University of Texas Press
Kinship to Kingship
About this book
Have women always been subordinated? If not, why and how did women’s subordination develop? Kinship to Kingship was the first book to examine in detail how and why gender relations become skewed when classes and the state emerge in a society.
Using a Marxist-feminist approach, Christine Ward Gailey analyzes women’s status in one society over three hundred years, from a period when kinship relations organized property, work, distribution, consumption, and reproduction to a class-based state society. Although this study focuses on one group of islands, Tonga, in the South Pacific, the author discusses processes that can be seen through the neocolonial world.
This ethnohistorical study argues that evolution from a kin-based society to one organized along class lines necessarily entails the subordination of women. And the opposite is also held to be true: state and class formation cannot be understood without analyzing gender and the status of women. Of interest to students of anthropology, political science, sociology, and women’s studies, this work is a major contribution to social history.
Author / Editor information
Topics
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Frontmatter
i -
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Contents
v -
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Acknowledgments
vii -
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Introduction
ix - Part One: The Quest for Origins
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i. The Subordination of Women: Gender in Transitions from Kinship to Class
1 -
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2. State Formation
24 - Part Two: Gender and Kinship Relations in Precontact Tonga
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3. Authority and Ambiguity: Rethinking Tongan Kinship
45 -
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4. The Reproduction of Ambiguity: Succession Disputes, Marriage Patterns, and Foreigners
63 -
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5. Division of Labor
84 -
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6. Exchange and Value
106 -
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7. Gender Relations at Contact
122 - Part Three: Conversion, Commodities, and State Formation
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8. Early Contact
143 -
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9. Missionaries: The Crusade for Christian Civilization
170 -
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10. A Native Kingdom: Creating Class and Gender Stratification
194 -
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11. Changing Production: Commodities, Tribute, and Forced Labor
217 -
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12. Dialectics of Class and State Formation
248 -
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Appendix: Sources and Methods
267 -
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Notes
271 -
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Glossary
287 -
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References
291 -
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Index
317
