Slavery is as old as human history and is a product of established cultures. To gain profit from captives resulted in slave trade and exploit them as labor force. Although ancient Turks took advantage of slaves, the conditions of Turkish nomadic steppe culture did not allow slavery become institutionalised. During Islamization of Turks, Turkistan witnessed one of the most successful periods of the slave trade because of raids against non-Muslim Turks by Samanids and Muslim Turks. Muslim travellers of X and (...) XI th century emphasize frequently the importance of the Turkish slave trade and its network. Turkish jawari (singular: jariya, an Arabic word, means concubine, female slave and housemaid) were the most demanded in Muslim countries in Turkestan and Near East due to their beauty, which the Muslim travelers mention quite frequently. Their beauty was reflected in epics like the stories of Dede Korkut and Shahnama as well. Turks used a few Turkish and Chinese origin words to mean jariya. Mahmud al-Kaşgari recorded the terms related to jariya in his book, Divan al-Lugat al-Turk. The meaning of some of these words have changed over time but the women referred to by these terms were generally housemaids in family life. All kind of jariya had opportunities such as marriage, being treated like a member of the family and being emancipated. My aim in this study is to address perception and interpretation of jariya and certain practices related to them in Turkish folk culture in the period of Islamization. (shrink)

Le droit applicable à l’exercice de l’autorité parentale a été remanié par la loi du 4 mars 2002. Il existe désormais un statut légal du couple parental, applicable quelle que soit la situation familiale des parents, conditionné par l’établissement du lien de filiation de l’enfant. Ce droit commun est gouverné par un principe supérieur : les père et mère exercent en commun l’autorité parentale. La consécration progressive d’un principe d’autorité parentale conjointe (1970,1987,1993, 2002) est certes un progrès en ce qu’elle (...) invite les parents à s’accorder et à se consulter dans l’exercice de l’autorité parentale, mais l’indifférenciation des situations familiales sur laquelle repose désormais la notion de « coparentalité » est excessive en ce qu’elle conduit à détacher le principe du modèle d’un couple uni. Une autre orientation pourrait être prise : celle consistant à rapprocher du mariage le concubinage avec vie maritale, ce qui supposerait de prendre en la matière le contre-pied de la loi de 1999. L’apport le plus apparent de la loi du 4 mars 2002 est de prévoir tout un arsenal de dispositions de nature à assurer l’effectivité du principe de coparentalité, en particulier les conventions et la résidence alternée. Les conventions marquent, sous l’angle de la notion d’ordre public, l’avènement du pluralisme familial, nouveauté encadrée par un corps de règles de plus en plus tentaculaire. Quant à la résidence alternée, cette modalité présente le défaut majeur d’être désormais légale, ce qui implique sa vocation à s’appliquer à tous. Il serait souhaitable pour cette raison de rétablir dans la loi le principe de la résidence habituelle de l’enfant chez l’un de ses parents et de réserver la résidence alternée à la pratique judiciaire, à titre très exceptionnel et expérimental, pour des enfants en âge de l’assumer. (shrink)

From the earliest days of its history, Brazil has been a favoured ‘laboratory’ for ethnic, cultural and religious hybridization. The absence or scarcity of white women and the temptations of sexual exoticism drove the Portuguese discoverers, and with them sailors from Normandy, Brittany and Poitou, to have relations with Indian women they chanced to meet, thus creating a race of coloured people, oddly called mamelucos, later cabocles (of mixed white and Indian ethnicity). Afterwards, the very substantial recourse to the Negro (...) slave trade and to manpower of African slave origin because of the requirements of the sugarcane economy (which remained predominant for a long time, especially in the Nordeste region of Bahia and Pernambuco), as well as the numerical imbalance of the sexes, characterized by a great predominance of men, popularized concubinage - all the more so because the Catholic Church was extremely reluctant to sanction interethnic unions with the sacrament of marriage. The Jesuits even recommended the despatch of white prostitutes or women condemned by common law (degredadas), for whom Brazil would furnish the opportunity for redemption, in order to avoid or reduce the number of unions of this kind. Thus, concubinage was the most common vehicle of miscegenation in Brazil. (shrink)

