After a relative silence of nearly four decades, matriarchal theory has been the subject of renewed interest in the social sciences. This paper traces the origins of matriarchal theory to its proximate roots in the nineteenth century speculative literature, and analyzes its impact on the development of utopian models for the restructuring of society along feminist and humanist lines.
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References
1.
Karl Mannheim , Ideology and Utopia ( New York: Harcourt, Brace, World , 1965; original 1936), pp. 192-248.
2.
Norman Cohn , Pursuit of the Millennium ( New York: Harper Torchbooks , 1961).
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Robert H. Lowie , Primitive Society ( New York: Harper Torchbooks , 1961; original 1920), p. 189.
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see also Robert Graves , The White Goddess ( New York: Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux , 1966).
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Ibid., p. 79.
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Ibid., p. 36.
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Robert Briffault , The Mothers ( New York: Grosset and Dunlap , 1963).
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`The Theory of Mother Right and its Relevance for Social Psychology' was originally published as `Die sozial-psychologische Bedeutung der Mutterrechtstheorie', Zeitschrift fur Sozialforschung, vol. II, no. 2 (1934).
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Ibid., p. 124.
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Ibid., p. 126.
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Erich Fromm , The Art of Loving ( New York: Bantam , 1963), p. 56.
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Ibid., pp. 41-4.
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Erich Fromm , The Forgotten Language ( New York: Grove Press , 1957), p. 210.
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James Mellaart , Catal Huyuk: A Neolithic Town in Anatolia ( New York: McGraw-Hill , 1967).
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Erich Fromm , The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness ( New York: Holt, Rinehart, Winston , 1973), p. 158.
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Erich Fromm , The Sane Society ( Greenwich, Connecticut: Fawcett , 1965), pp. 47-48.
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Fromm , Crisis of Psychoanalysis, op. cit., pp. 102-107.
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Ibid., p. 103.
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Ibid., pp. 104-5.
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Fromm , The Sane Society, op. cit., p. 59.
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Fromm , The Crisis of Psychoanalysis, op. cit., p. 105.
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Ibid.
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Ibid., p. 104.
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and Paul A. Robinson , The Freudian Left ( New York: Harper and Row , 1970).
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Wilhelm Reich , The Sexual Revolution, trans. Therese Pol ( New York: Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux , 1974), p. 165.
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Reich, op. cit., p. 166.
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Wilhelm Reich , The Mass Psychology of Fascism, trans. Vincent Carfagno ( New York: Simon and Schuster , 1970), p. 88.
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Ibid., p. 87. Emphasis in original.
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Helen Diner (Berta Eckstein-Diener), Mothers and Amazons, trans. John Lundin ( Garden City, New York, Doubleday , 1973).
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Mary Daly , Beyond the Father ( Boston: Beacon Press , 1973), p. 93.
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Ibid., p. 94.
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Ibid., p. 135.
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Ibid., p. 94.
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Ibid., pp. 96-7.
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Ibid.
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Ibid., p. 97.
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Carol Pearson , `Women's Fantasies and Feminist Utopias' , Frontiers, vol. II, no. 3 (1977), pp. 50-61 .
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Charlotte Perkins Gilman , Herland ( New York: Pantheon , 1979), p. 81.
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Ibid., p. 110.
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See Susan Brownmiller , Against Our Will ( New York: Bantam , 1976), pp. 313-314.
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Phyllis Chesler , Women and Madness ( Garden City, New York: Doubleday , 1972), pp. 283-291.
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Jane Alpert , `Mother Right: A New Feminist Theory' , Ms., vol. II, no. 2 (August 1973), p. 52 .
Howard Kaminsky , `The Problem of Explanation', in Sylvia L. Thrupp , ed., Millennial Dreams in Action ( New York: Schocken , 1970), pp. 215-217.
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Isidor Wallimann and Michael Dobkowski , eds., Toward the Holocaust ( West Port, Connecticut: Greenwood Press , 1982).
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Gunter W. Remmling , The Sociology of Karl Mannheim ( London: Routledge , 1975), pp. 33-34.
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Mannheim, op. cit., pp. 192-3.
71.
For a discussion of matriarchal elements among American Blacks, see Sally Bould , `Black and White Families' , Sociological Quarterly, vol. 18 (Autumn 1977), pp. 536-547 .
72.
Barker-Benfield, op. cit., p. 16.
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74.
see Steven Goldberg , The Inevitability of Patriarchy ( New York: William Morrow , 1974).
75.
See H. C. Greisman , `Disenchantment of the World' , British Journal of Sociology, vol. 27, no. 4 (Dec. 1976).
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Donella H. Meadows , et. al. , The Limits to Growth ( New York: Universe Books , 1972), p. 195.
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Carolyn G. Heilbrun , Toward a Recognition of Androgyny ( New York: Harper and Row , 1974).
