Temptress or Virgin? The Precarious Sexual Position of Women in Postemancipation Ukrainian Peasant Society

Slavic Review ◽  
1990 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 227-238 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine D. Worobec
Keyword(s):  
Power Relations ◽  
Russian Empire ◽  
Subsistence Agriculture ◽  
Agricultural Economy ◽  
Patriarchal System ◽  
Sexual Position ◽  
Peasant Society ◽  
Gender And Age ◽  
Peasant Women ◽  
The Village

Ukrainian peasant women of the postemancipation Russian Empire, like their Russian counterparts, faced an oppressive patriarchal system in both family and village. Over the ages peasants strictly delineated tasks and functions according to gender and age in order to meet the demands of a predominantly agricultural economy. The precariousness of subsistence agriculture and the peasantry's burdensome obligations to family, community, and state reinforced inflexible and oppressive power relations in the village. Ukrainian peasants feared that any departure from the subordination of woman to man, child to parent, young to old, and weak to strong would threaten the existence of their society and culture.

scholarly journals The Village Voice: Women's Views of Themselves and Their World in Russian Chastushki of the 1920s

1993 ◽  
pp. 70 ◽  
Author(s):  
Isabel A. Tirado
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Age Group ◽  
Historical Source ◽  
Peasant Society ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Village Voice ◽  
Almost All ◽  
The Village ◽  
Women’S Views

This was the call of a peasant woman, most likely a teenager, prompting her friends and neighbors to join her in composing and singing chastushki, the short ditties that enlivened all youth gatherings. The humorous songs were the spontaneous creation of young people of both sexes for an audience their own age. At times ironic, biting, or plain silly, chastushki expressed the composers' views on almost all facets of the young peasant's life: love, homelife, the way to dress, the changing countryside, and the world beyond the village. We know little about the views of the young peasant woman in the Russian countryside just after the Revolution. She is rarely the subject of scholarship, and her voice is seldom heard in the rich literature of the 1920s. In the wake of the revolutions of 1917 peasants made up 80 percent of the population; their children nineteen years of age· or younger accounted for half of the rural population, with females making up half of that age group. As the expression of the village young people, the chastushka is an invaluable historical source that captures the tension between old and new. This interpretative essay seeks to use chastushki as a tool in reconstructing aspects of post-revolutionary peasant mentalite-that is, the views, attitudes, and mores of peasant society.

Women’s Peasant Protest in Siberia in the First Half of 1930: The Phenomenon of a Radical Response to the Policy of Violent Etatization

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 457-475
Author(s):  
Evgeniya Ignatyeva ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Action ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Agricultural Sector ◽  
Soviet Society ◽  
Peasant Society ◽  
Participation Of Women ◽  
Archival Documents ◽  
Peasant Protest ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Village

The paper deals with the problem of the phenomenon of women’s protest during the process of “total collectivization” of the agricultural sector. The author investigates the phenomenon as social action within the framework of the structural-functional approach (M. Weber, R. Merton), which allows to eliminate ideological cliches and analyze women’s protest not as an affective social action (“Bab’i bunt” - women’s revolt), but as a complex social action in which the role of goal setting can be dominant. This approach makes it possible to establish the main characteristics of women's protest, its effect, and impact on the culture of peasant protest. It provides an opportunity to consider the processes of interaction between “authority – society” in the extraordinary conditions of “the Great socialist transformation”. Main sources are archival documents of the OGPU authorized representative in the Siberian region (krai); minor sources include archival documents of local party committees and Soviet organisations and also regional press. The author analyzes protest actions recorded by the OGPU officers with the participation of women in the first half of the 1930s, identifying the main characteristics of women’s protest, its forms, causes and motives, as well as the impact on peasant society and state policy. The author also reveals that this social action in the absence of a legal opportunity to influence the agrarian/peasant policy of the party was quite an adequate means to achieve certain goals of the protesters. “Bab’i bunt” was a marker of the extreme social life of early Soviet society during the “Great Break”, which demonstrated the radicalization of relations between the peasant society and authorities during a violent etatization of the village. The conclusion is that the women’s protest, as part of the general peasant protest at the first stage of “complete collectivization”, forced the authorities to adjust their policies and even seek some compromises.

