Kathleen Gough, « The Origin of the Family », 1975

Kathleen Gough, The Origin of the Family, pp. 51-76 in Rayna Reiter, ed., Toward an Anthropology of Women, Monthly Review Press, 1975.

This paper originally appeared in Journal of Marriage and the Family 33 (November 1971), and is reprinted with the permission of the publisher and author.

P. 51.

Plus loin dans le recueil Reiter 1975, p. 147, Paula Webster se réfère à l’article de Kathleen Gough comme de “1971 and reprinted in this volume”. Ça me donne l’idée de creuser et je trouve la référence au Journal of Marriage and Family plus complète que seulement 33 (November 1971), avec le titre de ce numéro spécial : Vol. 33, No. 4, Special Double Issue: “Violence and the Family and Sexism in Family Studies”, Part 2 (Nov., 1971), pp. 760-771 (12 pages). Published By: National Council on Family Relations. On donne sous le même titre un livre de la New Hogtown Press, Toronto, en 1973 et en 1976, mais c’est une brochure de 18 pages. Outre la mise en page et le corps de caractères, je me demande s’il y aurait eu des différences de contenu entre les 12 pages de 1971, les 26 pages de 1975 et les 18 pages de 1973 et 1976. Cependant on dit bien ici (entre 1971 et 1975) : « reprinted ».

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Beaucoup d’auteurs parlent de famille sans expliquer dans quel sens. Il est très difficile de trouver des discussions de quand date le couple homosexuel monogame, qui finit par devenir la norme dans beaucoup de civilisations. Voici enfin un article qui aborde le sujet de ce que veut dire famille.

En conclusion :

From the start, women have been subordinate to men in certain key areas of status, mobility, and public leadership. But before the agricultural revolution, and even for several thousands of years thereafter, the inequality was based chiefly on the unalterable fact of long child care combined with the exigencies of primitive technology. The extent of inequality varied according to the ecology and the resulting sexual division of tasks. But in any case it was largely a matter of survival rather than of man-made cultural impositions. Hence the impressions we receive of dignity, freedom, and mutual respect between men and women in primitive hunting and horticultural societies. This is true whether these societies are patrilocal, bilocal, or matrilocal, although matrilocal societies, with matrilineal inheritance, offer greater freedom to women than do patrilocal and patrilineal societies of the same level of productivity and political development.

A distinct change occurred with the growth of individual and family property in herds, in durable craft objects and trade objects, and in stable, irrigated farm sites or other forms of heritable wealth. This crystallized in the rise of the state, about 4000 B.C. With the growth of class society and of male dominance in the ruling class of the state, women’s subordination increased, and eventually reached its depths in the patriarchal families of the great agrarian states.

P. 74-75.