Kinship to Kingship : Gender Hierarchy and State Formation in the Tongan Islands

Gailey, Christine Ward

ISBN 10: 029272456X / ISBN 13: 9780292724563

Published by University of Texas Press, Austin, 1987

About this Item

Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987. Very Good condition. Occasional ink underlining. Otherwise a clean, square, tight copy. Sharp corners. NO owner's name or bookplate. NO remainder mark. Texas Press Sourcebooks in Anthropology, No 14. Illustrated with 14 figures/old prints/map. List of chapter notes. Glossary. Bibliographical references. Index. Bound in the original black cloth, lettered in shiny silver on the spine. First Edition, 1987 (stated). Hardcover. Very Good condition/No jacket. 8vo. xviii, 326pp. Seller Inventory # 014361

Bibliographic Details

Title: Kinship to Kingship : Gender Hierarchy and ...

Publisher: University of Texas Press, Austin

Publication Date: 1987

Binding: Hardcover

Condition: Very Good condition

Dust Jacket Condition: No jacket

Edition: First Edition, 1987 (stated).

About this title

Synopsis:

Have women always been subordinated? If not, why and how did women’s subordination develop? Kinship to Kingship was the first book to examine in detail how and why gender relations become skewed when classes and the state emerge in a society.

Using a Marxist-feminist approach, Christine Ward Gailey analyzes women’s status in one society over three hundred years, from a period when kinship relations organized property, work, distribution, consumption, and reproduction to a class-based state society. Although this study focuses on one group of islands, Tonga, in the South Pacific, the author discusses processes that can be seen through the neocolonial world.

This ethnohistorical study argues that evolution from a kin-based society to one organized along class lines necessarily entails the subordination of women. And the opposite is also held to be true: state and class formation cannot be understood without analyzing gender and the status of women. Of interest to students of anthropology, political science, sociology, and women’s studies, this work is a major contribution to social history.

About the Author:

Christine Ward Gailey is Professor of Women’s Studies and Anthropology at the University of California Riverside.