Life without Fathers or Husbands

Kirsty Anne Prescott
March18th( Due March 19th)
Ant 1001 TV24A/ Gaunt

Clifford Geertz: Life without Fathers and Husbands

Can you imagine a place where marriage, jealously towards partners and even husbands don't exist? Well there was once such a place. Geertz did a review of anthropologist Cia Hua who conducted field work on the Na tribal group of Southern China. This group like no other had a matrilineal meaning all the mothers and her sisters and their offspring shared the same household and in this culture it was called Consanguineous(Geertz 78).
Geertz stated" There is no marriage in fact or word. Sexual intercourse takes place between casual or opportunistic lovers"(Geertz 76). It is there custom for a man to routinely visit a woman in the middle of the night without fear of persecution. It is astonishing to know that there consider incest to be taboo, however, "A man is free to sleep with his mother's brother's daughter"( Geetz,77).
The most thrilling part of this story was why the man had to visit the woman, instead of being vise versa. It is said if a woman may never visit a man because she may be scorned. This form of social duty was created by their God who was in charge of setting the rules Abaodgu. He did an experiment where he sent a woman to a man's house. In order to reach the man she had to make her way through 9 doors, and at dawn she had gotten through 7 of them. The experiment was repeated with a man in quest for a woman and he only made through 3 doors. Abaodgu thus concluded that women were too passionate to do the visiting( Geertz, 80).
It is really sad to confess that we who consider ourselves "normal people" always seek to change anything that does not coincide with our norms. The People's Republic of China staged there first move against the Na tribe's tradition, by trying to encourage the formation of nuclear families(Geertz,81). It was eventually made law that all qualifying counterparts must be married and if not you were considered as an outcast. Geertz stated " This change was ruinous for the Na"(Geertz,82), and I must agree. This "Cultural Revolution" robbed them of their culture and forced them to be ascribed to what was considered normal.


Biography
Conformity and Conflict, David McCurdy, James Spradley-Life without Fathers and Husbands by Clifford Geertz (75-83).