Kin-based Societies Research Articles

Social and genetic connectivity despite ecological variation in a killer whale network.

Philopatric kin-based societies encourage a narrow breadth of conservative behaviours owing to individuals primarily learning from close kin, promoting behavioural homogeneity. However, weaker social ties beyond kin, and across a behaviourally diverse social landscape, could be sufficient to induce variation and a greater ecological niche breadth. We investigated a network of 457 photo-identified killer whales from Norway (548 encounters in 2008-2021) with diet data available (46 mixed-diet individuals feeding on both fish and mammals, and 411 exclusive fish-eaters) to quantify patterns of association within and between diet groups, and to identify underlying correlates. We genotyped a subset of 106 whales to assess patterns of genetic differentiation. Our results suggested kinship as main driver of social bonds within and among cohesive social units, while diet was most likely a consequence reflective of cultural diffusion, rather than a driver. Flexible associations within and between ecologically diverse social units led to a highly connected network, reducing social and genetic differentiation between diet groups. Our study points to a role of social connectivity, in combination with individual behavioural variation, in influencing population ecology in killer whales.

What kinship is and is not in the work of Marshall Sahlins … and beyond

This essay explores how anthropological assumptions about the differential place of kinship in kin-based and state-based societies shaped the work of Marshall Sahlins. On the one hand, I show how his expansive excursions into what kinship is, means, and does within the scope of kin-based societies clearly motivated some of his major contributions to anthropological theory: his critique of Western economic and biological determinisms; his exploration of the cultural dynamics of kinship as they articulate relations of hierarchy, power, and sovereignty; his rethinking of anthropological theories of structure; and his formulation of the concept of “performative” kinship. On the other hand, I analyze how these assumptions about the distinction between kin-based and state-based societies ultimately limited the scope of inquiry in his book, What Kinship Is—And Is Not. I then look beyond these limitations to more recent work in kinship studies that challenge the distinction between kin-based and state-based societies, and I end by arguing that, with regard to kinship studies, this distinction should best be left behind.

Competition Drives Group Formation and Reduces Within Nest Relatedness in a Facultatively Social Carpenter Bee

Animals respond to competition among kin for critical breeding resources in two ways: avoidance of direct fitness costs via dispersal of siblings to breed separately, and formation of kin-based societies in which subordinates offset direct fitness costs of breeding competition via altruism and increased indirect fitness. In the facultatively social eastern carpenter bee, nests are a critical breeding resource in perpetually short supply, leading to strong competition among females. Observations of individually marked and genotyped females in conditions of high and low resource competition demonstrate that competition leads to resource sharing and group nesting. However, in contrast to almost all known animal societies, females avoid nesting with relatives, and disperse from their natal nests to join social groups of non-relatives. This is the first example of a structured insect society with cooperation nestmates, the majority of which are unrelated; thus cooperation is more likely based on selection for direct, rather than indirect fitness. By forming social groups of non-kin, females avoid the indirect fitness costs of kin competition among sisters, yet increase their chances of successful reproduction, and thus direct fitness, when forming colonies of non-relatives.

Age Set vs. Kin: Culture and Financial Ties in East Africa

We study how social organization shapes patterns of economic interaction and the distributional consequences of public policy, focusing on the distinction between age-based and kin-based social structure in sub-Saharan Africa. In age-based ethnicities, known as ``age set societies,'' individuals are organized into social groups based on age cohort that take priority over kinship ties. Motivated by ethnographic accounts that suggest that these differences are important for financial transfers, we analyze an unconditional cash transfer program in Kenya and document that in age set societies there are large consumption spillovers within the age cohort, but not the extended family, while in kin-based societies we find the opposite pattern. Next, we document that local variation in social structure shapes the impact of national policy. Exploiting the staggered roll-out of Uganda's social pension program, we find that household exposure to the program has large, positive effects on child nutrition and educational investment in kin-based societies, but no impact on children in age set societies, where intergenerational ties are weak.

