his teacher, the great philosopher Socrates, to death.411 of fundamental concern to Plato were questions of justice and virtue— of identifying "the right way to live." The intellectual context was that of moral ambiguity resulting from the breakdown of a unified cosmic order; the problematic of coming to terms with the cultural relativity posited by the Sophists and responded to by Socrates. Rather than the sophistic understanding of rhetoric as political inquiry, Plato "...accepts the fact that moral concepts are only intelligible against the background of a certain sort of social order; he then tries to delineate it, providing or attempting to provide at the same time a

justification in terms of the order of the u n i v e r s e . "412

I will focus on two texts especially relevant for examining Plato's political thought as it relates to the

public-private: Republic and Symposium. In the Republic

Plato depicted the ideal r e g i m e ,413 based upon a class

411gee the introduction for historical setting: Plato's Republic, translated by G. M. A. Grube (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company 1974), pp. vi-ix. Also Ehrenberg, From Solon. pp. 362-74; Havelock, passim; MacIntyre, chaps. 3-6; Okin, Part I; Coole, chaps. 1 and 2.

412iîaclntyre, Ethics. p. 25.

413saxonhouse notes that the Greek title is Politeia. suggesting "not a set of laws" but a "regime that defined the patterns of behavior for all in the polis" ("Classical Greek Conceptions," p. 363-64). To what extent Plato intended this ideal as feasible remains controversial, a controversy fed by his apparently inconsistent treatment of women. Lange cites A. Bloom as rejecting the Republic as

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division of labor, where everyone functioned "according to

their nature": the philosophers as ruling elite, the

auxiliaries as soldiers, and the farmers and artisans as

productive workers. Because Plato believed that selfish

interests posed one of the greatest threats to the unity of

the polis, he proposed the abolition of private property—

eliminating disharmony by eliminating private interests.

Such renunciation was attainable by only the best persons—

the philosophers— and was indeed essential to their

realization of selflessness, a requisite for ruling in the

unified interests of the ideal s t a t e . 414 t q the extent that

the family fostered private interests, or specifically that

wives were considered private property, Plato's solution

necessarily implied the abolition of the family.415 To

ensure the requisite devotion of the philosophers to the

any literal, practical model of the state; "The function of Equal Education in Plato's Republic and Laws," in The Sexism of Social and Political Theory. p. 3 . Okin argues, by documenting their commentary, that Plato scholars who dismiss his radically egalitarian proposals do so from their own time and context-bound androcentrism (pp. 3 4 - 3 7 ) . For discussions of Plato's allegedly "feminist" perspective see D. Wender, "Plato: Misogynist, Phaedophile, and Feminist," in Women in the Ancient World, pp. 2 1 3 - 2 8 ; Coole, chap. 2 ; Hartsock, chap. 8.

414okin, especially pp. 2 9 - 3 1 .

415okin presents persuasive evidence that "women are classified by Plato, as they were by the culture in which he lived as an important subsection of property" (p. 3 1 , passim). Lange, "Equal Education," makes similar points regarding Plato's assumption of women as property, and the divisive effect they represent (pp. 9 - 1 3 ) .

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state, a "completely collective life and training" was necessary.418 On the one hand, particularism and

possessiveness were eliminated through abolishing primary kinship ties and private property. On the other hand,

devotion to the state was fostered by "raising familial impulses from the private to the public sphere, where their effect is to promote unity in the state."41? Thus, the guardians would think of each other as brother, sister, father or mother; and their behavior would be appropriate to the bonding and noncompetitive practices assumed to prevail in familial relationships.418

It is possible to regard Plato's Republic in terms of the transformation underway, from kinship to civil society. The problem of primary kinship ties and their threat to state allegiance was solved by abolition of the

family, while the need to retain continuity— a grounding in

418piamond, Primitive. p. 184; I draw especially upon his treatment of the Republic as reflecting the transition from "kinship or primitive society, to civilized or political society" (p. 176).

417Lange, "Equal Education," p. 11; also commenting on Plato's transference of familial terminology to the collectivity; Diamond, Primitive. p. 186; Okin, Western Political Thought, p. 37. Coole, p. 36: "The oikos-polis conflict is therefore to be healed by abolishing the family while harnessing its loyalties and emotional bonds to the city; by rendering all private life, public."

418piato's Republic. trans. G. M. A. Grube (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., 1978), pp. 124-25, 463 b, c, d, e.

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social relationships— that served state interests was

achieved by relocating the communal aspects of kinship at

the public level: the guardians as extended family.419

Plato's absolute division of labor formalized the

identification of persons with their occupational role;

henceforth, the "identity of the individual is exhausted by

the single occupation in which he e n g a g e s . "420 while a

division of labor predates Plato, his categorical hierarchy,

with its functional justification and rationalization of a

ruling elite, is especially insidious: "The belief in

immutable truths known only by a highly educated elite,

offered a dangerous precedent for those who claimed to speak

on others' b e h a l f . "421 For Plato, the elite guardians alone

were able to apprehend the universal Forms, the eidoi. which

constituted the highest knowledge:

Hence, the class structure of the republic reflects the doctrine of forms or essences. It descends from the superior, from the abstract, created by God and grasped by the guardians, to the inferior, to the particular, grasped by the craftsmen and ordinary citizens, who live in a world of ordinary, useful, sensuous things. Here we encounter Platonism enthroned, a political hierarchy perfectly mated to a conceptual o n e . 422

4l9ihe aristocratic form of this "family imagery" is noteworthy; Plato was not a proponent of democracy.

420üiamond, Primitive. p. 1 8 1 .

421coole, p. 4 0 .

422Diamond, Primitive. pp. 1 9 2 - 9 3 .

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Another aspect of Plato's model that can be related

to the state imperative is his censorship of art. In

seeking the untarnished universels, the essential and

unchanging, Plato banished those who deal in ambiguity,

emotionality, contradictions, or absurdity. There is

consistency in Plato's convictions: artists threaten the

stability of an abstract, objective order— there is no room

for them in the ideal state.423

We observe another aspect of Plato's rejection of

the emotional, sensual, and concrete in the Symposium, where

the dialogue addresses love. Dichotomies of reason-desire,

soul-body, male-female, immortal-mortal dominated the

discussion, with consistent deprecation of the latter.424

The text affirms patterns identified elsewhere but here

presented in their relation to eros: the elevation of reason

and the achievement of wisdom over the disorderly realm of

passion and bodily desires; the seeking of immortality and

association with the divine through creations of the soul

rather than bodily pleasure or productivity. The latter

contrast is dramatically portrayed as the vaunted ability of

men to give birth to "immortal children in the forms of art.

423ibid., p. 192.

424uartsock, pp. 194-96; my comments here draw upon her chapter 8.

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poetry, and philosophy."425 women's concrete labor begets

only mortal children, an inferior production.

Just as the soul is the proper ruler of the body, the creations of the soul are more beautiful than the creations of the body. Here, the citizen becomes disembodied. Procreation involves only the spirit; the flesh is irrelevant. 426

With Plato, the Homeric warrior-hero is replaced by

the citizen-hero; the glory of the battlefield is replaced

by the glory of wisdom in the service of the polis.

Achieving wisdom— the pursuit of higher knowledge— "is a

form of abstract philosophical knowledge unavailable in

principle to the majority of h u m a n k i n d . "427 Not only is the

material, concrete world spurned in favor of the "higher"

activities of abstract thought, but those categories of

people engaged in labor and the realm of necessity are

425ibid., p. 197. For similar commentary see Saxonhouse, p. 375; Okin, p. 24; Coole, chap. 2.

426jjartsock, p. 197. We encounter again the male assumption, literally, of procreativity, and specifically excluding the female role. "The fear of and contempt for the bodily, the irrational, the appetitive, and ultimately the female, are all part of the same pattern." Hartsock, p. 203. Clark, "The Rights of Women," p. 54 puts it this way: "The appropriate products of creation were thought to be... enduring ideas, and entities such as the polis itself, which can survive the vicissitudes of time and mutability, and serve as lasting monuments to man's higher capacities. To free themselves for these 'higher tasks,' men relegated the reproductive function to women alone, and refused to take any account of it whatsoever as a political fact."

427gightain, Public Man. Private Woman, p. 21.

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subjugated to the rule of an elite class: those few capable

of higher knowledge.

While few would dispute Plato's influence on

political thought, Aristotle's impact has been felt far

beyond political theory. His hierarchical and functional

outlook has particular relevance, as we will observe in his

treatment of the public and private. Plato's solution to

the fractionalism and disruption associated with the private

was to eliminate the strife by subsuming private interests

within the public, collective domain. In contrast,

Aristotle considers the private realm essential, while

inferior, and therefore establishes a dichotomy between the

spheres. It is Aristotle's depiction that has "had an

enormous influence on subsequent treatments of public and private."428

Unlike Plato's critical, probing approach, Aristotle

appears more concerned with explaining why things are as

they are— and more, "why it is that the world and its

constituent parts are, and must be, the way they a r e . "429

teleological method serves his inquiry perfectly, as

exemplified here:

428ibid., p. 44.

429okin, p. 73.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 229 And therefore, if the earlier forms of society are natural, so is the state, for it is the end of them, and the nature of a thing is its end. For what each thing is when fully developed, we call its nature, whether we are speaking of a man, a horse, or a family. Besides, the final cause and end of a thing is the best, and to be self-sufficing is the end and the b e s t . *30

In addition to identifying things by the function they perform— and their survival as proof that they perform their function well— Aristotle's concept of "final cause" generated a hierarchically ordered universe, with the lower

necessarily functioning for the benefit of the h i g h e r . 431

The state was natural, as the end to which previous associations— including households— were leading, and the

means by which man [specifically] achieved the highest possible good as zoon politikon (political animal). Humans share with other animals the trait of sociality and the

necessity of biological maintenance and reproduction. What differentiates them is their capacity for lexis (speech) and

praxis (action): the ability to make a choice, especially in regard to the good life.

Men share some capacities, those of nutrition and growth, with plants, and others, those of consciousness and feeling, with animals. But rationality is

430&ristotle, Politics. I, 1252b30, pp. 555-56.

431okin, p. 74-76. "In like manner we may infer that, after the birth of animals, plants exist for their sake, and that the other animals exist for the sake of man,...Now if nature makes nothing incomplete, and nothing in vain, the inference must be that she has made all animals for the sake of man." Aristotle, Politics. I, 1256bl4, p. 566. See also Coole, chap. 2.

