Marriage Strategies Research Articles

Interview with Laura Fortunato, Winner of the 2011 Gabriel W. Lasker Prize

Interview with Laura Fortunato, Winner of the 2011 Gabriel W. Lasker Prize Evelyne Heyer Keywords Indo-European Societies, Residence Strategies, Marriage Strategies An international jury composed of Michael Crawford (University of Kansas, USA), Dennis O’Rourke (University of Utah, USA), and Stephen Shennan (University College London, UK) has awarded the Gabriel Ward Lasker Prize 2011 to Dr. Laura Fortunato for her articles entitled “Reconstructing the History of Residence Strategies in Indo-European–Speaking Societies” and “Reconstructing the History of Marriage Strategies in Indo-European–Speaking Societies” considered as the best contribution to the 83rd volume of Human Biology (2011). Laura Fortunato is an Omidyar Fellow at the Santa Fe Institute in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She received her Ph.D. in anthropology from University College London in 2009; her doctoral research focused on the evolution of kinship and marriage systems (Fortunato 2009). In particular, she has investigated the evolution of marriage strategies (Fortunato and Archetti 2010; Fortunato 2011a), wealth transfers at marriage (Fortunato et al. 2006; Fortunato and Mace 2009), residence strategies (Fortunato and Jordan 2010; Fortunato 2011b), and inheritance strategies (Fortunato, in review). Laura’s current research activities apply conceptual and methodological tools developed in evolutionary biology to a diverse range of topics in anthropology, from matrilineal kinship organization to cultural evolution. Evelyne Heyer: Dear Dr. Fortunato, we are pleased that the Gabriel Ward Lasker award for the best article in the 2011 volume of Human Biology is attributed to you for the article “Reconstructing the History of Marriage Strategies in Indo-European-Speaking Societies: Monogamy and Polygyny” (Fortunato 2011a). This paper was published together with a sister article, having very similar methods and aims, titled “Reconstructing the History of Residence Strategies in Indo-European-Speaking Societies: Neo-, Uxori-, and Virilocality” (Fortunato 2011b), and they both perfectly match the editorial focus of the journal. Would you mind summarizing the research question you address, the methodology you adopt as well as the major results? [End Page 227] Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. Dr. Laura Fortunato (photo courtesy by Kate Russell Photography). Laura Fortunato Thank you, I am delighted at the award! The two papers aim to reconstruct past modes of social organization for societies speaking Indo-European (IE) languages. The focus is on marriage and residence strategies. Marriage strategies specify how many spouses an individual may be married to at any one time: the analysis looks at monogamy (marriage allowed to only one spouse at any one time) and polygyny (marriage allowed to multiple wives simultaneously). Residence strategies regulate the pattern of sex-biased dispersal of individuals at marriage: the analysis looks at neolocality (residence of the married couple apart from the kin of either spouse), uxorilocality (residence of the married couple with or near the wife’s kin), and virilocality (residence of the married couple with or near the husband’s kin). Methodologically, the papers use ancestral state reconstruction, within a phylogenetic framework, applied to cross-cultural data (Fortunato 2011c; see Fortunato 2008 for a nontechnical introduction to the approach). The analyses reconstruct early IE society as practicing monogamy and prevailing virilocality with alternative neolocality. Overall, the results are largely consistent with previous inferences from linguistic and ethnographic data; however, as I discuss extensively in the papers, previous work is beset by substantial methodological flaws and bias in interpretation. I like to think that my results provide an independent line of evidence against which to evaluate previous inferences about early IE social structure. EH For those readers willing to better review such research questions, is there any article you would recommend reading? [End Page 228] LF Your recent review paper “Sex-Specific Demographic Behaviours That Shape Human Genomic Variation” (Heyer et al. 2012) provides an interesting complementary perspective, with its focus on the genetic side of the story. EH You find that both Proto-Indo-Hittite and Proto-Indo-European had monogamous habits and were neo-/virilocal. Do you think these patterns of social organization arose because of the emergence of agriculture? LF Together with previous analyses (Fortunato et al. 2006; Fortunato and Mace 2009), the reconstructions of early IE social organization in the two papers point to a society practicing monogamy, virilocality with neolocality...