Culture by Nature. Familial roots of ambivalent human social behavior and its cultural extensions in large-scale societies. A contribution of Human and Cultural Ethology

Since Hobbes' dictum of "homo homini lupus" in 17th century the tenor in European philosophy was the one of human nature in need of strong external rules to restrain from mutual aggression, inter-personal and inter-group. Behavioral measures and rules limiting a presumably aggressive human nature were perceived as purely moral and cultural. Evolutionary theory in the 19th century seemed to confirm the notion of a self-interested individual, at least in parts. By contrast, new models of cooperation later on modified the concept of a selfish human nature. Under conditions of reciprocity, immediate or delayed, cooperative behaviors tend to function better than egoistic ones. According to Human Ethology, comparable conditions are found in the first nuclear small group that is the extended family. Kin-based societies hence shape the original form of sociability. The key for understanding the ambivalence of pro-social and asocial behaviors, trust and mistrust, is the evolution of parental care and individual bonding. With parental care friendly dispositions and signals came into being, already in vertebrate sociability, but the differentiation of "we and the others" as well. The appetence to bond is opposed by dispositions of mistrust that tend to keep a distance and defend primary resources. Hence, small-group sociability could be handled quite well. Rituals of appeasement and the leveling of dominance were cultural means that evolved to nurture group cohesion. As for the rise of Neolithic larger groups of heterogeneous populations living together, new cultural rules had to arise. This process includes forms of customs, of religion, monuments and sacred objects. We may observe comparable phenomena in traditional cultures that exist today. The construction of group identity depends on myths that explain the group's identity by means of the cultural creation of common ancestors. The earlier kinship-relations of group members are extended to become culturally co-defined relations. Materially, these myths are made manifest by sacred objects. Through such symbols, the group communicates its "identity". The small-group ethos is thereby transferred to a larger group. On another level, artifacts and monuments that derive their expression from the repertoire of ritual "hostility displays" are used to secure the group's territory. Both forms of symbolic practice serve to maintain group identity internally by binding through common descent and externally by territorial demarcation through agonistic symbols.

Evolutionary Models of Leadership : Tests and Synthesis.

This study tested four theoretical models of leadership with data from the ethnographic record. The first was a game-theoretical model of leadership in collective actions, in which followers prefer and reward a leader who monitors and sanctions free-riders as group size increases. The second was the dominance model, in which dominant leaders threaten followers with physical or social harm. The third, the prestige model, suggests leaders with valued skills and expertise are chosen by followers who strive to emulate them. The fourth proposes that in small-scale, kin-based societies, men with high neural capital are best able to achieve and maintain positions of social influence (e.g., as headmen) and thereby often become polygynous and have more offspring than other men, which positively selects for greater neural capital. Using multiple search strategies we identified more than 1000 texts relevant to leadership in the Probability Sample of 60 cultures from the Human Relations Area Files (HRAF). We operationalized the model with variables and then coded all retrieved text records on the presence or absence of evidence for each of these 24 variables. We found mixed support for the collective action model, broad support for components of the prestige leadership style and the importance of neural capital and polygyny among leaders, but more limited support for the dominance leadership style. We found little evidence, however, of emulation of, or prestige-biased learning toward, leaders. We found that improving collective actions, having expertise, providing counsel, and being respected, having high neural capital, and being polygynous are common properties of leaders, which warrants a synthesis of the collective action, prestige, and neural capital and reproductive skew models. We sketch one such synthesis involving high-quality decision-making and other computational services.

Humility, inquisitiveness, and openness: key attributes for meaningful engagement with Nyoongar people

ABSTRACTObjective: Mental health clinicians have struggled to recognise the need to understand an Aboriginal worldview and how human interactions are shaped by social relationships in kin-based societies. This paper considers the findings of Looking Forward Project, a participatory action research study aimed at investigating the serious disconnection between mental health and drug and alcohol service providers and Aboriginal families living in Perth, Western Australia.Method: Our research methods and knowledge exchange were premised on the shared storytelling between Aboriginal Elders, researchers, senior management and clinicians. Study participants included eighteen local Elders and approximately seventy staff across eleven mental health and drug and alcohol organisations, over four years. Elders have been the primary drivers of the research design. This paper is shaped by the storying process.Results: The study revealed the lack of trust between service providers and Aboriginal families is predominantly due to the lack of understanding by service providers of the critical difference in social relationships. The lack of trust creates a barrier to accessing services and compromises the quality of response by services. Humility, inquisitiveness and openness are essential qualities for meaningful engagement and sustainable relationships.Discussion: The rebuilding of trust requires the development of meaningful relationships in order to break down the barriers so as to increase access and develop culturally secure responses by services. When clinicians adopt these essential qualities they will develop a reflective practice that enables them to be more adaptable in their work with Aboriginal clients and their families.

