Societies of Peace: Matriarchies Past, Present, and Future. Edited by Heide Goettner-Abendroth.
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This book will probably be dismissed or ignored by many scholars, though it should not be. Why? Because most scholars have no point of reference for understanding much less evaluating the claims made in this book, and because it is widely accepted that matriarchies do not exist and that the claims made by feminists about female power in prehistory have been vastly exaggerated. That would be a shame, for this book not only provides information about societies past and present, but also offers suggestions for how we might imagine a post-patriarchal future before we destroy the possibility of human life on planet earth. First, let me clarify a misunderstanding that is likely to arise before the covers of the book are even opened. Most English-speakers understand ‘matriarchy’ as ‘the opposite of patriarchy’. The very word ‘matriarchy’ conjures up societies in which women rule over men with iron fists, lead armies, control all the wealth and power, hold men as slaves, and sexually abuse men and boys. Though this misconception may tell us something about the oppressive nature of patriarchies, it tells us nothing at all about the peaceful and relatively egalitarian societies discussed in this book. These societies are for the most part matrilineal, matrilocal, and matrifocal or mother-centred, and mother-honouring. Within them men have important economic and social roles and play a significant part in the lives of their sisters’ and female maternal cousins’ children. Second, let me offer a point of reference. In his popular documentary on the Himalayas, comedian, adventurer, and environmentalist Michael Palin met with the Masuo singer Namu at her home in the Lugu Lake area of China. Namu explained to an astonished and dare I say amazed Palin that in her culture girls and women choose their sexual partners, meet them in their mothers’ homes, and are free to send them back to their mothers if they do not find them suitable—even after they have children with them.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.004 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.004 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.030 | 0.011 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".