Abortions in the Under-Russian Ukraine in the 19th – early 20th centuries: modernization vs. traditional culture

2021 ◽  
pp. 30-35
Author(s):  
M. Krugliak
Keyword(s):  
Single Mother ◽  
Criminal Liability ◽  
Traditional Culture ◽  
Russian Empire ◽  
Number Of Children ◽  
Probability Of Death ◽  
The Russian Empire ◽  
The One ◽  
Peasant Women ◽  
Material Factor

The article considers the attitude of the society of the Under-Russian Ukraine of the 19th – early 20th centuries to abortion through the prism of confronting the values of traditional culture with its condemnation of abortion as a sin of infanticide, and new urbanization trends that justified abortion. The growth in the number of abortions in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which was a natural consequence of the deformation of the family institution against the background of modernization processes, has been demonstrated. The reasons that pushed women to have an abortion have been analysed. If among rural girls the main reason was the fear of being punished by the community for premarital sex or adultery, becoming an outcast (single mother), etc., among urban residents the material factor dominated (inability to feed a large number of children). At the same time, it was determined why abortions were low popularity among peasant women (strong positions of the Christian doctrine of infanticide, high probability of death during the operation, the dominance of the cult of the mother). Methods of abortion (mechanical and chemical) are given. The criminal liability of women and midwives for miscarriage is shown. The author provides significant statistics on the number of people convicted of criminal abortion not only in the Russian Empire, but also in the world, as well as examples of public struggle for the decriminalization of abortion. Legislation of the Russian Empire in the early twentieth century demonstrates a much more loyal attitude towards women who have resorted to abortion, given the new realities and challenges of the time. The probability of punishment for abortion was low, because, on the one hand, most miscarriages were made voluntarily, and therefore cases were rarely sent to court, except in the case of a woman’s death during surgery, and on the other hand – jurors often acquitted abortions. women and midwives.

Peasant Economic Behaviour in Thailand

1979 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 400-419 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bevars D. Mabry
Keyword(s):  
Elementary Education ◽  
Rural Areas ◽  
Labour Force ◽  
Tropical Climate ◽  
Economic Behaviour ◽  
Peasant Society ◽  
The Village ◽  
Tenant Farming

Thailand is primarily a peasant society. In 1974, about 65 per cent of the labour force earned their livelihood from agriculture, although 87 per cent of the population lived in rural areas. Because land has been relatively abundant until recent years, most farmers are landowners, with noted exceptions of tenant farming in areas contiguous to Bangkok. Their simple occupational skills have been transmitted from one generation to another within the village and family, supplemented only by up to four years of compulsory elementary education, acquired intermittently and sporadically between the ages of seven and fourteen. The basic necessities of life historically have been easily satisfied in a hospitable, tropical climate.

Architecture of the Early Valdivia Village

1984 ◽  
Vol 49 (3) ◽  
pp. 573-585 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan E. Damp
Keyword(s):  
Agricultural Economy ◽  
Garbage Disposal ◽  
Coastal Lowland ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Village Life ◽  
The Village

The architecture of early Valdivia (3300–2300 B.C.) communities provides information about the structure of early village life on the Ecuadorian Pacific coastal lowland. Household units from the sites of Real Alto and Loma Alta seem to exhibit domestic patterning in sleeping areas, cooking, tool working, cotton spinning, garbage disposal, and burial of the dead. The village layout provides a plan for settlement in the shape of a letter U. The Valdivia U-shaped village is briefly examined in its prehistoric context. Together, house and village patterns at Real Alto and Loma Alta reflect the beginnings of settled life in the context of an agricultural economy.

scholarly journals Performing Glinka's Opera A Life for the Tsar on the Village Stage

Slavic Review ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 79 (4) ◽  
pp. 755-777
Author(s):  
Julia Mannherz
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cultural Values ◽  
Social Position ◽  
Musical Life ◽  
Artistic Creativity ◽  
Artistic Collaboration ◽  
Peripheral Position ◽  
Ministry Of Finance ◽  
Peasant Women ◽  
The Village