Judicial culture and social complexity: a general model from Anglo-Saxon England

The development of so-called ‘complex societies’ is a central concern of social science, and a theme to which the discipline of archaeology has made perhaps the most significant contributions with regard to the origins and earlier development of social systems in past societies. Almost all of the features that are widely accepted as indicators of social complexity – urbanism, social hierarchy, organized religion and so on – have been characterized and placed in sequence principally through the lens of physical evidence. That other fundamental feature of complex societies – writing – provides the most accessible view of yet another key attribute: legal culture.It is well known that legal texts are among the earliest forms of writing to survive in many regions, but in general archaeology has yet to make inroads into the study of the emergence and development of legal and judicial culture in the past. This paper focuses specifically upon judicial practice and explores the range and nature of archaeological correlates for such activity at progressive stages of societal development, from kin-based societies to large-scale polities. The case-study material is derived from Anglo-Saxon England, where an exceptional body of textual material relating to legal culture and a substantial archaeological dimension – comprising court sites, places of ordeal and confinement and execution places – facilitates a finely grained reconstruction of the emergence and development of legal culture. A general model is proposed for testing in cross-cultural and cross-chronological contexts. Notions of increasingly agglomerated administrative functions as a reflection of developing complexity are also discussed with reference to an alternative view from Anglo-Saxon England.

Effects of social disruption in elephants persist decades after culling

BackgroundMulti-level fission-fusion societies, characteristic of a number of large brained mammal species including some primates, cetaceans and elephants, are among the most complex and cognitively demanding animal social systems. Many free-ranging populations of these highly social mammals already face severe human disturbance, which is set to accelerate with projected anthropogenic environmental change. Despite this, our understanding of how such disruption affects core aspects of social functioning is still very limited.ResultsWe now use novel playback experiments to assess decision-making abilities integral to operating successfully within complex societies, and provide the first systematic evidence that fundamental social skills may be significantly impaired by anthropogenic disruption. African elephants (Loxodonta africana) that had experienced separation from family members and translocation during culling operations decades previously performed poorly on systematic tests of their social knowledge, failing to distinguish between callers on the basis of social familiarity. Moreover, elephants from the disrupted population showed no evidence of discriminating between callers when age-related cues simulated individuals on an increasing scale of social dominance, in sharp contrast to the undisturbed population where this core social ability was well developed.ConclusionsKey decision-making abilities that are fundamental to living in complex societies could be significantly altered in the long-term through exposure to severely disruptive events (e.g. culling and translocation). There is an assumption that wildlife responds to increasing pressure from human societies only in terms of demography, however our study demonstrates that the effects may be considerably more pervasive. These findings highlight the potential long-term negative consequences of acute social disruption in cognitively advanced species that live in close-knit kin-based societies, and alter our perspective on the health and functioning of populations that have been subjected to anthropogenic disturbance.

Subordinates benefit from exploratory dominants: response to novel food in cooperatively breeding carrion crows

Kin-based societies typically form when offspring prolong their association with the parents. It has been suggested that offspring delay natal dispersal because of the benefits that such association conveys. We found that in cooperatively breeding carrion crows, Corvus corone corone, risk-prone fathers facilitated their offspring’s access to novel and potentially dangerous food. In crow groups, dominant breeding males, which share food nepotistically with their offspring, made the first contact with novel food, followed by male immigrants, whereas retained offspring and breeding females were last. This order mirrored the dominance ranks in the group, but it was unlikely to be enforced through social interference. In groups that were simultaneously presented with two identical novel food sources that could not be monopolized by one individual, subordinates only used the one that was first explored by the dominant male. This suggests that foraging decisions in crows were affected by the fear of the novel food and that the explorative behaviour of the dominant breeding male provided cues that helped subordinates to overcome their neophobia. In their natal territory, inexperienced offspring therefore gained access to food without incurring the risk of exploring. For a foraging opportunist such as the carrion crow, this may convey survival benefits that could play a role in driving delayed natal dispersal.

