Family ties: the multilevel effects of households and kinship on the networks of individuals.

Jeremy Koster

doi:10.1098/rsos.172159

Abstract

Among social mammals, humans uniquely organize themselves into communities of households that are centred around enduring, predominantly monogamous unions of men and women. As a consequence of this social organization, individuals maintain social relationships both within and across households, and potentially there is conflict among household members about which social ties to prioritize or de-emphasize. Extending the logic of structural balance theory, I predict that there will be considerable overlap in the social networks of individual household members, resulting in a pattern of group-level reciprocity. To test this prediction, I advance the Group-Structured Social Relations Model, a generalized linear mixed model that tests for group-level effects in the inter-household social networks of individuals. The empirical data stem from social support interviews conducted in a community of indigenous Nicaraguan horticulturalists, and model results show high group-level reciprocity among households. Although support networks are organized around kinship, covariates that test predictions of kin selection models do not receive strong support, potentially because most kin-directed altruism occurs within households, not between households. In addition, the models show that households with high genetic relatedness in part from children born to adulterous relationships are less likely to assist each other.

Highlights

Among hominoids, humans are uniquely organized in multifamily communities [1,2]
This paper addresses the hierarchical structure of human communities by examining the social support networks of indigenous Nicaraguan horticulturalists
Model 0 corresponds to a conventional Social Relations Model with only individual-level random effects, and this empty model suggests high dyadic reciprocity and that much of the variation in the data reflects dyadic variables

Summary

Introduction

Humans are uniquely organized in multifamily communities [1,2]. Cross-culturally, that is, married individuals and their offspring routinely aggregate into larger communities. The ethological uniqueness of this social organization is overshadowed by the ethnological diversity of households and their composition, exhibiting such expansive diversity that anthropologists struggle to identify the defining. Characteristics of human households [3]. The ubiquitous human pattern is for small groups 2 of related individuals to share domiciles and cooking areas while interacting regularly and peacefully with other comparable households (where ‘households’ is defined broadly to include analogous residence units)

Methods

Results

Conclusion