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exclusively human. In man's exercise of his rational powers therefore the specific human activity consists, and in the right and able exercise of them lies the specific human excellence. 432

The private realm of the family and household is where the

demands of necessity— what humans share with animals— are

addressed; relationships of inequality prevail, productive

labor is undertaken, as well as reproductive labor; birth

and death (mortality) transpire here. The public realm of the polis excludes by definition the realm of necessity

(what is common to humans and animals); here there are only

equals, members of the highest association seeking

immortality by pursuing the highest g o o d . 433

The household is natural because it is the site of production and reproduction; it facilitates life, it is necessary to a well-ordered life, and may even participate in a limited expression of the good life.

432jiaclntyre, p. 62.

433«The state or political community, which is the highest of all, and which embraces all the rest, aims at good in greater degree than any other, and at the highest good." Politics I1252a4-6, p. 553. My rendition draws upon Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), pp. 22-37; and Okin, pp. 74-86. Saxonhouse is critical of the polarization implied in Arendt's depiction, and especially her "denigration" of the private (pp. 380-81). While I have specific criticisms of Arendt's work, I find her hierarchical dichotomization of the public and private in this period more persuasive than Saxonhouse's preference for "interdependence," which suggests more mutuality than seems warranted. Perhaps the question turns on whether super/subordinate relationships are appropriately termed "interdependent." For valuable criticisms of Arendt, see Carol C. Gould, "Private Rights and Public Virtues: Women, the Family, and Democracy," in Carol C. Gould, ed., Bevond Domination (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Allanheld, 1983), pp. 8-10; M. O'Brien, pp. 99-115.

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But it exists on behalf of that higher political institution (more natural in a teleological sense) that is self-sufficient and arena of the good life itself. For in civic life, freemen who are equals in terms of their reasoning capacities, engage in self- determination through rational discourse, taking turns to rule and be ruled; they achieve their telos. Only those who are free can enjoy such activity, and such freedom depends on a life of leisure and plenty, on liberation from the daily round of productive and reproductive tasks. The household's natural function is therefore to fulfil the preconditions making such a life possible for the few. Women and slaves exist for the sake of rational male citizens; they remain in the realm of necessity rather than freedom, a prerequisite of the good life rather than participants in it.434

Aristotle considered Plato's attempt to subsume the

private as untenable: the private was of a lower order but,

in the nature of things, functionally necessary for the

higher association. Because necessary, the private could

not be abolished, but because it was of a lower order the

demands of necessity could not be permitted to contaminate

the activities and relationships of the superior

association. A "radical bifurcation" is the r e s u l t . 435

Aristotle presented a different resolution of the public-

private tensions, he nonetheless replicated Plato's

hierarchical model— indeed, provided what has proven to be a

lasting rationalization of domination.

434coole, p. 4 3 . We should note, however, that the extent of leisure enjoyed by non-elite citizens— the majority— was considerably less than these comments suggest. See also Arthur, "Early Greece," pp. 3 0 - 3 2 .

435gightain, "Moral Woman, Immoral Man," p. 4 5 5 .

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The normative import of Aristotle's theories in terms of the actual operation of Greek politics lies in the fact that his concepts could be utilized to justify slavery, to defend the dominance of women by men, and to support as well the subordination of certain 'underclasses'. His concepts additionally underpinned the notion that Athenians, as superior participants in the ideal state, had a right to extend their sway over certain lesser, barbarous p e o p l e s . 436

Aristotle built his rationalization of domination

upon the fundamental, "natural," and Platonic dichotomy of

soul over body: "And it is clear that the rule of the soul

over the body, and the mind and the rational element over

the passionate, is natural and expedient. "437 This

assertion of the immaterial over the material repeats themes

familiar from Plato's dialogues, but Aristotle explicitly

rejected the possibility of women participating in the

ruling class: "the male is by nature superior, and the

female inferior; and the one rules, and the other is ruled;

this principle, of necessity, extends to all mankind;" and

"the temperance of a man and of a woman, or the courage and

justice of a man arid of a woman, are not, as Socrates

maintained, the same; the courage of a man is shown in

commanding, of a woman in o b e y i n g . "438 we can better

appreciate Aristotle's leap from soul-over-body to male-

436ibid., p. 457.

437poiitics. I, 1254b5-8.

438poiitics. I, 1254bl3-15, p. 560-61; I, 1260a22-25, p. 576.

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over-female if we understand his view of women's nature. In

his biological writings, and consistent with Greek thought

of this period, Aristotle assumed the superiority of form

(soul) over matter (body). In regard to sexual

reproduction, he asserted that the male contribution is that

of spirit or the soul, whereas the female contributed only

matter, and that in only a passive sense of "material for

the semen to work upon."439 Females were actually defined

as deformities, necessary for the propagation of the species

but lacking the male qualities essential for the attainment

of virtue, specifically, the capacity for reason.

Yet even Aristotle is compelled to qualify his

classification of slaves, women, and children as simply

"without virtue," especially in light of their sharing the

capacity for speech. His teleological premises afforded him

an easy clarification: "the very constitution of the soul

has shown us the way; in it one part naturally rules, and

the other is subject, and the virtue of the rule we maintain

to be different from that of the subject;— the one being the

virtue of the rational, and the other of the irrational

439jjy synoptic remarks are drawn from more elaborate treatments of Aristotle's theory of procreativity in Lerner, pp. 205-210; and Okin, pp. 81-87. Although the notion precedes him, Aristotle's "scientific" rendering of male procreativity parallels— and empowers— that of the Olympian mythology and fifth-century tragedies.

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p a r t . "440 The difference in rule depended upon the nature

of the persons ruled: "For the slave has no deliberative

faculty at all; the woman has, but it is without authority,

and the child has, but it is immature."441 And so with

moral virtue: men appropriately command, women obey.

Looking at Aristotle's explanation of "why things

are as they are, and must be as they are," clear patterns

emerge. Unlike Plato's quest for the ideal state, which

leads him to probe fundamental givens, Aristotle's method

permits him to explain and rationalize the status quo.

Aristotle's world-view is both hierarchical and dichotomized. Soul rules over body; rational thought over emotion; humans over animals; male over female; masters over slaves ; and Greeks over barbarians. All the philosopher need do to justify the existing class relations within his society is to show how each of the subordinate groups is by "nature" designed to occupy its appropriate rank in the h i e r a r c h y . 442

In terms of the public-private, Aristotle recognized

the functional necessity of the family and household. Yet

the highest purpose of zoon politikon was to be free from

the demands of necessity in order to act and speak

politically, uncontaminated by physical needs or

relationships of inequality. So separate, hierarchically

related spheres were inevitable aspects of nature's creation

440poiitics. I, 1260a5, p. 576.

441ibid., I, 1260a, p. 576.

442berner, p. 208.

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of the highest association: the state. And here we are

reminded of the historical context of Aristotle's work. A

"political" society, that is, organized on the principle of

property-based citizenship, necessarily implied the prior

"destruction of all organized units resting on k i n s h i p . "443

However, kinship as an organizing principle did not so much

simply disappear as become relegated to or incorporated

within the developing political structures based upon

patriarchy— specifically, the individual household form of

husband-wife-dependents, whose marital relation, property

rights, and reproductivity were subject to state regulation.

Thus, qualification for citizenship rested upon parental

citizenship, and it was literally the patriarchal household,

within its boundable domain, that established one's claim to

the property requisite for citizenship.

But the claim to citizenship, that is, the power to

rule rather than be ruled over, was available only to a few.

"In the democratic polis based on slavery, about which

Aristotle was writing, the very definition of citizenship

had to exclude all those deemed inferior— helots, slaves,

w o m e n . "444 Aristotle provided a rationalization for the

extensive exclusion by building upon teleological premises

and his own assertions regarding "the nature of things."

443&rendt, p. 24.

444Lerner, p. 211.

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Fundamental to his entire system of justification is the

"metaphoric construct, the "inferior and not quite completed

f e m a l e . '"445 Upon this rests his justification of all

subsequent domination.446

Aristotle's grand and daring explanatory system, which encompassed and transcended most of the knowledge then available in his society, incorporated the patriarchal gender concept of the inferiority of women in such a way as to make it indisputable and, in fact, invisible. Definitions of class, of private property, of scientific explanations could and would be debated for centuries after on the basis of Aristotle's thought— but male supremacy and male dominance are here a basic foundation of the philosopher's thought and are thus elevated to the power of natural l a w s . 447

The significance of Aristotle's model can hardly be

overstated. His version of procreativity with its

denigration of the female as "incomplete," and his

singularly functional treatment of women— their nature being

always and only to reproduce— has powerfully structured

445ibid., p. 210.

448Lerner effectively demonstrates Aristotle's use of the unchallenged inferiority of women to argue the reasonableness of the master-slave relationship (pp. 208-09).

447berner, p. 210. Okin documents contemporary authors critical of Aristotle's thought in regard to slavery and class, concluding: "By contrast, the perception and treatment of women in purely functional terms has remained so prevalent that these intelligent scholars have not felt the need to argue against Aristotle's disposition of the female sex. In fact, it is fairly clear that they are unable to see that the injustice of his treatment of slaves, women and workers is all of a piece" (p. 95). Failure to make this observation is the source of considerable critique in the feminist literature.

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subsequent assumptions about w o m e n . 448 The extent to which

the Western tradition assumes a male-as-norm perspective—

that men as specifically "not-women" constitute the human in

human rights, the citizen, tax-payer, and laborer— is yet

under-acknowledged. At this point it is important to note

that with Aristotle's procreative model, women's

"inferiority" as "incomplete" (i.e., not male) is literally

articulated and enters powerfully into the Western

philosophical and scientific t r a d i t i o n . 449 Also implanted

into the Western world-view was the image of women as

naturalIv restricted to their inevitable and unchanging

reproductive role. Additionally, given the importance of

property claims, women's reproduction was regulated by

patriarchal principles that, among other things, confined

women's activities to the private sphere. As the new

principle organizing society was "political" (in the sense

of property rather than kinship), restriction to the

448John Peradotto and J. P. Sullivan, "Introduction," Women in the Ancient World, p. 3: "It is impossible to exaggerate the influence of Aristotle's claims that women are physically, mentally, and socially,... inferior by nature to men. These ideas were to pervade the theological, philosophical, medical, and political writings of later ages."