Nepotistic access to food resources in cooperatively breeding carrion crows

Offspring delayed dispersal is the principal mechanism leading to formation of kin-based societies. It has been suggested that parents promote offspring philopatry by providing them with preferential access to the food resources of the territory and that parental tolerance may be affected by territory quality. However, few studies have addressed this hypothesis in kin-living vertebrate species. Here, we show that in cooperative breeding groups of carrion crows (Corvus corone corone) containing retained offspring and immigrants, dominant breeding males behaved nepotistically on an experimental source of food by (1) attacking immigrants with more frequency and intensity than offspring and (2) associating preferentially with their offspring on the feeding spot and sharing food with them. This parental facilitation allowed the offspring to spend more time feeding than higher-rank immigrants. We also found that a year-round experimental food supplementation neither increased breeding males’ tolerance nor relented the overall aggressiveness in the groups. This indicates that higher natal philopatry observed on fed territories compared to unfed ones is not a consequence of a more benign social environment. Rather, it suggests that offspring value territory resource wealth and adjust the timing of dispersal accordingly.

Reconsidering Ivor Wilks’s “Big Bang” Theory of Akan History

GHANA STUDIES / Volume 14 ISSN 1536-5514 / E-ISSN 2333-7168© 2012 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System 11 RECONSIDERING IVOR WILKS’S “BIG BANG” THEORY OF AKAN HISTORY MARIANO PAVANELLO Introduction: The Akan “Big Bang” Theory In this article, I wish to discuss Ivor Wilks’s “big bang” theory of Akan history,1 particularly as it concerns the related hypothesis on the recent origin of matrilineal mmusua.2 Wilks assumes that, between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the Akan of the forest were protagonists of an extraordinary transition from a foraging economy to an agrarian system, and that matriclans originated in the sixteenth century together with the matrilineal ideology itself.3 He presents his theory as follows:4 I advance [. . .] a “big bang” theory of Akan history. It comprises several theses. First, in the course of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and in the forest country between the Ofin and the Pra, a foraging mode of production gave way to an agricultural one. [. . .] Second, that in the course of this transformation the forest people reorganized themselves in a way such that the bands appropriate to the older mode of production were replaced 1. The term Akan refers to a group of populations sharing a stock of cultural features and a common linguistic phylum settled between the Bandama river in Ivory Coast and the Volta river in Ghana (for the “Akan problem,” see Kiyaga-Mulindwa 1980; Pescheux 2003; Terray 1995; Wilks 1982, 1993c, 2005), even though it is not possible to consider such a group as ethnically homogeneous. 2. Plural of abusua, word used throughout the Akan area commonly translated as “family ” in the sense of the anthropological categories of matrilineal clan or lineage. 3. Wilks (1993b: 70) gives credit to tales, reported by Reindorf ([1895] 2007: 104– 105), and Rattray (1916: 41), that seem to place the origin of the matrilineal system at the beginning of the Akan political development in the Adanse area in the sixteenth century. 4. Wilks set forth his theory in various papers (1977, 1982, 1993a, 1993b, 1993c, 2005). 12 Ghana Studies • volume 14 • 2012 by the matriclans appropriate to the newer. [. . . ] But third, that the transformation also engendered the emergence of political structures of a new kind: the aman5 (Wilks 1993c: 94). [. . .] this represented a major transformation in the system of productive forces such that an economy with a primary dependence upon hunting and gathering gave way to one with a primary dependence upon the cultivation of food crops; that the social relations of production of the forest peoples were accordingly modified by the creation of the great exogamous matriclans [. . .] this socioeconomic revolution began, geographically, in the forest heartland of Amansie and Adanse,6 and chronologically, should probably be regarded as having reached its zenith in what is for the Asante the immediate protohistoric period (firi tetemu), the sixteenth century (Wilks 1993b: 71). The historical awareness about Africa may be summarized by the following passage from Paul Lovejoy: One characteristic [of Africa] was a social structure based on ethnicity and kinship. Although the antiquity of kin-based societies is not known, linguistic , cultural and economic evidence indicates that such structures were very old. [. . .] Thus, the coastal evidence for west-central Africa indicates the probable existence of a matrilineal belt of societies stretching across the continent to the Indian Ocean, just as it does today. Nothing in the 5. Plural of ɔman, a Twi term designating the political community, and particularly the state. 6. Wilks refers to the “highly auriferous area in the forest country between the Komoé and Volta rivers [that] may conveniently be referred to as the ‘Akan goldfields,’ because it is all but completely dominated by the Akan-speaking peoples” (Wilks 1993a: 4). This vast area of forestland, whose centre is the auriferous basin of the Ofin and the Pra rivers in SW Ghana, lies between 5° and 70° N lat., and 1° E and 3° W long., from the coastal line of the gulf of Guinea in the South, to the southern edge of the savannah in the North, roughly between Bonduku in Ivory Coast, and the Volta Lake in Ghana. Pavanello • Reconsidering Ivor Wilks’s...

