Our mother-tempers Book

A useful review of some anthropological research into the question male dominance. The author spent some years studying the Montaigne-Naskapi people of Canada, where she develops her central argument (following Engels) that male dominance is culturally contrived and not a part of human nature. There are some fascinating insights into the egalitarian nature and gender equality that apparently existed amongst the Montaigne-Naskapi people before the arrival of European colonialism. Leacock also brilliantly charts the transformation of the Montaigne-Naskapi into a hierarchical class society with gender-based exploitation as the fur trade between colonists and the Indians developed.

Leacock argues for a historical approach to anthropology; that is, we can't merely look at "pre-modern" or "primitive" societies as they exist today and hypothesize general traits, because all of these societies have changed dramatically over the last few hundred years with the development of capitalism and colonialism. She writes (albeit disappointingly briefly) about the Australian Aborigonals, Nigerian tribes and the Iroquois, all of which may have exhibited gender equity at some point in the past.

There seem to be only a few other books like this, and for that alone Leacock's work is valuable. But the book is a disparate collection of mostly academic papers (with the exception being a piece from the Daily worker, which sticks out like a sore thumb!) and one wishes that she had actually written a coherent book for a general audience, as she says in the preface she planned to do. The various chapters are hit or miss: there are quite excellent pieces such as that on the Montaigne-Naskapi and the fur trade (mentioned above), but there are also quite tedious and seemingly pointless expositions on Lewis Henry Morgan, for example.