Critical Thinking On Anthropology

Sacred Queens and Women of Consequence, is a book that explicitly details the position of women in the history of the Hawaiian society before the advent of colonialism. Chapters four and five, focus on the role of women in society regarding their involvement in political leadership and economic activities during the socio-political and economic transformation of the Nineteenth century, which set the stage for colonialism.
Analytically, the feudal relationship between the chiefs and commoners in this society set the stage for the social stratification. A situation aggravated by the punitive Chief’s right of seizure. Absoluteness of the right with no curtailment that was meant to be a social control mechanism on the downside derailed their economic progression. Ideally, it being a social control mechanism was to serve the purpose of minimizing instances of subjects usurping their chiefs especially in instances of marriage. The result was hyper gamy, ultimately resulting in forbidden unions. Moreover, this saw an expanded role of women in the community activities with respect to the land holding in the form of the local group.
With the advent of colonialism, which sought to abridge the women roles to be in tandem with the dictates of rather chivalrous a Western world were successfully resisted by the local group. Owing to the fact that colonialism sought to devalue women that were going against the social norms that formed the fabric of the Hawaiian society.
Conclusively, one of the changes that took place was the apparent shift not to embrace colonialism to for the sake of economic progression and civilization at the expense of equity that increasingly allowed the conservative transformation of the women social roles.