Did ‘Kin-based Societies’ Exist? On the (De)Construction of an Anthropological Concept

Concept of a ‘kin-based society’ relies on the assumption that, in stateless societies, kinship served as a fundamental and sufficient principle of social and political organization. Developed within the evolutionary paradigm, this concept has acquired different forms during the discipline’s history, depending on the theoretical orientation of various anthropologists and their understanding of the notion of ‘kinship’. Speaking from significantly different theoretical positions, anthropologists ranging from Rivers to Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown, to Evans-Pritchard, Fortes and Levi-Strauss, all maintained that kinship formed a basis of social organization, although they did not always agree on the definition of the concept and the type of kinship relations that had this special quality of integrating and organizing the whole of society.
 The debates were primarily about whether it was consanguinity or affinity that served as a fundamental factor of forming and reproducing social relations. As modern anthropology rejects the idea that kinship relations can form the basis for social, economic and political integration in any type of society, including those without the state, class or caste system, this article considers the assumptions underpinning the construction of the concept witch for long played such an important role in the discipline’s knowledge but later came to be seriously challenged.

Bárbaros: Spaniards and Their Savages in the Age of Enlightenment

Bárbaros: Spaniards and Their Savages in the Age of Enlightenment

Experimentally increased food resources in the natal territory promote offspring philopatry and helping in cooperatively breeding carrion crows

Kin-based societies, where families represent the basic social unit, occur in a relatively small number of vertebrate species. In the majority of avian kin societies, families form when offspring prolong their association with the parents on the natal territory. Therefore, the key to understanding the evolution of families in birds is to understand natal philopatry (i.e. the tendency to remain on the natal territory). It has been shown that, within populations, the strength of the association between parents and offspring (i.e. family stability) increases when offspring dispersal is constrained by external environmental factors, but it is unclear whether and how family wealth influences juvenile dispersal decisions. Here, we show that young carrion crows (Corvus corone corone) from territories that were food-supplemented year-round were more philopatric and more likely to help at their family's nest than the unfed ones. The results suggest that offspring philopatry and helping behaviour are influenced by the quality of 'home' and that the availability of food resources positively affects the cohesion of the family.

