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Global Matricultures Research Network (MatNet)

The Global Matricultures Research Network (MatNet) is an international network for research based on Marie-Françoise Guédon’s concept of matriculture. That is, as a cultural system in the classical Geertzian sense within which the experiences and expressions of women are primary.

Similar to other cultural systems such as art, religion, or mathematics, employing the heuristic of matriculture allows for, among other things: cross-cultural comparisons; fresh insights into the social roles of women, men, children, and the entire community of humans, animals, and the environment; or renewed understandings of historically mis-labelled cultures. With Guédon’s work in mind, then, and based on Geertzian principles, the concept of matriculture is both a model of reality by rendering the structure of matricultures apprehensible and a model for reality, where psychological relationships are organized under its guidance.

MatNet encourages and supports research which explores, evaluates, re-evaluates, and interprets global cultures from this perspective.

Matrix: A Journal for Matricultural Studies

• Matrix: a Journal for Matricultural Studies

An important MatNet initiative is the journal Matrix: a Journal for Matricultural Studies. Launched in 2020, it provides a forum for current research in the field.

Matrix is available on this website and through the Open Journal System platform, here. The journal is distributed internationally through Érudit, Canada's digitial journal distribution platform.

Matriculture, Shamanism, and the Authority of Women: The Powers That Be

In partnership with Cambridge Scholars Publishing, MatNet published Matriculture, Shamanism, and the Authority of Women: The Powers That Be in 2025.

The volume is an edited collection of chapters featuring research into the history and contemporary expressions of matricultures in communities that include the Basque of northern Spain and southern France, the Mosuo of China, the Ahtna of southern Alaska, the Pangcah/Amis of Taiwan, and the Ho-chunk and Cherokee of the contiguous United States, as well as present-day settler American society.

Based on Geertzian theory, matriculture is a term used here to encompass that entire cultural system present within every society pertaining to mothers, women, and the feminine; in other words, the various cultural worlds that women inhabit, voluntarily or involuntarily. Power, in this context, represents the authority that women wield or are denied in these worlds.

This book, then, explores intersections between matriculture and power among a wide range of societies; contributors document the waxing and waning of matriculture across diverse realms of the spiritual/shamanic and the socio-political. By examining the powers that be, these contributions provide new avenues of analysis and throw light on the forces at work that support or suppress women’s authority, action, and agency. They point to the social benefits of a thriving matriculture, and to the conditions necessary for all members of a society to flourish.

To purchase: Matriculture, Shamanism, and the Authority of Women: The Powers That Be

Matriculture: Society Through Women's Eyes

The Network on Culture has also produced an educational video called Matriculture: Society Through Women's Eyes (2025). The production features an extensive interview with Dr. Marie-Françoise Guédon, originator of the concept of matriculture, as well as examples of Basque matriculture.

We are currently seeking a distributor and welcome queries.