449non the unexamined assumption that this stereotype represented reality, institutions denied women equal rights and access to privileges, educational deprivation for women became justified and, given the sanctity of tradition and patriarch dominance for millennia, appeared justified and natural." Lerner, p. 211.

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private— by definition non-political— sphere had far-

reaching consequences for women.

The fact that sex dominance antedates class dominance and lies at its foundation is both implicit and explicit in Aristotle's philosophy. It is implicit in his choice of explanatory metaphors, which takes for granted that his audience will understand the "naturalness" of male dominance over females and consider slavery just if he can prove his analogy. It is explicit in the way he sets up his dichotomies and assigns greater value to that which men do (politics, philosophy, rational discourse) than that which women do (minister to the needs of life). And it is most explicit of all in the way his gender definitions and prescriptions are built into his discourse on politics. His great and path-breaking insight that "man is by nature a political animal" is immediately followed by his explanation that the state is made up of individual households and that the management of the household is analogous and makes a model for the management of the body politic. What he describes here is exactly the development we have been tracing in Mesopotamian society since its inception: the patriarchal family is the form which the archaic state takes. The patriarchal family is the cell out of which the larger body of patriarchal dominance arises. Sexual dominance underlies class and race dominance.*50

Having examined the nature of the Athenian political

community— its understanding of politics and power, its

dichotomizing of men and women, public and private,

political and apolitical, necessity and freedom— Hartsock

concludes:

All of this both rested on and reinforced a profound misogyny. The result was a theorization of politics and political power as activities that occurred in a masculine arena characterized by freedom from necessary labor, dominance of intellect or soul, and equality among the participants, in which political power rested on heroic action defined by courage in war and courage

450ibid., p. 211.

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in speech, a world defined exclusively in masculine terms. It rested on, depended on, but at the same time opposed another world— a world where necessity was held to rule, where inequality and hierarchy were seen as central, bodily needs as opposed to those of the soul or intellect were described as dominant, a world in which heroic action was not even a possibility, a world of women— the household. I argue that the refracted impact of these dualities still structures our thinking.451

45lHartsock, p. 187.

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CONCLUSION

Certain dualisms have been persistent in Western traditions; they have all been systemic to the logics and practices of domination of women, people of color, nature, workers, animals— in short, domination of all constituted as others. whose task is to mirror the self. Chief among these troubling dualisms are self /other, mind/body, culture/nature, male/female, civilized/primitive,.. .The self is the One who is not dominated, who knows that by the service of the other; the other is the one who holds the future, who knows that by the experience of domination, which gives the lie to the autonomy of the s e l f . 452

Intra-Subiactive Core-Relation

With the process of state formation, the intra-

sub]active core-relation— our "relation" to our "selves," to

our embodiment as "subjects"— was quite dramatically

altered. The shift from corporate kin-based societal

organization to oikos-based citizenship had profound

implications for sexuality in an encompassing sense.

Legally codified regulation of women's sexual reproduction—

in order to determine claims to property and citizenship—

was perhaps the most obvious consequence of the state's

452j3onna Haraway, "A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the 1980s," Socialist Review 15 (1985), p. 96.

240

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intervention in sexual matters. But in addition to

generating a "need" to regulate the transmission of property

and citizenship, state formation processes— especially

militarism, slavery, and specialization— have consequences

for the embodiment of "subjects" more generally.

We observed that in the communal/egalitarian

configuration, where no contradiction between producer and

owner roles yet existed, all women and all men had similar

relations to productive means and resources.453 in the kin-

corporate/lineage configuration, patrilocal/patrilineal

groups privatized women's productive and reproductive labor

to the advantage of the husband's lineage group. In this

case, "sisters and wives are two different productive

relationships," sisters being owners and not producers,

wives being producers but not owners. 454 Under

patrilocality/patriliny women's relations to production and

ownership have changed, and the change tends to disadvantage

"women in general" (see discussion in chapter 3 ) . However,

the fact that women embody both relations455 (permits some

453gacks, Sisters, p. 122.

454ibid., p. 122.

455"In a woman's life cycle, her relations to the means of production of both her own and her husband's lineage change. Young married women in their own lineage and in their husband's are subordinates, specifically daughters and wives in productive relations. With age, they become controllers of labor and productive means— as sisters who control brothers' children's lineage affairs and as mothers

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sexually egalitarian relationships; the extent of

egalitarian relations and the presence of singularly

"powerful" women depends upon specific situations.

In the shift from kinship-based societies to class-

divided states, women are denied all owner roles— and the

power and control inherent in "owner" status. "The breakup

of corporate owning groups and their replacement by class

ownership of productive means...transformed women from

sister and wife to daughter and wife, making them perennial

subordinates."456 women continued to be producers (and

reproducers), but were denied all claims to ownership: they

became the transmitters of property, and indeed, were

treated very much like property themselves.457

This transformation in women's status is rendered

explicit in the legal codifications accompanying state

who control their own children and their children's productive means." Sacks, Sisters, p. 120.

456ibid., p. 123.

457pQ2T example: "[Solon's legislation]... illustrated the general debarment of women from making decisions about their own matrimonial destinies. True, the community, by such measures, was displaying a keen interest in their role as transmitters of property and thus preservers of continuity, but it did so in such a way as to confirm that they were regarded as incapable of a self-determined act." See Grant, pp. 31-32. See also my discussion in chapters 4- 6, and Lemer, chap. 2. Some of the most compelling evidence of women being treated as property are the "substitution" principle in Mesopotamian law codes, and identifying the male-with-rights-in-the-woman as the injured party in cases of rape (see chapter 4).

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formation. As noted in chapters four and five, a major

focus of these early law codes was the regulation of women's

sexuality and reproduction— in the form of laws regarding

marriage, rape, incest, abortion, adultery (of wives only),

divorce, and family property. The extent and specificity of

these laws can be seen to emerge from and cluster around two

major transformations : 1) the effects of militarism and

slavery on sexual relations in general, and 2) the shift

from kin-based to property-based social relations.

Historically, militarism has been an essential

element in the state formation process; the rape and

enslavement of captured women has been a consistent and

significant aspect of militarism, serving in some cases as

sufficient incentive in itself for military v e n t u r e s . 458

Prior to the establishment of chattel slavery,

captives/slaves were in most cases integrated into the

captor's social structures. This does not preclude a

distinction being made between women gained through capture

and those acquired through more elaborate— and obligation

incurring— kin-organized marriages. To whatever extent such

a distinction existed, it was very much expanded as slavery

became institutionalized with the transition from corporate

458gee my discussion in chapter 4; also Redman, pp. 320-21; Lerner, pp. 76-87.

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to individual ownership principles, that is, in the

transition to state societies.

The distinction between "respectable women"— "free"

women who provide legitimate heirs and are otherwise chaste-

-and "not respectable" women— "available" women who provide

sexual release and pleasure for men, without the men

incurring any obligations— was codified in the earliest

legal reforms. The "availability" of women for men's

(ab)use was further ensured in the Solonian legislation

establishing state brothels, "staffed" by slave women. In

Athens, the separation of "sex for reproducing heirs" and

"sex for pleasure" was "so complete that it left its marks

on almost all facets of organized society."459

One consequence then of the sexual abuse of women— a

corollary of militarism and slavery— was a fractured eros:

looking at the historical record, none of the sexual

liaisons promoted in classical Athens permitted a mutually

respectful and pleasurable a c t i v i t y . 460 That, i t seems to

459Keuls, p. 205. She continues: "Did the Athenians also develop the corresponding notion, still strongly represented in the modern world, that these two functions, of childbearing and of sex for its own sake, represent two antipodes of the feminine character— in other words, that there are natural-born mothers and natural-born whores?" (p. 205).

460por a discussion of the various sexual relations— and their invariably hierarchical nature— see, for example, Keuls, passim (and her many citations); Hartsock, especially chap. 8; Elshtain, chap. 1.

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me, is quite a comment on the social relations of "glorious

Athens."

I include here, of course, the homosexual relations

widely acknowledged in Athenian life. Because the

historical record is focused on elite male experience it

fails to illuminate the sensual/emotional/sexual experience

of of non-elite men and virtually all women. While one

cannot rule out the possibility of "mutual respect" and

unfragmented eros between individual lovers, I believe that

the generalized denigration of sexual/emotional/non-

rational/ecstatic expression promoted among the elites

necessarily affected the sexual/erotic experience of non

elites as well. I do not mean to deny "agency" to non-elite

men and women (that is, to deny strategies of resistance to

elite hegemony), but to emphasize the systemic effects of

domination relations— specifically, the improbability of

"mutual respect" in a society constituted by hierarchical

relations.

The regulation of women's sexuality was also

"necessitated" by the structural changes in social

organization. By codifying laws that served the interests

of centralized, "political" (i.e., property-based)

authority, kin-based (corporate) ownership and

responsibility principles were displaced. Clan allegiances

representing a threat to state authority were weakened.

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while a modified "kin-based" principle was retained in

promoting the marital unit and patriarchal, "nuclear" family

of individual households. Women were regulated in a variety

of ways in order to promote the interests of the patriarchal

household and patriarchal state. The critical issues

revolved around assuring legitimate heirs; women were

therefore most severely regulated in terms of marriage and

divorce, sexuality, reproduction, and transmittal of family

property.461 The double standard was clearly instituted in

these legal codifications, and appeared to pervade

Mesopotamian and, especially, Athenian practices.

In addition to the legal codes, I note the

transformation in women's status as revealed in the shifting

cosmologies accompanying state formation. I have included

extensive descriptions of the transformations in belief

systems in chapters four and six, and simply summarize them

here. In both the Mesopotamian and Athenian cases, the

transition from kinship-based to centralized, political-

based authority produced— and was produced by— altered

cosmologies. From initial fertility goddess veneration—

wherein the mother-goddess encompassed both creative and

procreative capacities— we observed a shift to either a

461gee discussions above; I believe that the surviving legal codes provide a clear statement of the state's interest in— and action to secure— the regulation of women's sexuality.

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monotheistic male deity or a male-dominated pantheon of

gods. In both cases, not only creativity but— what would

seem counterfactual— procreativity are appropriated by the

male deities: they usurped female reproductive power. The

ramifications are extensive; I note those most relevant to

interpreting the intra-subjective core-relation.

