[Glorantha] Re: Grandmother, a patriarchal concept?

Donald R. Oddy:    

  >> For instance, do we really want to model Esrolian society purely on
>> ideas that would confuse Heortling males, or feel familliar to our world
>> view with a twist. I don't. If it is an issue where MGV, then so be it.

> I can't imagine anything Esrolians do being particularly confusing to
> Heortling males. They will rationalise differences as being "what
> happens when you let women take charge". It's easy to regard Esrolian
> and Heortling cultures as patriarchal and matriarchal extremes but
> they aren't. It's a shared culture with a different slant on male
> and female roles. Esrolia also has a much bigger population which
> alters the social structure. In Sartar the clans are independant
> and largely self sufficent whereas in Esrolia even the tribes are
> interdependant.

  Also, the Sartarite clans are generally more traditional, almost religious zealots on a mission to go back to the good old days. But, yes, Esrolian culture is a mixture of cultures and that is where the potential problems and misunderstandings can be found.   

>> How is Mother a Patriachal concept?

  > Jamie seems to be arguing that because the RC church is a patriachal
> organisation the use of "Mother" and "Father" as titles for authority
> figures is in itself patriachal. I've not seen any evidence to
> support that argument and doesn't in any case apply to the use of
> "mother" and "father". Also, as has been mentioned before, we aren't
> writing in Esrolian so we need to translate as best we can when we
> are dealing with concepts which don't have direct equivelents in
> English.
   

  I didn't particularly agree with the argument - there are enough matriachal societies in the real world to dismiss and RC input.

>> Uncles are different, though, as you are more closely related to
>>your uncle than your father. In families where the mother is married
>>to more than one man, there may not even be the concept of father.
>
> I think there will be a word for "adult males in the family"
> which best translates into "fathers". The patriarchal obsession
> with knowing who the physical father is won't exist however.
   

  Actually, unmarried uncles who still live at home would probably have a similar status to husbands - they are adult or adolescent males who live within the same household and would provide similar services.   

> They are going to be more socially important than uncles
> simply because they are present. The majority of uncles will
> have been married away so although the relationship is technically
> closer than the fathers the social relationship is going to be
> the same as the patriarchal clan's child's relationship to their
> aunts.
   

  Possibly. So married uncles (brothers of mothers) would live elsewhere and would only come back to visit now and again. Whereas husbands of aunts would be present in the extended family and might have a similar relationship to husbands of mothers.

>> The Greater Mother concept is important as you are born of your
>>mother, she of her mother, she of her mother and so on to an original
>>ancestress. That is fundamental and primal.
>
> Except there will be people who don't know their mothers, maybe
> they were orphaned or abandoned and taken in by strangers. The
> rarer this is in a society the less status and security such
> people have. I can see Esrolian society being particularly harsh
> on such unfortunates - "You don't know who your great grandmother
> was! She must have been a slave or stickpicker to abandon her
> child".
   

  Absolutely. Any society has a problem with dealing with orphans or foundlings. In a patriachal society, a man can father a child on a woman out of wedlock and abandon her, leaving a bastard with all the attached stigma. In a matriachal society, the stigma is not as great as the child derives clan membership from its mother, so the child is not illegitimate. However, children whose mothers die are probably taken in by maternal aunts or strangers. Abandoned children in a matricahy must be doubly challenged - they have been abandoned by their mothers in a society where there is not a stigma attached to being an unmarried mother.    

  There is also the problem of adoption into the clan - a man can be adopted into a clan simply by marriage, but a woman must be adopted into the clan and given a new mother and new bloodline.   

> Whichever means we use doesn't affect whether particular terms
> confuse outsiders. Language often uses terms which are ambigious
> without the context and the fewer words in the language the more
> common that is. If I say "I'm going to town." it is meaningless
> to you - which town am I talking about? If I say it to a neighbour
> they know precisely where I'm going even though Manchester city
> centre is a specific part of a city and not a town. If I say it
> to someone ten miles away they will assume I'm talking about the
> local town or city centre which may or may not be correct.
   

  Personally, I don't think that cultures are that bothered about what terms they use to describe family members or degrees of kinship.    

  Bashkiri has a word "Keoh" which seems to mean "male in-law" and my wife uses it to describe her brothers-in-law, but my mother-in-law uses it to describe her sons-in-law and brothers-in-law, so I am Simon-Keoh to her, or just "Keoh!" when she wants something.    

  Clearly, we can use the terms "mother", "grandmother", "aunt" and "uncle" without a problem, although in English, Uncle/Aunt can mean both "parent's sibling" and "parent's sibling's spouse", so it would better to have words that distinguish between different types of uncle/aunt. Father is pretty standard, even though it doesn't necessarily imply a blood-link, in cases where a woman has multiple husbands, they would all be called "Father". Cousins are the children of maternal aunts. Children of uncles would not necessarily be considered kin.    

  So, ideally we would need specific terms for:

  Mother's Sisters
  Mother's Brothers
  Mother's Sisters' Husbands
   

  We probably don't need any specific term for:

  Mother's Brothers' Wives (Uncle's Wife - not really kin)
  Father's Siblings (Father's Sisters/Brothers - not really kin)
  Mother's Brothers' Children (Uncle's Wife's Children - not kin)
   

  Or maybe that's comlicating things too much.    

  See Ya    

  Simon     Received on Tue 04 Jul 2006 - 11:49:14 EEST