Interview with Laura Fortunato, Winner of the 2011 Gabriel W. Lasker Prize

An international jury composed of Michael Crawford (University of Kansas, USA), Dennis O’Rourke (University of Utah, USA), and Stephen Shennan (University College London, UK) has awarded the Gabriel Ward Lasker Prize 2011 to Dr. Laura Fortunato for her articles entitled “Reconstructing the History of Residence Strategies in Indo-European–Speaking Societies” and “Reconstructing the History of Marriage Strategies in Indo-European–Speaking Societies” considered as the best contribution to the 83rd volume of Human Biology (2011). Laura Fortunato is an Omidyar Fellow at the Santa Fe Institute in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She received her Ph.D. in anthropology from University College London in 2009; her doctoral research focused on the evolution of kinship and marriage systems (Fortunato 2009). In particular, she has investigated the evolution of marriage strategies (Fortunato and Archetti 2010; Fortunato 2011a), wealth transfers at marriage (Fortunato et al. 2006; Fortunato and Mace 2009), residence strategies (Fortunato and Jordan 2010; Fortunato 2011b), and inheritance strategies (Fortunato, in review). Laura’s current research activities apply conceptual and methodological tools developed in evolutionary biology to a diverse range of topics in anthropology, from matrilineal kinship organization to cultural evolution.

Mecanismos y estrategias de promoción, ascenso y consolidación de los Carrillo de Toledo, señores de Caracena y Pinto

Social mobility was a typical phenomenon in the estates system of the Modern Age, as it has already been shown repeatedly. Money was a key element in an attempt to get the coveted promotion as well as to seize opportunities for royal service that the Habsburg imperial machinery provided. In the political and social elevation process starred by the lords of Caracena and Pinto, the grant of the manor, the access to government local areas, the foundation of “mayorazgos”, the implementation of some successful marriage strategies, and finally, the performance of some of the most relevant administrative, governmental and military positions of the Spanish monarchy became milestones. Therefore, these lords’ upward career also allowed them to build up honors and rewards, diversify their income sources, as well as prop up a privileged status and become part of the titled nobility.

The deathbed marriage of Karl Knutsson Bonde: legitimization by subsequent marriage, property and family strategies in late medieval Sweden

AbstractThe article discusses the reception of the canonical doctrine of legitimization by subsequent marriage in medieval Sweden. It analyzes what legal institutions were available in Sweden for pursuing individual property strategies. The article discusses especially how the doctrine was used in practice in the fifteenth-century case involving the marriage and inheritance of King Karl Knutsson Bonde. This case study demonstrates the conflict of interest between the presumptive heirs and the person using marriage as an instrument for changing the pool of presumptive heirs and effectively reducing the inheritance lots of the then heirs or disinheriting them altogether.

Indicios de cambio en el sistema de heredero único en Cataluña en el siglo XIX

In Catalonia, non-partible inheritance system did work perfectly —especially for wealthy peasant families— until the end of 18 th . Century. Along the 19 th century, some changes did occur, concerning unsafe situation due to the «carlistas» wars, to a growing process of urbanization, to the new political and administrative structures, to the equalitarian ideologies, and even to the agrarian crisis at the end of the century. All together meant to question the inheritance and marriage strategies of the wealthy social groups of the country. The paper analyzes a set of genealogies, which allow inferring some changing patterns related to the processes quoted before.

Marriage strategies among immigrants in Spain

This paper studies patterns of endogamous marriages of immigrants in Spain by using data from the NationalImmigrant Survey of Spain (2007). First of all, we examine patterns of endogamous marriage and linksbetween migration and marriage. Second, we assess the factors influencing the likelihood of being in anendogamous marriage. Our analyses focus on persons married either immediately before, during or afterarrival in Spain originating from six countries: Morocco, Romania, Ecuador, Colombia, Argentina, and a groupof other developing countries. Results show that the level of endogamy is highest among the Moroccan immigrantsand lowest for those coming from Colombia. The likelihood of an endogamous union is higher for thosemarried before migration compared to those married later. Furthermore, chances on endogamy are lower formore highly educated. Women are less likely than men to be in endogamous unions.

