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The Republic of Cousins: Women's Oppression in Mediterranean Societyby Germaine Tillion
Synopses & ReviewsPublisher Comments:The social position of women in many of the countries ringing the Mediterranean is notoriously inferior. Across North Africa and along much of the Mediterranean's eastern shore, the 'crime of honour' - in which a woman suspected of having violated a stringent code of sexual behaviour is murdered by members of her own family - is rarely punished severely. Women spend their entire lives under the formal control and 'protection'of their fathers, brothers, husbands. <BR>In this classic work, now in its fifth edition in France, Germaine Tillion argues that this extreme form of oppression is not an aberration specific to Islam, but part of a legacy from pagan prehistory that weighs upon Christian and Muslim society alike. The rise of the Republic of Cousins was a unique Mediterranean social innovation whereby the immemorial incest taboo was relaxed and marriage between first cousins in the paternal line became common. It set the stage for the debasement of the female condition and for much else besides, from economic expansionism to high birthrates. In the hinterlands of the Mediterranean's northern shore, the Republic of Cousins ultimately gave way to the modern Republic of Citizens, though not without leaving deep traces in European and eventually American society. On the southern shore it still persists widely to this day, and many of its practices have been absorbed into Islam so profoundly that they are considered Islamic in origin by the peoples of Morocco and Algeria themselves. <BR>In support of her thesis Tillion draws upon authors as diverse as Herodotus, Saint Paul, and Ibn Khaldun, on legend and literature, ethnography and personal history, sociological investigation andfascinating anecdote. "The Republic of Cousins" is a work of engaging charm and impressive scope, a blend of scientific insight, irreverent wit, and provocative speculation. <BR> About the AuthorGermaine Tillion, former Director of Studies of the cole Pratique des Hautes tudes in Paris, is an anthropologist with unrivalled knowledge of nomads and settled agriculturalists in North Africa. She was involved with the French resistance under Nazi occupation and was interned in a concentration camp. She will turn 100 in 2007. Table of ContentsConcerning Ethnology - Preface to the Fourth Edition 1. The Noble Mediterranean Peoples Citizens and Brothers-in-law Between Horace and Antigone Socio-Analysis of the Harem Ethnography: a Sociology for External Use Interpretative Grids Conjuring Away Half the Human Race A Chronic Frustration Five Correlates The Ancient World 2. From the Republic of Brothers-in-Law to the Republic of Cousins A Place Where Incest Is Not Forbidden A Million Years of Political Argument Political Cross-Breeding and the Emergence of Intelligent Man The Palaeo-Political Age The Infant 'Civilization' Dandled on Bony Knees Were the Wives of Aurignacian Hunters Less Robust Than the Norman Women of Quebec? The Hundred Square Kilometres of a Palaeolithic Family Human Space, the Structures of Kinship, and Two Types of Natality The Neolithic 'Situation' Reproduces Certain Aspects of Man's Earliest State 3. Keeping to Oneself Incest and Nobility Prohibition of Exchange Kings of Egypt Patriarchs of Israel Indo-European Monarchs Keeping the Girls in the Family for the Boys in the Family Eating Meat From One's Herd Is Like Marrying a Paternal Uncle's Daughter 4. The Maghreb in the Butter Age In the Beginning Was a Continuation The Soup Civilization The Maghreb's First Ethnographer They Were Practising Circumcision a Thousand Years Before the Birth of the Prophet West of Egypt, an Almost Unknown Land Female Fashions, a Model of Constancy Headless Men and Dog-Headed Men A Huge Pile of Empty Shells Evergreen Foliage and Deciduous Roots Uncertain Jealousy 5. 'Lo, Our Wedding-Feast Is Come, O My Brother' My Lord Brother 'Don't Cry, Chapelon' The Honour of Sisters Manufacturing Jealousy Women, Like Fields, Are Part of the Patrimony 'Our Son's A-marryin' a Furring Girl!' Revolutions Come and Go, Mothers-in-law Remain 'Lo, Our Wedding-feast Is Come, O My Brother! Lo, the Day Is Come I Have So Longed For' The 'Cousin/Brother' Is a Cousin/Husband 6. Nobility According to Averroes and Nobility According to Ibn Khaldun Agriculturists and Nomads Celtic 'Clan' and Berber 'Fraction' Joint Honour 'No Man Knows What They Have in Their Hearts' Two Orphans Go to Visit Their Mother 'Nobility and Honour Can Come Only From Absence of Mingling' Ancestor Worship 'The Dunceboroughs Are Part of the Family, That's Why We Receive Them' Golden Age 'Warn the Dummy Not to Drink All the Milk' The Nomadic Clan 7. Conflict With God A Selective Piety The Veil According to St. Paul Joan of Arc and Robert the Pious Our Holy Mother Church Is a Masculine Mother The Koranic Revolution Into Hellfire and Shall Abide in It For Ever' Matrilineal Descent and Orthodoxy A Transfer Back to God, by Notarized Deed The Geographical Distribution of the Veil Corresponds to Female Inheritance 8. Bourgeois Snobbery Seven Thousand Years of Destroying the Old Structures Divergences Between History and Ethnography The Child-Devouring City The Arrival of Adults Loaded Down With Convictions Half-Way Through an Evolution The Local Bigshot Cha-t-Diya: Neither the Worst Sheep Nor the Best More Veiled Women in the Villages, Fewer in the Towns A Case of Social Urticaria 9. Women and the Veil The Last 'Colony' 'Whosoever Removes the Head-Dress or Kerchief . . . Shall Incur the Penalty' On the Sea's Muslim Shore The Ancient World, Beyond the Maghreb The Influence of Invisible Women Index What Our Readers Are SayingBe the first to add a comment for a chance to win!Product Details
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