First, the actual procreative power of women is

denied. The capacity so clearly female— fecundity— has been

arrogated to men. This is not simply symbolic, as the

reading of Aristotle demonstrates: women ("mutilated males")

are merely the receptacles for "the more divine" male

principle of movement which alone imparts "life, soul and

r e a s o n . "462 This not only denies women a sense of agency in

biological reproduction (on the face of it, the least

deniable instance of women's agency), but also denies the

materiality of women's bodily experience in the gestation

and parturition process. That is, positing the male

abstract principle— the soul— as superior to female matter—

the body and its material processes— celebrates the abstract

and ideational at the expense of the concrete and sensate.

Second, this hierarchical dichotomizing of soul over

matter is simply a different statement of Plato's promotion

462gee Coole's discussion of Aristotle's theories of human reproduction, as stated in his Generation of Animals (pp. 20-21).

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of male generation of immortal ideas as superior to female

generation of mere mortal beings;

The vision of the Symposium is one that attempts to move eros away from the disorderly realm of the physical and toward reason, away from bodily concerns and toward those of the soul (ultimately toward the divine) . Only when it is cleansed of enough of its bodily impurities can eros take its place as an honorable tie between citizens....The eros that has a place in politics rejects the body in favor of the soul, rejects the material and not lasting in favor of higher things. Those things associated with the bodily and with the female world are seen as subordinate to the things associated with maleness and the higher w o r l d . "463

In other words, the power to produce ideas is placed above

the power to produce people; what is most important for the

good life cannot be tainted by bodily needs or processes.

This brings me to the third point; a denial of actual

reproduction— including its biological, nurturing, and

socialization aspects— as a socially necessary activity of

primary significance for social relations. Instead of

acknowledging the centrality of human reproduction, our

Athenian forefathers assumed that actual (that is, female)

...reproduction is demeaning, that fundamental meaning and importance for man, and here I mean the term literally, cannot derive from the genesis and nurturance of children. The idea of politics, and the theory to support it, was born from a sense of the futility of the reproductive function. It was designed exclusively by men, exclusively for men, as an escape from the world of the household, the realm of the "merely" biological, of pure necessity....Political theory begins from the conclusion that satisfying forms of social organization cannot arise out of, and be for the sake of, the mode of reproduction....It is based on a rejection of the

463Hartsock, p. 195.

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process of reproduction as a meaningful principle of social organization....[It assumes that] reproduction as such is of no importance in the creation of a significant life for m a n , ...464

This is, in turn, related to the male abdication of

responsibility for social reproduction: by diminishing and

devaluing the actual tasks of childrearing, men justified

their relegation of these tasks to women. There are two

related issues here of fundamental significance to our

understanding of social relations. On the one hand, men's

denial of the centrality of reproduction "necessarily

condemned women to carry on an indisputably necessary social

function without any recognition whatsoever and without any

power to shape other social institutions in ways which were

compatible with this central process in individual and

social l i f e . "465 on the other hand, men surrendered all

systemic participation in the childrearing experience,

precluding its transformative potential for understanding

power as enabling (i.e., power to) rather than only dis

abling (i.e., power o v e r ) . 466

464ciark, pp. 51-52.

465ibid., p. 52.

466There is an extensive literature on the significance of parenting under patriarchal social relations and its and implications for reproducing gendered realities. See, for example, Joyce Treblicot, ed. Mothering; Essavs in Feminist Theorv (Totowa, NJ; Rowman and Allanheld, 1983), especially Sara Ruddick's "Maternal Thinking."

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Fourth, the hierarchical dichotomizing of

male/abstract/ideational production over

female/concrete/biological reproduction denies the

necessarily social aspect of women's reproduction. Instead,

we have the image of "woman as animal"— reminiscent of

Semonides's metaphors, much of Greek mythology, and

Aristotle's female as "incomplete male"— not capable of

rationality, unable to transcend her biological process, and

subject to unrestrained emotionality. Where we might

anticipate appreciation for a crucial and demanding social

engagement, we observe instead the disdain for that realm of

"mere necessity."

Unlike man, the woman of the polis was regarded as a hybrid creature, a domesticated animal who could be adapted to the needs of society but whose fundamental instincts were antagonistic to it. Woman, says Euripides,...is a more terrible thing than the violence of the raging sea, than the force of torrents, than the sweeping breath of fire. Thus her very existence was a testimony to the gods' hatred of mankind. This is the Greek view of women; this is the way in which women's ties with nature manifest themselves; this, finally, is the supreme articulation of man's alienation from the sources of his own essence as a natural b e i n g . 46?

However, the need for "good" women to provide

legitimate heirs complicates the denigration of all that is

female; therefore, a division of "respectable" vs. "not

respectable" women is devised to obscure the contradiction.

"Good" women do not enjoy sexuality but do responsibly

467Arthur, "Liberated Women," p. 73.

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pursue their duty to produce legitimate heirs; "...the

female is represented as beneficent when her creative

potential is subjected to the regulatory power of the

m a l e . "468 «Bad" women simply demonstrate the need for just

that order the state is anxous to impose. In both cases,

women's sexuality is placed at the service of and under

control by men, who exercise that control individually and

through the patriarchal state. The only (socially approved)

sexuality of women precludes any celebration of their bodies

and biological processes, or mutual pleasure in sexual

relations.469

In sum, the intra-sub j ective core-relation in the

state configuration is seen to encompass the following; in

Mesopotamia, the Mother-Goddess is dethroned and

"domesticated," with the power of creation and fertility

usurped by the male Creator-God; in Athens, a privileging of

male identification with the higher domain of the political-

-in the form of abstract creation of immortal ideas, in

contrast to (and at the expense of) a female association

with the domain of necessity— in the form of "animal-like"

468j^rthur, "Early Greece," p. 48.

469a s noted above, men have more options for their sexual expression and considerable "freedom" to exercise their preferences. The failure of the Athenian context to provide any mutually respectful sexual liaisons is here deemed a loss to men, as well as— much more systematically and oppressively— women.

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(merely biological, material, and non-ref lective)

reproduction of (merely mortal) children. The sexuality of

women— and to some extent that of men— is regulated by the

state, especially through the codification of laws.

Mutually respectful and mutually pleasurable homo- or

hetero-sexual relations are precluded by patriarchal

dominance and its denial of gender equality.

Subi ective-Obi ective Core-Relation

The subjective-objective core-relation— between

humans as "subjects" and what is constructed as "objects"—

also takes on significant new meanings in the process of

state formation. I have organized the points to be made

here around the implications of the invention of writing.

Historically (see the discussion in chapter four),

writing was developed as a function of record-keeping

necessitated by the centralization process: "The compulsive

rite of civilization is w r i t i n g . "470 % believe that this

has very significant consequences for the social relations

constituted by state formation, and also for our

contemporary understanding of those relations. In addition.

470Diamond, p. 3. See also Giddens, p. 41: "Writing did not originate as an isomorphic representation of speech, but as a mode of administrative notation, used to keep records or tallies. Rather than being treated, on a more abstract plane, as a material representation of speech, writing must be recognized as having its own distinctive characteristics."

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I consider this one of the least explored aspects of state

formation processes and structures and, therefore, of

particular interest.

As I noted in my earlier discussion, writing has

implications for social relations in terms of new

abstraction capababilities, the durability of communication

forms, codification and "publicizing" of normative

principles, and greatly expanded possibilities for social

control— and criticism. I would like to examine the

significance of writing (in terms of the subjective-

objective core-relation) by (artificially) dividing the

consequences into implications for science, social control,

and moral philosophy, with specific references to the

classical period.

The introduction of "naming" as a new notion of

"creation" ("things" come into existence, become "real," by

being named) was closely related to increasing use of

abstract categories and expanded classificatory schema.

Abstractions expand the possibilities of comparison and

critical scrutiny by providing "forms" for communicating

thoughts or consciousness; while all language presupposes

abstraction, these forays at increasing "distance" from

"concreteness" are further enabled by the introduction of

writing;

Because when an utterance is put in writing it can be inspected in much greater detail, in its parts as well

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as in its whole, backwards as well as forwards, out of context as well as in its setting; in other words, it can be subjected to a quite different type of scrutiny and criti^e than is possible with purely verbal communications. Speech is no longer tied to an "occasion"; it becomes timeless....Writing makes speech "objective" by turning it into an object of visual as well as aural inspection;... Here, I suggest, lies the answer, in part at least, to the emergence of Logic and Philosophy....Logic, in its formal sense, is closely tied to writing:...Symbolic logic and algebra, let alone the calculus, are inconceivable without the prior existence of writing. More generally, a concern with the rules of argument or the grounds for knowledge seems to arise, thought less directly, out of the formalisation of communication... which is intrinsic to writing. Philosophic discourse is a formalisation of just the kind one would expect with literacy. "Traditional" societies are marked not so much by the absence of reflective thinking as by the absence of the proper tools for constructive rumination. 471

The "intellectual revolution" in the Greek context

is evidenced in the prose writing of the fifth and

subsequent centuries: in the form of philosophies and

metaphysics, natural sciences, ethical and political

philsophy, and historical research. Common to all of these

texts was the process of abstraction: identifying "natural

laws," hidden regularities, the universels, the underlying

order, the pattern in the particularity. The search for

"order" is also evidenced in the poetry of the sixth- and

fifth-centuries, where reason and law struggle against the

chaos and unpredictability of nature and natural forces.

Permeating these texts, and related to the development of

471coody, p. 44.

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writing itself, is the dichotomizing of form and matter,

abstract and concrete, culture and nature, reason and

emotion, order and chaos, freedom and necessity, public and

private. These dualities are not "balanced" but

hierarchical, the first term being superior to— and

"dominating"— the second.

The second term in each case is inevitably made out to be external, derivative, and accidental in relation to the first, which is either an ideal limit or the central term in the metaphysical system. The reason why this is so,... is that the second term in each case usually connotes something that endangers the values the first term assures, values that connote presence, proximity, ownership, property, identity, truth conceived as conscious mastery,...4?2

Implicit in the dichotomies— and rendered explicit

in the classical tragedies— is the intention of domination

or control: fending off the unpredictability or instability

of disorder and nature by imposing predictability and order

through the power of classificatory systems and/or actual

physical control. We observe then, a shift away from

earlier, more "symbiotic" understandings of human

interaction with, dependence upon, and appreciation for the

natural environment. The dualizing of form and matter,

culture and nature, dramatically altered the subjective-

objective core-relation: away from mutuality, toward a

hierarchical rendering of teleologically superior "man,"

472}iichael Ryan, Marxism and Deconstruction (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982), p. 9.

