Webs of Power

Women, Kin, and Community in a Sumatran Village

By (author) Evelyn Blackwood

Publication date:

12 January 2000

Length of book:

249 pages

Publisher

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

ISBN-13: 9780847699117

Webs of Power offers a fresh perspective on women in Southeast Asia. Focusing on one rural Minangkabau village, the book provides vital insights into the gendered processes of post-coloniality. The Minangkabau living in West Sumatra are the largest matrilineal group in the world. They have intrigued generations of scholars because they are matrilineal and Islamic. By exploring the contestations and accommodations women and men make with state and Islamic ideologies, Webs of Power discloses the processes at the heart of globalization as well as the complexities of kinship and power in a rural agricultural community. The book challenges conventional thinking about matriliny, showing the prominence of senior women in all aspects of village life.

Chapter 1 1 Introduction: Matriliny, Gender, and Power
Chapter 2 2 Village Currents in West Sumatra
Chapter 3 3 Senior Women and Their Houses
Chapter 4 4 National Discourses and Daughters' Desires
Chapter 5 5 Senior Women and Ceremonial Strategies
Chapter 6 6 Ceremonial Practice and the Ideology of Rank
Chapter 7 7 Controlling Labor, Controlling Kin: Village Farm Relations
Chapter 8 8 The Politics of Power

The book makes a significant contribution to both gender studies and anthropology, for it is one of the few books that provides an empirical basis for the reality of women's social power. Webs of Power provides a very informative overview of the literature in both gender studies and anthropology while giving us an excellent summary of work not only in Minangkabau but in Southeast Asia more generally.