Refusing to Sing: Gender, Kinship and Patriliny in Macedonia

Abstract

The issue of whether formal kinship structures and sentiments reflect the reality of social relations was of particular concern to specialist at the height of the kinship debates in the 1960s and 1970s as it continues to be in some contemporary studies. So too the classifications patrilineal or matrilineal have clearly been shown to be problematic given that there are multiple levels of discourse and relational and ideational realities in any given society. For many contemporary kinship specialists in fact no simple correlation can be made between type of descent system and actual social relations especially relations between men and women. However some anthropologists continue to argue that patrilineal kinship systems are somehow indicative of control or domination by men or put inversely of womens lack of power and authority. It is argued in this paper that even where the formal kinship structures and ideological discourses are dominated by agnation as appears to be the case in south Slay societies generally and Macedonian in particular this is not automatically mirrored in gender relations between men and women. In short there is a long leap from patriliny to patriarchy. (authors)