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able (and destined) through his unique reasoning capacity,

to impose order on a recalcitrant but necessarily

subordinate realm, that of "nature."

The possibilities for enhanced social control

introduced by writing are extensive: I here briefly review

the issues around the control of writing and literacy more

generally, and the use of writing to extend and

institutionalize state power more specifically.

Writing, in addition to expanding the possibilities

for abstraction and--in the Athenian context—

dichotomization,473 ig similarly related to a "split in

consciousness" and increasing "objectification."

Writing splits consciousness in two ways-it becomes more authoritative than talking, thus degrading the meaning of speech and eroding oral tradition; and it makes it possible to use words for the political manipulation and control of others. Written signs supplant memory; an official, fixed and permanent version of events can be made. If it is written, in early civilizations, it is bound to be t r u e . 474

473It is important to note that extreme dualizing, and the Platonic rendering of causality as mover and moved, is by no means universal. Rather, it is specific to Western thought and can be very directly traced to Plato ' s and Aristotle's texts. See, for example, Hodge, Struckmann, and Trost, pp. 22-25, 42; Coontz and Henderson, "Introduction," pp. 14-15 and citations therein; Michelle Z. Rosaldo, "The Use and Abuse of Anthropology: Reflections on Feminism and Cross-Cultural Understanding," Signs 5 (Spring 1980): 409 and citations in note 40.

474oiamond, Primitive. p. 4.

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Writing permits reification— a "naturalizing" of

historically contingent social constructions=-not possible

without the durability and "authority" of the written word.

With the existence of texts— authored invariably by the

ruling elites— "History" is invented and (its ruling class

version) perpetuated;

In so far as texts describe "what went on" plus "what should go on" in a range of social situations, the "history" that is written can form a consolidated part of the apparatus of power. What were once a series of customary forms of conduct, informally sanctioned in the daily practices of local communities, become in some part appropriated and administered by the state apparatus.475

Not only History, but more diffuse versions of

"reality" are "imposed" and perpetuated through control of

the symbol systems. This is critically significant for

those periods when symbol systems are in the very process of

formation: it is during this early phase that the most

foundational concepts, terms, labels, and metaphors— the

very stuff of cultural classifications— are "fixed" in the

symbol system. Historically we know that these formative

periods in the development of symbol systems are embedded in

the state formation process: the instituting of gender and

class relations of domination. That is, the specialization

and stratification processes of state formation are

inextricable from the administrative requirements spurring

475eiddens, p. 45.

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the development of notational systems. As argued in this

dissertation, the cosmological renderings accompanying state

formation evidence the imposition of male elite supremacy;

the rulers legitimate their rule by "naturalizing" its

ascendance and superiority. "Hen have explained the world

in their own terms and defined the important questions so as

to make themselves the center of d i s c o u r s e . "476

The power of this hegemony over the symbol system is

incalculable— particularly so in light of its role in

"authorizing" a particular version of reality that is fed

back in to the "material" relations reproducing the social

s y s t e m . 477 That is, once in place, particular

"authoritative" legitimations are reproduced as the

socialization process "internalizes" and reproduces the

"official" version, progressively silencing alternative

realities. Names, classifications, and creation myths

constituting the earliest, formative symbol systems and

texts have been uniquely powerful in structuring subsequent

discourse— and even thought.

History gives meaning to human life and connects each life to immortality, but history has yet another function. In preserving the collective past and reinterpreting it to the present, human beings define

476Lerner, p. 220.

477% note again that recent attention to, for instance, Gramsci's hegemony theories, sociology of knowledge, and the politics of language spring from similar recognition of the power of symbol systems in constituting the social formation.

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their potential and explore the limits of their possibilities. We l e a m from the past not only what people before us did and thought and intended, but we also leam how they failed and erred. From the days of the Babylonian king-1 ists foirward, the record of the past has been written and interpreted by men and has primarily focused on the deeds, actions, and intentions of males. With the advent of writing, human knowledge moved forward by tremendous leaps and at a much faster rate than ever before. While, as we have seen, women had participated in maintaining the oral tradition and religious and cultic functions in the preliterate period and for almost a millenium thereafter, their educational disadvantaging and their symbolic dethroning had a profound impact on their future development. The gap between those who could or might (in the case of lower- class males) participate in the creating of the symbol system and those who merely acted but did not interpret became increasingly g r e a t e r . 478

Historically, literacy has also been associated with

the instituting of of a separation between mental and manual

Icibor, both as a consequence of their co-occurence in state

formation and as an extension of writing as technology.479

478Lerner, p. 221.

479M[in Plato's Republic] the manual laborers are at the base of the social hierarchy, being considered constitutionally unfit to rule themselves. This is of course a quite typical attitude, however rationalized, and we find it associated with the rise of civilization almost everywhere." See Diamond, Primitive, p. 182. For a discussion of "pure reason" as corollary of the introduction of a money economy— through the development of coinage in the sixth-century B.C.— and a concomitant division of mental from manual, see Alfred Sohn-Rethel, Intellectual and Manual Labour; A Critique of Epistemoloov (London; Macmillan & Co., 1978), Part I. Feminists have pushed beyond the marxist critique of mental vs. manual in noting its continued omission of "women's work" in providing the "services" that enable men's "mental" and "manual" activities. See for example, H. Rose, "Hand, Brain, and Heart; A Feminist Epistemology for the Natural Sciences," Signs 9 (1983), pp. 73-90.

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This can be seen in the relation between writing and

bureacracy:

The written word does not replace speech, any more than speech replaces gesture. But it adds an important dimension to much social action. This is especially true of the politico-legal domain, for the growth of bureaucracy clearly depends to a considerable degree upon the ability to control "secondary group" relationships by means of written communications...... It is clear that the adoption of written modes of communication was intrinsic to the development of more wide-ranging, more depersonalized and more abstract systems of government;...480

The codification of laws is, of course, an obvious

example of the power of writing to affect the social order

(see my discussion in chapter four). By establishing the

"rule of law," the state displaces alternative social

principles, historically those based on kinship obligations.

I have noted above the effects of these codes on regulating

women's sexuality; the point here is that "procedural"

principles— allegedly appropriate across contexts rather

than being context dependent (more typical of a normative

order based on "customs")— were imposed by the state. That

is, procedural, abstract rules replaced customs based upon

concrete practices and contingent contexts; as noted above,

codified laws are "impersonal."

It is important to note that only citizens had any

voice in the legislative process; non-citizens were in some

real sense "non-members" of the community. (Mesopotamian

480(3QQdy, pp. 15-16.

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kings were unconstrained by even citizen input.) This

contrasted with kinship organization where everyone was a

"member" by definition, and presumably had some claim to

participation— however differentiated in practice— in the

maintenance and change of the normative order.

Finally, the dichotomizing of culture and nature is

related (in Athens) to the emergence of "moral philosophy";

that discourse attempting to address questions of agency and

responsibility raised by the recognition of human agency

(see chapter six).

A prephilosophical but increasingly sophisticated vocabulary emerged in the Homeric period, undergoing permutations in the pre-Hellenic and the Hellenic epochs in response to altered social realities and as a kind of anticipation of future exigencies. The distinction between nature fphvsis) and culture fnomos) became fixed, at least for the literate, privileged classes. With a division between the basic notions nature and culture secured, more sophisticated differentiations within culture became possible, desirable, or necessary....The result of the Greek division and classification of cultural phenomena was the polis. the concept of a structured body politic set off in contrast to the oikos. or private h o u s e h o l d . 481

A towering achievement, tied inescapably to the public-private division, is the notion of politics as a form of action, an activity carried out by individuals with agency within and upon the world, rather than creatures through or to whom things simply happened....The linguistic resources of [oral cultures] frequently disallow certain distinctions. Inferences, and the drawing of causal relations. There is a qualitative distinction to be made between language systems that provide for agentic imperatives and those that do not....Man's [sic] gain of partial autonomy, his emergence from the imbeddedness of "natural"

48lElshtain, Public Man. Private Woman, pp. 11-12.

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determinism, meant that henceforth an individual could be seen as praiseworthy or could be b l a m e d . 482

Once the notion of individual agency is introduced,

the corollary notion of responsibility emerges, as well as

the question of justice; we observe that issues of

responsibility and defining the "good" preoccupy classical

writers. And, after Plato, the answers are embedded in

rational, essentialist, secular, and patriarchal theories.

The important point to note here is that the non-democratic

nature of Plato's and Aristotle's moral-political

philosophies precludes their grounding in concrete practices

and participatory interaction. Both Plato's model of

"philosopher-kings"483 and Aristotle's model of the "public"

institute rule by those explicitly separated from

"necessity." Indeed, their claim to rule is premised upon

their unique capacity to remain disassociated from the

demands of maintaining the social system (productively and

reproductively) and from all conflictual, "private"

interests; the preferred moral and political self is viewed

4S2ibid., p. 13. I prefer Goody's less dichotomizing rendition of the development of literacy.

483piato's inclusion of women among the ruling elite— something that is always acknowledged, whether in disbelief, scorn, or enthusiasm— would seem to demand a translation of his rulers quite literally as "philosopher-monarchs." That one consistently encounters not the "correct" translation, but only that of "philosopher-kings," provides an excellent example of the depth of our androcentric presumptions; in the one famous example specifvinq the inclusion of women, women are omitted "in translation."

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as "disembedded and disembodied."484 There are two related

issues here. On the one hand, the posited systems of rule

are elitest and— in their exclusion of most humans from

participation— politically oppressive. On the other hand,

the systems are essentialist (relying on universalizing

notions of transcendent reason for delineating virtue) and

are therefore methodologically untenable.

I summarize the subjective-objective core-relation

in the state configuration as follows: the invention of

writing enabled an altered consciousness of human

interaction with nature (tending to greater

objectification), greatly expanded social control by

literate elites (institutionalized through the "author-ity”

of transformed cosmologies), more impersonal and intrusive

administrative techniques, codification of "universalizing"

laws, and increased, differentially evaluated task

specialization. In Athens, cosmological transformations

484seyia Benhabib, "The Generalized and the Concrete Other," in Feminism as Critique: On the Politics of Gender (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987), p. 81.