States and women's rights: the making of postcolonial Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco

List of Maps and Tables Preface Acknowledgments Note on Foreign Terms and Transliteration Introduction PART ONE: Similarities: Common Heritage of the Maghrib 1. State Formation in Kin-Based Societies 2. Islam and Family Law: An Unorthodox View 3. Women Ally with the Devil: Gender, Unity, and Division 4. Men Work with Angels: Power of the Tribe PART TWO: Historical Differences 5. The Precolonial Polity: National Variations 6. Colonial Rule: French Strategies PART THREE Three Paths to Nation-State and Family Law 7. Palace, Tribe, and Preservation of Islamic Law: Morocco 8. Elite Divisions and the Law in Gridlock: Algeria 9. State Autonomy from Tribe and the Transformation of Family Law: Tunisia Conclusion. State-Building, Family Law, and Women's Rights History, Strategy, and Policy Some Theoretical Implications Glossary Notes Bibliography Index

Mortuary Practices, Social Development, and Ideology in Precolumbian Puerto Rico

Mortuary practices rank among the best sources of archaeological data from which to infer social organization, ideology, religious beliefs, and to a certain extent, the political structure of past societies. This essay (1) reviews mortuary practices among prehistoric groups of Puerto Rico, (2) proposes a possible sequence of changes through time, and (3) presents explanations that account for the observed changes. Aside from evident correlation with broad cultural developments, changes in mortuary practices can be understood best in the context of parallel developments in social, political, and economic complexity. We argue that in Puerto Rico a shift in mortuary practices from burying dead relatives in centralized cemeteries to the disposition of the dead in domestic contexts was strongly related to a shift from largely kin-based societies to the ranked organization of cacicazgos (chiefdoms). Particularly, we conclude that the shift in social organization from emphasis on extended descent groups that acted as corporate groups to nuclear households reflects a strategy utilized by the emerging elite to dismantle and reorient previous communal institutions. This shift was accomplished through the monopolization, by the emerging elite, of the tenets surrounding the cult of the ancestors to create a legitimizing ideology.

Distant Sources, Local Contexts: Interpreting Nonlocal Ceramics at Paquimé (Casas Grandes), Chihuahua

The role of long-distance exchange in later prehistoric societies in the Greater Southwest of North America is the subject of controversy. This paper suggests that clarification of this issue requires closer study of specific social and historical contexts and better conceptualizations of exchange among kin-based societies. This position is explored by considering the nonlocal ceramics at the site of Paquimé (Casas Grandes). Paquimé has been presented as a crucial link in prehistoric interregional exchange, and nonlocal ceramics have been used to advance this position. However, the reanalyses presented here concerning the sources of the nonlocal ceramics, nonlocal ceramic frequencies, and the distribution of nonlocal ceramics in burials and room clusters find little change in nonlocal ceramic use as Paquimé grew in scale. The implications of this finding and a framework to understand the acquisition of nonlocal goods that does not rely on institutionalized networks are discussed.

Communal Societies and the Emergence of Elites in the Prehistoric American Southeast

The emergence of elites in the prehistoric American Southeast takes place within the context of communal societies. Incipient elites exacerbate contradictions that appear under conditions of population growth, subsistence intensification, decreased mobility, and technological reorganization within the communal mode of production to undermine egalitarianism and consolidate their positions of status. Archaeological data from the Plum Bayou culture of central Arkansas suggest that the elite had not completely transformed communal life despite attempts at accumulation and monopolization. Their strategies of aggrandizement were effectively resisted by non‐elites and communalism was ultimately restored in the region. The dynamic that pushes egalitarian, kinbased societies towards inequality in the Southeast appears to be cyclical rather than linear.

History of Thought as Ceremonial Genealogy: The Neglected Influence of Herbert Spencer on Thorstein Veblen

Most academic disciplines lay claim to a few seminal thinkers whose works are regarded as In a 1981 article, Donald N. Levine noted the intense scrutiny and concern devoted by sociologists to sociological classics (Emile Durkheim, Max Weber, Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx, and Georg Simmel) and contrasted this intense concern with the relative indifference of economists to the economic classics. Levine argues that this focus on seminal works results from the relatively greater fragmentation of sociology into specialized sub-fields: lacking the group cohesion imparted to economics by its subject matter (markets), sociology creates group cohesion by tracing the descent of each subfield to the canon of sociological ancestors [Levine 1981, p. 63]. Thus, history of thought serves a function in sociology; it serves to integrate the various specialized sociological schools into a common discipline. The use of common ancestors to create group cohesion is one of the major functions of a genealogy in societies organized primarily along lines of affinal and consanguineal relationships. The first part of this article looks briefly at some features of genealogy in kin-based societies,