La Polonaise Apolline Hélène Massalska (1763-1815) n’est pas une inconnue en France. Née en Lituanie, orpheline de père et de mère dès 1764, elle est conduite à Paris en 1771 par son oncle qui la place au couvent très huppé de l’Abbaye-aux-Bois, rue de Sèvres, jusqu’à son mariage en 1779. Elle épouse alors le prince Charles de Ligne puis, en 1794, le prince Vincent Potocki, moyennant quelques années de concubinage, pour elle, et de bigamie, pour lui. Elle connaitra une (...) vie mondaine en Belgiqu... (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to examine Salvian of Marseilles’ (ca. 400–490 CE) invective in De gubernatione Dei against his Christian audience pertaining to their sexual roles and behaviour as slaveholders. It is argued that rather than considering the oppressive practice of slavery in itself as a reason for moral rebuke and divine punishment, Salvian highlights the social shame that arose from the sexual vices Christian slaveholders committed with their slaves. Salvian forwards three accusations against his opponents that concern (...) slavery and sexual vice. Firstly, he asserts that Christian slaveholders have no self-control. Secondly, the polyamorous relationships slaveholders have with numerous slaves resemble shameful and adulterous unions, namely concubinage and even polygamy. Thirdly, Roman-Christian slaveholders behave in a worse manner than barbarians (i.e. the argument of ethnicity). Each of these accusations is examined in detail in the study. (shrink)

Is a reconciliation possible between Chinese philosophy and woman when taking into account infamous gender-oppressive cultural practices such as foot-binding, concubinage, etc., in premodern Chinese societies? The article tackles the complexity of the subject by calling the readers' attention to texts from Confucian classics that indeed support intellectual equality of the sexes and classless access to education, while noting diverging historical cultural evidences of women's education and their social status in premodern, modern, and postmodern Chinese societies. The article challenges (...) the belief that Confucian philosophy is unequivocally a sexist ideology to be a foregone conclusion. While not intending to exonerate Confucian philosophy from its opponents' charges, the article questions the adequateness of Western liberal feminism as the means to reappropriate Confucian philosophy. It suggests that a more culturally sensitive approach coupling with better historical and contextual analysis would prove to be both helpful and necessary. (shrink)

The Introductory chapter explains the purpose of the book. To this aim, the chapter contains four subsections: (1)Bring the Past Into the Present, (2)Multiculturalism and Liberal Feminism: Is the Rift Between Them Necessary?, (3)Development of Gender Discourse in Chinese Culture and Thought, (4)Purpose of This Volume and Its Four Main Parts, and (5) What's Next? A Way Forward. Excerpt: "Chinese philosophy, broadly construed, in its varied roots and forms has approximately three thousand years of history, and it continues to exert (...) immense influence on the lives of Chinese people as well as on the world community. Nonetheless, if traditions are not simply to remain as antiquated ideas, they must be able to converse with contemporary readers and address their deepest concerns and longings (Pang-White, 2009b, 2009c, 2011). Premised on the undeniable facts that (1) all persons are embodied and cultural beings and that (2) traditions constitute an essential element of individual identity, it would be a mistake to attempt to eradicate traditions altogether, as certain types of liberal feminists have recommended. Instead, it would be more meaningful to ask: Can we, and how do we, re-read, re-imagine, and reconstruct canonical texts so as to find their new significance in the contemporary world? It is generally agreed that Chinese traditions have had a troubled history in dealing with gender relations—well-known examples include concubinage, foot binding,female infanticide, and so on. For various reasons, Chinese traditions and societies have generally been less enthusiastic in confronting, dialoguing about, and resolving problems of gender disparity. Even though gender studies and feminist theories have populated academic discourse in the West since the 1960s, these topics remain relatively marginalized, often as an afterthought, in Chinese philosophical and cultural discourse. Furthermore, as the growing body of research and our deepened knowledge informs and expands our conception of gender, informed persons must ask themselves how Chinese philosophical traditions would and should engage the LGBT community and their concerns. Gender studies is not and should not be perceived simply as a subject in vogue. Rather, for humanity to flourish in this incredibly interdependent network of reality, it is imperative that we have a better understanding of all members of the human community so as to relate to one another in more inclusive, caring, and just ways. Surely, many of our contemporary concerns and vocabularies are anachronistic in the historical settings of classical texts. However, even within the framework of Western traditions, phrases such as “feminism,” “gender,” and “homosexual” were not part of the existing apparatus of vocabulary until the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries (Jenainati and Groves, 2010). Moreover, with the advancement of . . . ". (shrink)