Between 1896 and 1917, the Perm΄ “Guardianship of Popular Sobriety”—an organization funded by the Ministry of Finance and supervised by the provincial governor—ran a popular choir program that engendered enthusiastic artistic collaboration between peasants, workers, the regional intelligentsia, and state officials. One major achievement of participants were amateur performances of Glinka's monarchical opera A Life for the Tsar throughout Perm΄ province. This article focuses on the musical activities of one peasant women, E.N. Shniukova, and argues that provincial and otherwise unknown musicians, many of whom were women, played a key role in spreading cultural values and shaping musical life in the early twentieth century. These regional musicians rejected the peripheral position that their location and social position otherwise suggested and proudly viewed their villages as centers of artistic creativity.

scholarly journals Uma revisão crítica da antropologia de Carmen Junqueira

2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (1-2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lindinalva Laurindo Teodorescu
Keyword(s):  
Social System ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Group Interaction ◽  
The Core ◽  
Nature And Culture ◽  
The Social ◽  
System 2 ◽  
Human World ◽  
The Village ◽  
Animal World

O artigo faz uma revisão crítica da antropologia produzida pela antropóloga Carmen Junqueira, junto ao povo Kamaiurá, do alto Xingu, ao longo de cinquenta anos de pesquisa. Entre as publicações selecionadas para análise, foram retidos quatro temas que são recorrentes em suas pesquisas e que constituem o cerne de sua antropologia. São eles: 1) a composição do universo Kamaiurá (as formas de produção, parentesco e relações de poder, a generosidade ostentada e o sacrifício do líder, mudanças e interação grupal entre os povos do alto Xingu, política protecionista e deslocamento de poder na aldeia de Ipavu e os ritos como fundamento do sistema social); 2) o espaço das mulheres nas sociedades indígenas (as narrativas míticas e a situação das mulheres); 3) o imaginário e o simbólico na configuração do tempo Kamaiurá; 4) o mundo animal e o mundo humano ou a relação natureza e cultura. Neste último item, foi feita uma tentativa de comparação entre a antropologia de Carmen Junqueira e a perspectiva que dá conta da composição do universo indígena, em termos de pluralidade de mundos, como o modelo desenvolvido por Philippe Descola e Eduardo Viveiros de Castro.  Abstract: This article reviews the anthropology produced by the anthropologist Carmen Junqueira, around the Kamaiurá people of the upper Xingu, over fifty years of research. Among the publications selected for analysis four themes were retained that are recurrent in her research and which constitute the core of her anthropology. They are: 1) the composition of the Kamaiurá universe (the forms of production, kinship and power relations, the leader´s bounty and sacrifice, changes and group interaction among the upper Xingu peoples, protectionist politics and power displacement in the village of Ipavu and rites as the foundation of the social system); 2) the space of women in indigenous societies (the mythical narratives and the situation of women); 3) the imaginary and the symbolic in the configuration of Kamaiurá time; 4) the animal world and the human world or the relation between nature and culture. In this last item, an attempt was made to compare the anthropology of Carmen Junqueira with the perspective that accounts for the composition of the indigenous universe in terms of a plurality of worlds, such as the model developed by Philippe Descola and Eduardo Viveiros de Castro.  

scholarly journals Die "Macht" der Bauern? Agrargesellschaft im Wandel

2021 ◽  
pp. 109-149
Author(s):  
Ernst Bruckmüller
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social Welfare ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
The Political ◽  
Village Level ◽  
Agrarian Society ◽  
Steep Decline ◽  
The Village

The Power of the Peasants? The Transformation of Agrarian Society. This chapter examines the development of a clear estate consciousness among the Lower Austrian peasantry in the nineteenth century and considers its implications for power relations in the land. Prior to 1848, the peasant population were ruled by feudal landowners, and were entitled to an insignificant degree of self-governance only on the village level. When the landholding reform (Grundentlastung) put an end to feudalism in 1848, autonomous communes were formed in which the upper peasantry now had some say. The liberalism that prevailed from 1861/67 onwards shattered the traditional societal foundations, and crisis set in with debt and a steep decline in prices from 1880 onwards. The articulation of peasants’ problems by a vintner (Steininger) and experts and politicians with an interest in social welfare saw the emergence of an increasingly dense agrarian network via specialist associations and trade unions. Ultimately, these efforts culminated in the foundation of a successful political organisation, the Lower Austrian Farmers’ Association, which may be considered a manifestation of athe emergence of an estate consciousness realisable on the political level.

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