The Elementary Structures of the Patriarchy
Feminist Critiques of Alliance Theory
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.22199/issn.0718-1043-2023-0029Keywords:
kinship, anthropology, critical feminism, structuralism, male dominationAbstract
This article reviews Lévi-Strauss’s Alliance Theory based on the feminist critiques of the seventies and current archaeological findings. Its central hypothesis argues that the theory should be understood as a historical product tied to a specific form of masculine domination that became hegemonic in terms of scientific, colonial, and Eurocentric discourse from the nineteenth century onwards. To introduce these arguments, the second section of the article offers a brief glossary of terms on kinship. The third section offers some interpretative reservations to consider when rereading the classics of this anthropological subfield. The fourth explores the analytical assumptions and central hypotheses of Lévi-Straussian theorizing on kinship, and the fifth section synthesizes the current archaeological findings on Paleolithic human groups, an exercise through which we deconstruct several of Lévi-Strauss’s maxims. Finally, the last section concludes by proposing a rereading of Lévi-Straussian theory and discussing the definition of patriarchy in terms of hegemony.
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