Moon, sun, and witches: gender ideologies and class in Inca and colonial Peru

Silverblatt, Irene Marsha

Book

Moon, sun, and witches: gender ideologies and class in Inca and colonial Peru

Princeton University Press • Princeton, N.J. • Published In 1987 • Pages:

By: Silverblatt, Irene Marsha.

Abstract
Silverblatt discusses the the status of, treatment of, and ideologies about women before the Inkan conquest, under the Inka before the Spanish conquest, and under the Spanish during colonial Peru. How this changed during this time period is explored. However, only the information pertinent to the Inka up to 1600 A.D. were indexed for OCM (Outline of Cultural Material) subjects. Silverblatt states that long before the Inka came on the scene, 'Andean peoples interpreted the workings of nature through an ideology of gender complementarity. Male and female interdependent forces were also ancestor-heroes and ancestor-heroines of the mortals whose gender they shared. Constructing the supernatural with familiar materials, Andean women perceived kinship and descent to follow lines of women, just as in parallel, men saw themselves as descending from and creating lines of men....[Later,] the Inkans manipulated popular structures of gender complementarity and parallelism to coax [the conquered] into acquiescing in their loss of autonomy.' (page xxviii). This gender parallelism allowed women to control their own political and religious institutions and to become AYLLU leaders before and during the Inkan conquest.

Acculturation and culture contact

Prophets and ascetics

Gender roles and issues

Inka

HRAF PubDate

2005

Region

South America