Andean Society What\'s Your Gut

Andean Society

What's your gut reaction?

My gut reaction is that some ideas of gender parallelism make a lot of sense. In most modern societies, only the male side of the family is continued through marriage. Wives take their husbands' names and if they have no brothers, their family names die out even though they give just as many genes to their children as their husbands. In that sense, gender parallelism is a more accurate way of tracking heredity than the artificial way most human societies pass along only the family heritage of males after marriage.

Explain the ayllu. Explain gender parallelism and how this influenced how Andean women gained resources in the ayllu.

The ayllu (or community) allowed all Andean members of society the same rights to community regardless of whether they were male or female. Andean men considered themselves to be part of a heritage from their father's side of the family and Andean women considered themselves to be part of a heritage from their mother's side. Unlike many more modern human societies, the Andean people allowed women independent rights to the community resources. In many other societies, women could not own property on their own and only had rights through their fathers and husbands, the Andean women had property rights of their own.

3. How did Andean societies view relationships between men and women, especially as reflected in the ritual of marriage?

Andean societies emphasized the concept of equality between the sexes in marriage. They did not view the wife as the property of her husband or as subservient to him. After marriage, Andean husbands and wives were viewed as being two equal interdependent parts of a new whole unity. Even the marriage rituals and ceremonies expressed this concept. Husbands and wives exchanged ritual gifts of equal value. Their families did the same, unlike other societies where the bride's family gives money and other valuable to the husband's family as though they have to compensate the husband because he has accepted the burden of caring for their daughter in marriage.

4. What work in the Andean community did women primarily contribute to? What were the duties that defined maleness?

In Andean society, women were responsible for weaving and spinning clothes and they did that all of the time. They also prepared food, brewed chichi, prepared and harvested fields, card for children, and carried water. Men were responsible for many things, but their main responsibilities and their most important roles in life were believed to be soldiering and plowing their fields. Men also built houses, helped with the harvest, carried fire wood, and herded animals, and they even participated in spinning and weaving. However, their maleness was defined by the role of warrior and plowman.

5. What is Silverblatt's argument about how gender differences became gender hierarchies in Andean communities conquered by the Incas?

Despite the fact that so much of Andean culture was based on gender parallelism and equality, there were important gender-role differences that eventually became gender hierarchies. The main way this happened was that males within the family (and not women) represented the family in relations with the state, such as in relation to the census. The Inca generally were "hands-off" in their style of rule over their conquered peoples. However, they did impose the same sorts of male-oriented official relations between families and the state on their subjects. Eventually, this difference accounted for differences on gender rights and status that elevated males over females in all societies over which the Incas ruled.