485i refer to critiques of the logic of identity and its universalizing and essentializing premises. See, for example. Iris. Young, "Impartiality and the Civic Public: Some Implications of Feminist Critiques of Moral and Political Theory," in Feminism as Critique. pp. 37-77; Benhabib, "The Generalized and the Concrete Other"; Roberto Mangabeira Unger, Knowledge and Politics (New York: The Free Press, 1975); Richard Rorty, Philosophv and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979).

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were paralleled and reinforced by the metaphysics author

ized in Plato and Aristotle's hierarchical dualities—

privileging culture over nature, mind over body, eibstract

over concrete, public over private, male over female.

Inter-subiactive Core-relation

That the inter-subjective (between "subjects") core-

relation also takes on significant new meanings is not

surprising if we consider the enormous increase in social

differentiation that constitutes Western state formation.

We have already noted the shift from kin corporate

"membership" networks to household-centered, class-divided

societal organization; the "family" defined as "co-resident

primairy kin-relations" is constituted for the first time as

a political entity. Corporate kin group responsibility is

undermined, to be replaced with greater emphasis on

" individual "--actually, male head-o f-household--

responsibility. In Athens, the oikos as primary productive

(and reproductive) unit of the society constitutes the

"private," the sphere of necessity that is inferior to but a

precondition of the "public," the sphere of freedom

(literally, from the demands of necessity). Citizenship— in

the sense of legal recognition in the polis— becomes the

"membership" category of overriding importance, yet is

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denied to the majority of persons (women, children, slaves, metics, etc.).486

As noted in chapter five, the distinction between

free and non-free was decisive in classical Athens,

especially so after the elimination of debt-bondage: "the

free citizen now stood out in full relief, against the

background of slave labourers."487 with the

institutionalization of slavery (in contrast to slave-

ownership in kin corporate society), a "continuum" of

relative degrees of (un) freedom gave way to a more dramatic

polarization between a "complete loss of freedom" and "untrammelled liberty."488

The crucial invention, over and above that of brutalizing another human being and forcing him or her to labor against their will, is the possibility of designating the group to be dominated as entirely different from the group exerting dominance. Naturally, such a difference is most obvious when those to be enslaved are members of a foreign tribe, literally "others." Yet in order to extend the concept and make the enslaved into slaves. somehow other than human, men must have known such a designation would indeed work.... Out of [sexual asymmetry] kinship structured social relations in such a way that women were exchanged in marriage and men had certain rights in women, which women did not have in men... .At the very beginning of state formation and the establishment of hierarchies and classes, men must have observed this greater vulnerability in women and learned from it that

486j.Qr a discussion of what constituted citizenship and its significance, see Ehrenberg, Greek State, especially pp. 52-74.

48?Anderson, p. 47.

488ibid., pp. 22-23.

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differences can be used to separate and divide one group of humans from another. These differences can be "natural" and biological, such as sex and age, or they can be man-made, such as captivity and b r a n d i n g . 489

Related to the polarization of free and non-free was

the devaluation of manual labor: working for someone else

evidenced a lack of the independence associated with the

values of a polis citizen. Also related, a differentiation

of "respectable" from "non-respectcible" women emerged as a

function of militarist practices of capturing and enslaving

women; wives, concubines, prostitutes, and slave women have

different relations to each other, yet share their

subordination to patriarchal structures.

I have also referred (see chapter six and

immediately above) to the need for Athenians to confront

issues of cultural relativism. Having separated themselves

from the organic world-view of archaic times by adopting a

culture vs. nature perspective, Athenians attempted to

address new issues of defining the "good" in terms of the

just state and the virtuous citizen. Plato was unwilling to

embrace the relativist and anti-metaphysical stance of the

Sophists, and imposed instead an essentialist and elitest

world-view.

Both Plato and Aristotle gave first priority to problems of political authority....At the level of practical application they concentrated almost exclusive attention on the mechanisms of power; at the theoretic level they

489berner, pp. 77-78.

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devoted the energies of their joint genius to establishing a valid source, philosophically respectable, for the use of political power. They found this either in the eternal ideas outside time and space, or in the equally eternal forms inherent in the political process itself....The act of organization as applied either to society or to the soul is not spontaneous nor is the system automatic. It requires discipline in the person and in the state to hold both the soul and the state in a condition of harmony and perfection. Hence the problem of building an intelligent authority over the whole had automatic priority in their thinking as against the disposition and behaviour and autonomy of the separate parts. According to this type of thinking, then, man, society and law are all theoretically fixed quantities. An examination of historical process and environmental conditions is relevant only as it illustrates the presence of such fixed quantities in history. When history makes it difficult to identify them, it is better to ignore historical man altogether.490

The good state requires rule by those who are able

to discern the eternal ideas and forms (Plato's

philosophers) or those capable of exercising the

teleologically superior faculty of reason (Aristotle's zoa

politika). For both theorists, mind (or soul) and body are

separable, the former being superior to the latter.491 As

noted above, the recurrent dualities in the classical texts

were not posed as "balanced" or reciprocal relationships but

as hierarchical oppositions wherein the first term was

superior. In terms of the mind-body duality, only in the

490Havelock, pp. 12-13.

^^lAristotle's treats the soul as the source of motion; his mind-body dualism is less radical but retains the separation and hierarchy. See the discussion in Hodge, Struckmann, and Trost, p. 22.

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realm of freedom (the public sphere, where the demands of

bodily necessity were absent) could the mind or soul reach

its highest expression— but it required discipline.

Achieving harmony and the good required self-control over

one's own body, and achieving the harmonious state required

rule by those capable of that self-control: only they were

capable— through the exercise of reason— of apprehending the

eternal ideas and forms, the knowledge of "what is, of

being, not of the changing manifestations of being."492

In terms of the inter-subjective core-relation, it

is important to note that the discipline and control

referred to here presupposes "individualistic" agency,

either in terms of the (individual) will as the "source of

motion or control over behavior, thoughts and emotions"493

(i.e., "will power"), or (individual) rationality as the

essential quality of "political man." Implicit are notions

of the atomistic self (as constituted in isolation from

social influences) and an essentialist understanding of

rationality (as transcendental, not socially constructed, capability).494

492uodge, Struckmann, and Trost, p. 98.

493ibid., p. 25.

494critiques of these positions are now extensive. See, for example, Hodge, Struckmann, and Trost, passim; Jaggar, passim; Caroline Whitbeck, "A Different Reality: Feminist Ontology," in Carol C. Gould, ed., Bevond Domination (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Allanheld, 1983).

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Related to the already noted transformation from

"fatalistic" to "man as actor" world-views, recognizing

individual agency and therefore responsibility had extensive

implications for social relations. Hodge, Struckmann, and

Trost make the following points about Western constructions

of the individual and the will (soul):

Essentially, the Western notion of the individual is that of a separate, distinct entity....This notion of the individual is a consequence of the concept of will. The will, as a center of control, is that which acts upon the physical person without itself being acted upon... .Since it is the essence, the life-force of the person, the essence of the person is to be separate and distinct from other persons.... Not only is the individual, given this conception, isolated and separate from other individuals, he is also naturally, prior to the establishment of common controls, in conflict with other individuals. Since the essence of each individual is his power to control, each individual seeks to egress himself by controlling that which is around him.49»

This conception of the individual is not a universal

one— it emerges specifically in the Athenian context, in

response to new questions of agency and responsibility

generated by dichotomization of culture vs. n a t u r e . 496 The

Athenian notion of the individual— "seen in its 'natural

^^^Hodge, Struckmann, and Trost, p. 26. See also Hartsock, chap. 8.

496see the citations in note 473 in regard to non dual istic cultures. Additionally, because the culture vs. nature dichotomy is inextricable from the privileging of the male/public sphere of reason over the female/private sphere of necessity, a primary inter-subjective polarization is that of male over female.

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state' as an isolated entity in conflict with other selves

-then generates the need for some centralizing power to

"force the naturally conflicting individuals into some kind

of social harmony. This is accomplished by forcing the

individual wills to submit to authority. This authority is

imposed by means of a hierarchy of social c o n t r o l s . "497

In other words, having assumed atomistic and

competitive individuals. Western theorists start with the

assumption of conflict, and proceed to problematize

cooperation. 498 Accordingly, the inter-subjective core-

49?Hodge, Struckmann, and Trost, p. 29.

498Qibere are numerous methodological critiques of atomistic or abstract individualism. While correctly challenging atomistic renditions for failing to acknowledge the interaction of the "individual" and social structures, these critiques often fail to make the following points. First, acknowledgement of the reproductive labor required to "produce" "individuals" renders the notion of atomistic, "pre-social" humans— "individuals" in abstraction from all social context— radically untenable. (See, for example, Jaggar, pp. 40-44.) Second, the concept of "psychologically detachable units" (that mental states attach to "individuals") or even of a "coherent subject" (as if a static definition could capture the "identity" of the "individual") is also untenable. (See, for example. Coward, p. 265; Naomi Scheman, "Anger and the Politics of Naming," in Women and Language, and "Individualism and the Objects of Psychology," in Discovering Realitv.) Third, conceptions of the "individual" and the "citizen" are not sexually neutral but androcentric— the male is assumed, as well as the conflictual, competitive practices associated with masculinism. Moreover, references to the "individual" in terms of the public sphere cannot be understood in isolation from the constitution of the private sphere; failure to recognize their interaction "naturalizes" a division of "individuals" on the basis of sex. See Carole Pateman, The Problems of Political Obligation (Berkeley and Los Angeles: Unversity of California Press, 1985), pp.189-90. For an

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relation is rendered as conflictual: insider vs. outsider,

"us vs. them," self vs. other. Summarizing this core-

relation, I note that increased differentiation in state

formation (facilitated by writing, exacerbated by

militarism, mapped on to exploitative social relations)

generated multiple and conflictual social relations. The

individual, as atomistic and competitive, appears

perpetually in conflict with others; freedom consists in

being the autonomous "agent" of one's actions ; social order

or harmony appears to require acceptance of hierarchical authority relations.499

Having reviewed the core-relations engendered by the

state configuration, I turn to a final look at the

dichotomization of public and private as ideological

legitimation of Western state formation. There are two

related but analytically separable issues I wish to present:

1) the division of public and private as constituted in the

classical context and its texts per se; and 2) the dichotomy

as "mapped on to" the core-relations. As noted in my

introduction, I believe the dichotomy not only established

extensive critique of the individual as "inherently competitive and acquisitive," see Hartsock, especially chaps. 2 and 5.

