The speaking sign: marriage alliance, myth and gender perspective in Mentawai (Western Indonesia)

Schefold, Reimar

essay

The speaking sign: marriage alliance, myth and gender perspective in Mentawai (Western Indonesia)

across the boundaries : women's perspectives : papers read at the symposium in honour of els postel-coster to mark her retirement from the department of cultural and social studies, university of leiden, 10-11 january 1991 • Leiden, The Netherlands • Published In 1991 • Pages: 25-46

By: Schefold, Reimar.

Abstract
For many years the anthropological model of the exchange of women as the basic principle in all clan alliances has been an accepted fact in the literature of anthropology. "This model is based on the assumption that in all forms of marriage leading to alliances between descent groups it is the men who behave as active partners. The women who are exchanged appear merely as objects whose transfer renders the alliance possible" (p. 25). In an article published in 1988 entitled "Women as Gifts: An Observer's Model", Els Postel demonstrates that this model is not universally valid, and in fact, in some societies the voices of women play a significant part in the formal dialogue preceding marriage alliances. To provide data on the female perspective on this aspect of Mentaweian culture Schefold believes that it is necessary to pay attention to symbolic utterances made in myths and proverbs in which information "…about sensitive or controversal questions which in the direct language of daily life are often subordinated to the dominant and in most case male centered ideology" (p. 29). To demonstrate this more fully the author presents four narratives with basically the same central theme -- three by men and one by a woman. These stories clearly indicate a distinct female perspective, different from that of men, in dealing with the central theme and in particular with marriage exchange described in the text. From Schefold's review of these stories he notes that "…the theses that men, as masters of outward political relationships, use women as signs in the building of marriage alliances, yet that by this very fact the inmarrying women, who, before and after their marriage, are destined for the respecitve domestic spheres, are the ones who actually know best the political partners in the alliance" (p. 31).

Verbal arts

Gender status

Basis of marriage

Regulation of marriage

Mode of marriage

Inter-community relations

Gender roles and issues

Texts translated into english

Mentawaians

HRAF PubDate

2000

Region