Under normal circumstances the church would function as an agent of change and transformation, but this article focuses on the church herself that needs radical change if she is to remain relevant in mission and ministry in this current era. Clericalism and the centralisation of hierarchical control can be identified as the root causes of institutional pathology and weakening collegiality. To address clericalism may require the adjustment of seminary training, as in the current system seminarians are nurtured in a sense (...) of separateness, promoting male-ego and feed gender exclusivity and doctrinal self-righteousness. While the seminary was once an instrument of reform in the Catholic Church, established to counter problems such as clerical concubinage and illiteracy, but now it is no longer suitable as it has become the forum that breeds other problems. Priority attention should be paid to purge the church of rampant clericalism, discriminatory scapegoating of gay persons, marginalisation of free thinkers, exclusion of women priests, the perceived moral laxity of family life issues and reception of communion by divorced Catholics without the benefits of annulment. Discrediting the personal authority of the pope is hardly an enlightened option. What ought to be transformed is the centralisation of control and allowing increased localised dominion whereby crises such as sexual abuse scandals could be addressed and solved more speedily and liberally, and limit the need to go to the top for solutions. To wait for centralised, hierarchal structures to deal with urgent issues is not desirable, as speedy accountability is needed to address issues that hurt the church in its entirety. (shrink)

Published in 1936, the author predicts that marriage will eventually die out in western civilization. Includes the meaning and origin of marriage, matrimonial unhappiness, sexual maladjustment, adultery, jealousy, concubinage, free love, monogamy, polygamy, divorce, morality and more.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Sage and the Second Sex: Confucianism, Ethics, and GenderLi-Hsiang (Lisa) LeeThe Sage and the Second Sex: Confucianism, Ethics, and Gender. Edited by Chenyang Li, with a foreword by Patricia Ebrey. Chicago: Open Court, 2000. Pp. xiii + 256.The relationship between Confucianism and sexism, or between "the sage and the second sex," as Chenyang Li suggests in the title of his new anthology The Sage and the Second (...) Sex: Confucianism, Ethics, and Gender, is a complex issue. For one [End Page 429] thing, scholars who engage in the field of Chinese gender studies would immediately be confronted with the questions "What constitutes Confucianism?" and "Can such sexist social practices as footbinding, concubinage, and widow suicide in premodern China be attributed to Confucian ideology?" Yet, since the surge in interest in women's studies in the 1970s—and even as far back as the 1930s—the Confucianism in Western feminist studies on the condition of Chinese women has commonly been portrayed as a sexist, feudal ideology that is solely responsible for the oppression of women in China. In some sense, the attribution of women's oppression in China to Confucianism is justified, since Confucianism, as scholars generally agree, is the underpinning of the social structure of China. However, by reducing Confucianism to a set of hierarchical kinship and rigid gender roles in its ritual presentation, one also overlooks the dynamic aspect of Confucianism, whose ethical theory of ren as well as its emphasis on self-cultivation, at least on the theoretical level, are akin to the feminist ethic of care and its understanding of the self as socially constructed. In other words, Confucianism, despite its historical and social connection with women-oppressive practices, is also an ethical theory of care, self-cultivation, and proper relations, which can provide a platform for the flourishing of a harmonious society. The similarities, and hence a possible convergence, between Confucianism and Feminism are, then, the subject of Li's anthology.The engagement between Confucianism and Feminism, however, as Li points out in the Introduction, has long been one-sided; that is, feminists criticize Confucianism for victimizing Chinese women (pp. 1-2). The characterization of Confucianism by Western feminists as a patriarchal ideology through and through is indeed an over-simplification of the root of women's oppression as well an obstacle to achieving a genuine understanding of Confucian ethics. And the lack of research studies from contemporary Confucian scholars on the issue of sexism has also fueled the misunderstanding. The well-known disagreement between Margery Wolf and Tu Weiming on the openness of Confucian self-cultivation is a case in point. Yet, as Li points out, Confucianism cannot remain a world philosophy and religion if it continues to ignore the issue of sexism and fails to respond to the feminist critique of its role in women-oppressive practices (p. 1). Li's anthology is an attempt to reconcile this antagonistic relationship and to overcome the one-sided engagement between Confucianism and Feminism by exploring the possibility of a rapprochement based on their common approach to ethics and their understanding of the self as a relational one. In short, this collection can be seen as a bold experiment on a positive convergence between two seemingly conflicting ideologies.The Sage and the Second Sex is a collection of ten heterogeneous essays whose eleven contributors represent such divergent fields as philosophy, religion, history, Asian languages, and interdisciplinary studies. Although the content of the essays is diverse, the anthology as a whole, according to Li, aims to provide a starting point where Confucianism and Feminism can begin to come to terms with one another (p. 19). In general, the content can be divided into three different themes: first, the commonality between Confucian ethics and Feminist ethics; second, the Confucian [End Page 430] construction of gender and its solution; and third, the representations of women in early China.The essays that fall into the first category set out to demonstrate the similarity between Confucian and feminist ethical thinking and hence to suggest that a significant convergence is possible. For instance, Chenyang Li, in his pioneering contribution "The Confucian Concept of Jen and the Feminist Ethics... (shrink)