499por a critique of the androcentrism of these characterizations of the "individual," or "human nature," see my "Re-Constructing the 'Individual' in 'Human Rights'."

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the oppressive division of public and private as a

fundamental ordering principle in the Western political

tradition, but established as well other dichotomous

renderings— more generally— as "naturalized" ordering

principles in Western thought. I will first briefly review

how the public-private dichotomy per se established and

mystified social relations of domination— power relations—

that we must understand in order to understand the state

adequately.

First, the public-private dichotomy denies the

majority of the population their voices in the "political

process." Not only wives but also aliens, slaves, and

children— and all others denied citizenship status— are

rendered non-participants in the decision-making processes

that affect their lives. The "nuclear family" and

"independent" oikos are not "natural" but social entities

constituted in the state formation process: "the family and

state arose in conjunction with each other and...their very

structures are interdependent."500 Kinship as a societal

organizing principle is displaced; (patriarchal) property-

®^®Nicholson, p. 114; and p. 117: "Contrary to the picture which Locke and others have given us, of the family preceding the state in time, the above analysis suggests a mutual emergence. The family as that institution which focuses on kinship ties in the conjugal, domestically centered unit arises as an understandable component of a form of society whose overarching organizational principles become now based on criteria antithetical to kinship."

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based households become the primary social units of a class-

divided state; patriarchy is instituted and legitimized

within the domestic units through legal codification of

males as heads-of-household and citizens. That is, the

state formalizes the (older) patriarchal relations in the

(new) "family"; "The state in and of itself

institutionalizes patriarchy.

With independent households as primary economic and

political units, the "integrity" of each unit achieves new

salience. Women's sexuality is regulated by and for the

purposes of male supremacy; women— free and non-free— are

permitted virtually no voice in decision-making about their

sexuality, marriage, production, or reproduction. Class

domination relations are also instituted between women

through the distinction— required for patriarchal control of

property— between "respectable" vs. "non-respectable," or

"the good wife" vs. "the prostitute."

Second, the public-private dichotomy "naturalizes"

the exploitation of productive and reproductive labor

undertaken in the domestic or private realm. This includes

household maintenance ("necessity"), processing of raw

materials into usable goods, management of the oikos, and

reproduction of the social system through bearing and

SOlEisenstein, p. 227. This is not to minimize economic class relations but to note patriarchal relations as preceding and enabling and inextricable from class relations.

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rearing of children. "Economic" and political theory is

inadequate to the extent that it fails to incorporate these

socially necessary practices. As Lange states;

[My hypothesis is] that there are two activities essential for the existence of any human society; production and reproduction....Reproduction, broadly defined to include the labour of nurture and socialization, must be seen to have a place beside production as a primary essential activity of human society, and not a merely "natural," pre-social, albeit necessary, activity. As such, its mode is a determinant, along with the mode of production, of the form of the whole society....I believe that the sexism of poltiical theory is rooted in in the existence of social units for the performance of reproductive labour (which happen to be exploitative of women) which is taken for granted at the point where theory begins, much as one might say that the existence of raw materials for production is taken for granted when theorizing begins, inasmuch as the belief that there exist raw materials is not thought to have political connotations. But whereas the latter assumption is reasonable, the former is a reflection of a theoretical, political, assumption, whose implications are undemocratic in relation to women. The "material" of society, viz., human persons (and not just organisms of a certain sort) is riot "raw." Labour has already been expended on it, else the organisms remain non-human, or they die.^®^

Additionally, the abdication of male responsibility

for child-rearing and household maintenance has implications

that must be acknowledged if we are to understand the social

reproduction of domination relations. I refer to the

differential life experiences, and the implications for

gendered world-views, constituted by men and women engaged

in separate spheres and thus perpetuating gender-

differentiated world-views and practices. Men not only

502Lange, "Reproduction," pp. 136-37.

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"relegate" child-rearing tasks to women; they exclude

themselves from specific interactive learning processes with

significant implications for the systemic reproduction of

domination relations.

Third, the public-private dichotomy legitimizes

domination relations because it so effectively obscures the

historically specific establishment of patriarchal relations

in the state formation process. The basis of the state is

the "formal institutionalization of the separateness of male

and female life,"504 Qf freedom from necessity, public from

private, "collective" interests from "personal" interests.

Yet these "separate" spheres are in fact connected by a

patriarchal structure: the "public" cannot exist without the

mutually constituted and similarly patriarchal "private."

The public

gains its meaning and significance in relation to and in contrast with the sphere that is created simultaneously;...The private sphere is the world of

SOSgxclusion of women from those learning processes available in the public domain has implications for women's world-views as well. I do not consider it a "romanticizing" (or essentializing) of "maternal practices" (constructed under patriarchy) to note 1) that what men "miss" by failing to participate in child-rearing is significantly different from what women "miss" by being excluded from the masculinized public sphere; and 2) that the differences referred to here are specifically significant in considerations of perpetuating essentialist, instrumentalist, and elitest worldviews. See my discussion and citations in "Re-Constructing the 'Individual' in 'Human Rights'."

504j;isenstein, p. 221.

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particularism, of subjection, inequality, nature, emotion, love and partiality. Neither the public nor the private world can be understood in isolation from each other, although this is taken to be possible in the conventional understanding of the "political" and the subject matter of political theory.®®^

The dichotomy obscures that "women's full and equal

membership in public life is impossible without changes in

the domestic s p h e r e . "^96 The "freedom" of those in the

public is purchased at the expense of those in the private;

"...the democracies of ancient Greece secured liberty for

all of its [sic] citizens by inventing a system of private

property [footnote deleted] which required women to

legitimate it and slaves to work it."507 in other words,

the Western state is premised upon the exclusion of women as

a "sexual class" from public life; it is not simply an

oversight— the unconscious sexism of individual theorists,

etc.— but a structural precondition of the establishment of

the Western state. In clarification and confirmation of

this point, I quote extensively from L. Clark's critique of

Western political theory as— in its androcentric denial of

the centrality of social reproduction, i.e., the private

sphere— nothing other than an ideology of male supremacy.

The claim that virtually all political theory and theorists are sexist is trivial if it is assumed to mean

SOSpateman, Political Obligation, p. 191.

506pateman, "Feminist Critiques," p. 293.

5°^Arthur, "Early Greece," p. 37.

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only that it just so happens that because of their own particular political, social, historical, economic, and so on, background each of these men, and the theories they propounded, "naturally" reflect the prevalent biases of their own day, but that, like most "mere prejudices," these can be discounted without serious consequences. But this is not what the claim means, and it is reasoning such as this which has been used to buy off feminists who began to comment on the sexism so prevalent in the works to which they were required to give serious study. Underlying this gloriously liberal and generous reasoning is of course the view that the false and the true are incompatible, that the true can survive without the false, and that since most of what they said, or at least those parts of it which "we" (i.e., other men) in the tradition dignify as "significant," is true, then it must be able to survive without benefit of the false. But that is exactly the assumption that is now being questioned. When the false is removed, when the theories are stripped of their sexist assumptions, nothing is left of any significance whatsoever, except, of course, as an ideology of male dominance. Thus, the claim is not trivial because it insists that the sexism is systematic and structural, that it is a necessary presupposition of everything else, and that without it, the theory is quite different from what it is with it, and not one which is compatible with non-sexist assumptions. What Marx claimed for the proletariat, feminists are now claiming for women.

I would like, finally, to address the implications

of the public-private dichotomy being "mapped on to" the

core-relations. I believe that institutionalization of the

public-private dichotomy— given the historically specific

context of that institutionalization— simultaneously

established specifiable core-relations— not inherently so

ordered— as ranked, oppositional dichotomies. Specifically,

I submit that the dichotomizing of public and private

concomitantly established as hierarchical dichotomies: 1)

^®®Clark, "Rights of Women," p. 50.

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the intra-sub jective core-relation as "creativity vs.

procreativity"; 2) the subjective-objective core-relation as

"culture vs. nature"; and 3) the inter-subjective core-

relation as "autonomy vs. mutuality." It is in ranked

dichotomous form then that the core-relations enter the Western tradition.^99

The point is that establishing these relationships

as hierarchical dichotomies (only one of numerous

possibilities) precluded other possible constructions having

different social implications. Having been established in

the Western tradition as ranked dichotomies, the

possibilities of conceptualizing or constructing the core-

relations were limited to hierarchical and oppositional

dynamics— those particularly conducive to domination,

competition, instrumentalism, and either-or worldviews. On

the one hand, to the extent that the three dichotomized

core-relations are concomitant with (or constitutive

elements of) the public-private dichotomy, they can be seen

to order cosmologies and worldviews whenever the public-

private split is paramount. On the other hand, the

oppressive dynamic implicit in the dichotomized form of

these fundamental core-relations is mystified by their very

embeddedness in the public-private dichotomy which is

509por further elaboration of these dichotomized core- relations see my "Historicizing the Public-Private Dichotomy."

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legitimized in the liberal state. In sum, I believe that

the public-private dichotomy invariably incorporates some

historically contingent version of these three (also

dichotomized) core-relations and, more significantly, their

incorporation in/as the public-private dichotomy obscures 1)

the ideological significance of the dichotomized core-

relations; 2) their persistence and centrality as

unacknowledged ordering principles; and 3) the powerful

constraints they continue to impose on our thought and

action— most importantly, our understanding of power

relations. I turn, then to a brief elaboration of the

dichotomized core-relations, for convenience henceforth

referred to simply as "themes."

The first theme— creativity vs. procreativity—

surfaces clearly in the transformation of cosmologies both

accompanying and legitimizing the transition from kinship-

based to patriarchal-family, centralized-authority societal

organization. The displacement of the mother-goddess (who

encompassed both generative capacities) by either a male-

dominated pantheon or monotheistic male deities (who

appropriated both capacities) generated a separation and

elevation of creativity/productivity from

procréâtivity/reproductivity. Because (actual not symbolic)

procreativity pertained only to females, the separation

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tended to "essentialize" women in terms of their

reproductive role, simultaneously alienating them from other

aspects of their creativity, productivity, and sensuality.

