Matriliny and Modernity (1996) explores from a feminist anthropological viewpoint the links between gender and the remakings past and present of the matrilineal system of Negeri Sembilan, Malaysia.
Matriliny and Modernity (1996) explores the situation both past and present of women living in the matrilineal society of Negeri Sembilan in a rapidly modernising Malaysia. Written from a feminist anthropological viewpoint, it considers how far both the colonial and post-colonial remakings of matrilineal cultural practices within modernity have left women with what many western feminists would call a degree of social agency if not autonomy. Maila Stivens looks critically at the appropriateness of such judgements, at the same time reflecting on the ways that western knowledge production and the continuing importance of images of exotic matriarchies in the western imagination have shaped debates about such societies. As well as appealing to those with an interest in issues of gender-and-development, Asian Studies and womens situation in modernising societies, the books explanation of the past and present of relatively more egalitarian gender arrangements also contributes to wider debates about causes of sexual inequality and the possibilities for gender equality.
Introduction: A Modern Malaysian Matriliny.
1. People and Places
2. Past
and Present I: Gender and the Remaking of Adat Perpatih
3. Past and Present
II: Gender and the Remaking of Rembau Peasant Economy
4. Gender and a
Marginal Village Economy I: Women of Property
5. Gender and a Marginal
Village Economy II: Local Production and Income
6. Gender, Work and
Inequality in Rembau
7. Rembau Femininities
8. Modernising Kinship and Family
in Contemporary Rembau. Conclusion: Female Autonomy in Rembau?
Maila Stivens is Principal Research Fellow at the Asia Institute, University of Melbourne. Previously Director of Gender Studies at Melbourne, she studied anthropology at the London School of Economics, and has also taught at University College, London, and the National University of Singapore (NUS), as well as holding fellowships at NUS and the Institute of Development Studies, Sussex. She has published widely on her research which has included studies of middle-class kinship in Sydney; 'matriliny, gender relations and modernity, and work and family in Malaysia; childhood in Southeast Asia; family values; and, latterly, asylum seeker issues in Australia.