The creativity vs. procreativity split fragmented erotic

possibilities and pleasures, and segregated— to be forever

separate and never equal— the sphere of biological

reproduction. The asymmetry posited women (essentialized as

merely and only reproducers) as "naturally" inferior to and

thereby justifiably subordinate to the "creators." The

elevation of male creativity/productivity privileged

"creating ideas and things" over "creating people,"

promoting thereby political and economic theory that denied

the significance of productive and reproductive labor in the

private sphere. Herewith— at the origin of Western

civilization— was established, and most significantly, was

justified, an asymmetrical differentiation of human beings

and the labor they perform.

The devaluation of reproductive processes (child-

rearing as well as childbearing) as apolitical and

ahistorical "naturalized" women’s role as reproducers within

patriarchal households; the trivialization of social

reproduction served to justify the abdication by males of

their share of repsonsibility for this socially necessary

labor. The creativity vs. procreativity split not only

denied women's participation in the only creativity that was

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valued, but also "denied" (by devaluing) men's participation

in the transformative practices of child-rearing.

Additionally, emphasizing men's exclusion from

procreativity facilitated a definition of male creativity as

necessarily contrasted with that of females: thus the male

claim to "give birth to ideas." The new version of

"creation"— male expropriation of procreativity through

giving birth to ideas, i.e., "idea-making"— was closely

related to the process of symbolization that originated with

"naming" and advanced dramatically with the invention of

writing. Historically, the emergence of writing in the

context of patriarchal social relations had the effect of

systematically excluding women from the "meaning-giving

process of interpretation and explanation."510 with this

exclusion, not only all History-making but all subsequent

systems of shared meaning are rendered, by definition,

androcentric. If one accepts, as I think we must, the

constitutive centrality of meaning in human existence— its

creation, maintenance, and re-creation— the implications of

"male hegemony over the symbol system" are staggering.

The androcentric fallacy, which is built into all the mental constructs of Western civilization, cannot be rectified simply by "adding women." What it demands for rectification is a radical restructuring of thought and analysis which once and for all accepts the fact that humanity consists in equal parts of men and women and that the experiences, thoughts, and insights of both

SlOLerner, p. 5.

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sexes must be represented in every generalization that is made about human beings.

The creation of symbol systems was part of the

transition from fatalistic worldviews to conscious acts of

"creation," both in the sense of naming, conceptualizing,

etc., and in the sense of doing and making. The latter

reflected an emerging awareness of human agency:

consciousness of human action having causal efficacy within

a world of objects. The separation of the social

(conventional) order from the natural (necessary) order as a

function of recognizing causality was rendered in the

classical texts as a dichotomization of "culture vs.

nature." This theme incorporates not only the dualistic

tendencies generated by the separation of ourselves as

social/"non-material" beings from nature/materiality, but

also the elevation of abstract— specifically "rational"—

thought over concrete reality. Implicit is the intention of

domination or control: fending off the

unpredictability/instability of nature by imposing

predictability/order through the power of hierarchical

classification and/or actual physical control.

It is the co-occurrence/mutual constitution of the

first and second themes that, I believe, is especially

significant for subsequent domination relations. The first

Sllibid., p. 220.

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theme— creativity vs. procreativity— establishes and

justifies an asymmetrical differentiation of human beings

and effectively "disembodies" us; the second theme— culture

vs. nature— establishes and justifies an asymmetrical

differentiation of "ways of being" (abstract over concrete)

or "ways of knowing" (reason over emotion, objectivity over

subjectivity) and effectively "disembeds" us. The mutual

occurrence of the themes generates a profoundly

hierarchical, essentializing, instrumentalist dynamic,

especially taken-for-granted because so constitutive of the

classification/symbol system being in the very process of

initial construction. Moreover, the dominating dynamic of

the themes— rendered more powerful by their mutual

occurrence— is especially oppressive to or dismissive of the

"alterity" constituted by the second term of each duality:

women, nature, emotion, subjectivity, materiality, etc.

Expressions of the culture vs. nature theme and the

public-private dichotomy surfaced in the Homeric epics: the

public sphere as appropriate to "action"— in the new sense

of definitively human "agency" and responsibility— and the

private sphere as the world of necessity (nature), where

family and household "maintenance" occur. Between the

Homeric epics and classical Greek literature we can trace

the revolution in (or to) moral philosophy associated with

new questions of agency. Previously, one's behavior was

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evaluated in terms of fulfilling functions that were clearly

specified within the single-order (non-dualistic) worldview.

With the decline of that fatalistic worldview, and expanding

consideration of radically different social orders,

questions of cultural relativity and defining the "good"

arose.

As an element in such considerations the third

dichotomization emerges, identified as "autonomy vs.

mutuality." In addition to issues of autonomy— in the sense

of self-determination and "freedom" from the

authority/control of others, this dichotomy also encompasses

the "self vs. other" (us vs. them, insider vs. outsider)

t e n s i o n . while the self-other dualism is exemplified in

the earliest patriarchal opposition of men-women, this theme

gains prominence when the relationship between the

individual and the collective— or between one collective and

another— is seen as problematic. This is an issue addressed

by the classical authors and exemplified in their

assumptions of atomistic individualism and hierarchical

authority.

^^^Additionally, this dichotomized core-relation has implications for the "contradiction" between "agent vs. structure" exemplified in subsequent positivist paradigms. I do not attempt to develop these issues here.

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From the demise of the Athenian polis until the

liberal state's re-institutionalization of a rigid public-

private dichotomy, the interplay of the three themes varies

considerably without however transforming their structure as

dichotomies. Of particular importance here is the

conjunction of the themes in the historically specific

context of m o d e m state formation, and the implications this

has for our understanding of power relations and political

discourse in the modern era. In terms of the first theme,

the continued functionalist rendering of women was

contradictory to the Enlightenment view of "rationality" (as

the definitive human characteristic) and promotion of

individual autonomy and equality in order to afford the

greatest opportunity for self-development. The

contradiction was "resolved" by assigning citizenship to

(propertied) male heads-of-households only; the family— not

the adult human individual— was assumed to be the basic

political unit. The result was a reconci1iation of

liberalism and patriarchy, positing free and equal male

citizens comprising a "conventionalized" public sphere, and

"essentialized" female non-citizens constituting dependents

and reproducers in a "naturalized," patriarchal, private

sphere.

In terms of the second theme, liberal theorists

imbibed science's esteem for purely instrumental

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(ahistorical, decontextualized) rationality, adopting a

"political method" allegedly free from the taint of private

interests, just as science claimed a method allegedly free

from value bias. Science's subject-object and fact-value

dualizing was replicated in the liberal public-private

dichotomy; public actors— abstracted from all historical and

concrete particularity— assumed completely impartial

standpoints permitting their unbiased determination of

"public good(s)."

In terms of the third theme, liberals recruited

Humanist individualism and scientific reductionism to

construct a political model assuming abstract, atomistic

individuals who were best left to rationally pursue their

self-interests, free from intervention. The public/state

was legitimate only to the extent that it facilitated the

"order" necessary for individuals to pursue instrumentally

their private ends. Self-determination— "freedom" from

intervention— was the objective for sovereign states as well

as autonomous individuals.

As primary actor in the transition to a global

capitalist system, it is the modern liberal state— including

its power relations— that profoundly shaped and continues to

shape other state and inter-state practices. A corollary of

that dominating influence is the hegemony of Western,

instrumental, liberal, and implicitly patriarchal ideology—

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including Western political theory and its rendering of

power relations. However, rapid and extensive

transformations of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries

have rendered the Western state model and its self-serving

theorizations transparently inadequate. Feminists,

especially, have developed encompassing critiques of the

public-private dichotomy. Western and androcentric

definitions of "human," the "silencing" (privatizing) of

challenges to domination, and state intervention in

"private" affairs. But erosion of clarity around the

meaning of public and private turns out to be merely

symptomatic of other and more extensive contradictions:

Marxists critique liberal "procedural justice"; security

theorists ponder the demise of territorially "défendable"

states; transnational corporations challenge the primacy of

the state as global actor; post-positivists deny the

adequacy of reductionist dichotomies, whether as public vs.

private or fact vs. value; ecologists decry unregulated

growth; and philosophers expose the literal

"meaningnessless" of radically decontextualized "rules."

I believe that these critiques are related because

the problématiques they address share the deep assumptions

exposed in historicizing the public-private dichotomy. In

other words, to the extent that the establishment of the

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public-private dichotomy simultaneously structured the core

relations (as the dichotomies I have set out above), the

deep assumptions of the public-private dichotomy permeate

the core-relations; the deep assumptions, as argued here,

are essentialist, instrumentalist, and androcentric. Until

the domination dynamic implicit in these deep assumptions is

acknowledged and effectively challenged, the problématiques

of domination relations will continue to elude our inquiry,

understanding, and transformation.

I close with a final summary of themes and relations

that have surfaced in this project, that I have argued

constitute inter-related components of the Western

worldview, and that I urge us to consider critically.

Early patriarchal expropriation of symbolization and

subsequent hegemony over the construction of shared systems

of meaning generated a persistent and pervasive

androcentrism evidenced especially by a virtually

unchallenged essentializing of "woman." This is exemplified

by the identification of women and procreativity with the

private— and only the private— sphere; by women's exclusion

from symbol— therefore meaning— creation; and their

exclusion ultimately from the very definition of what counts

as "human."

The alienation of thought from materiality intimated

here is further entrenched by the privileging of reason over

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chaos, culture over nature, and control over

unpredictability. The pursuit of causal efficacy generates

reductionist characterizations of reality, suitcvble for

order, expediency, and dominâtion--but variously

antithetical to humility, a holistic appreciation of

Interdependent relationships, and attention to the

centrality of interpretive meaning in social reality. The

exaltation of instrumental reason's expediency masks its

costly bias.

Finally, increasing secularism, buoyed by a robust,

reductionist science, embedded in patriarchal social

relations and in service to emerging capitalism generates a

privileging of the (male) individual— as autonomous and

agentic. The progressive separation of the individual from

the collectivity precludes the collective construction of

normative frameworks, culminating in liberal, procedural

justice, which, emptied of substantive values, is

def initively "meaningless."

Historicizing "public" and "private" is a necessary

but not sufficent step toward more accurate and emancipatory

understandings of power relations and the domination they

permit. Dis-covering the ideological themes that constitute

and perpetuate the public-private dichotomy does indeed

render the "invisible" visible: what we observe are

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patriarchal relations of domination supported by an

instrumental metaphysics. Before we can dismantle

domination relations, we must know the foundations upon

which they rest; once we understand with clarity those

foundations, every delay in dismantling is an assent to the

domination.

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