Reconstructing the History of Marriage Strategies in Indo-European—Speaking Societies: Monogamy and Polygyny

Explanations for the emergence of monogamous marriage have focused on the cross-cultural distribution of marriage strategies, thus failing to account for their history. In this paper I reconstruct the pattern of change in marriage strategies in the history of societies speaking Indo-European languages, using cross-cultural data in the systematic and explicitly historical framework afforded by the phylogenetic comparative approach. The analysis provides evidence in support of Proto-Indo-European monogamy, and that this pattern may have extended back to Proto-Indo-Hittite. These reconstructions push the origin of monogamous marriage into prehistory, well beyond the earliest instances documented in the historical record; this, in turn, challenges notions that the cross-cultural distribution of monogamous marriage reflects features of social organization typically associated with Eurasian societies, and with "societal complexity" and "modernization" more generally. I discuss implications of these findings in the context of the archaeological and genetic evidence on prehistoric social organization.

Reconstructing the History of Marriage Strategies in Indo-European-Speaking Societies: Monogamy and Polygyny

Explanations for the emergence of monogamous marriage have focused on the cross-cultural distribution of marriage strategies, thus failing to account for their history. In this paper I reconstruct the pattern of change in marriage strategies in the history of societies speaking Indo-European languages, using cross-cultural data in the systematic and explicitly historical framework afforded by the phylogenetic comparative approach.

Chinese and Chinese Mestizos of Manila: Family, Identity, and Culture, 1860s–1930s (review)

Reviewed by: Chinese and Chinese Mestizos of Manila: Family, Identity, and Culture, 1860s–1930s Jerry Dennerline (bio) Richard Chu. Chinese and Chinese Mestizos of Manila: Family, Identity, and Culture, 1860s–1930s Leiden: Brill, 2010. xviii, 451 pp. Hardcover $179.00, ISBN 978-9-004-17339-2. In this study, Richard Chu explores the unfolding of the tension between Chinese and Filipino identities over the past 150 years. He begins and ends his book with personal stories that underscore the significance of the problem today, but the study itself is historical. The primary question is, how and why did the boundary between these two identities harden? His differs from previous studies primarily by focusing on legal documents such as marriage licenses, baptismal certificates, wills, and court documents involving disputes over immigration status, inheritance, and business contracts. Following the lead of Edgar Wickberg’s The Chinese in Philippine Life, 1850–1898 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1965), he argues that the roots of the problem are in the period before the American colonial regime. Beyond this, like Andrew Wilson, in Ambition and Identity: Chinese Merchant Elites in Colonial Manila, 1880–1916 (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2004), he rejects the notions that ethnic identities were structurally determined by Spanish colonial attitudes or Chinese ethnic identity alone. Unlike Wilson, he employs a method that is “basically ethnographic, reconstructing and reconstituting individual and family life stories as well as describing particular everyday commercial and domestic practices” (p. 15). His fieldwork, he says, is in the “bundles of baptismal and matrimonial records” (p. 15) in church and state archives. With this approach, he succeeds in showing a wide variety of ways in which the Chinese and Chinese mestizo merchants and their families pursued social and economic strategies that reflect the transnational and multicultural resources available to them. The flexibility and fluidity of these strategies underscore the basic conclusion that legal and institutional controls were more influential than ingrained traditional or modern ethnic structures in hardening the ethnic boundaries. The Chinese mestizos gradually became Filipino, while the Chinese became aliens, vulnerable to stereotyping and scapegoating that, while it was not entirely new, tended to isolate the self-identifying Chinese in a space where they had fewer options for flexibility and negotiation. In this review, I will focus on a few key issues of interest to social historians and students of transregional Chinese communities during this period. My own familiarity with the Philippines is extremely limited. My perspective is shaped by my study of family and kinship in the Lower Yangzi region and, more recently, the China-born and Straits-born Chinese communities in Malacca and Singapore during this period. From this perspective, I find the most important contribution of this book to be in its meticulous attention to the details of marriage strategies in relation to family continuity, social networking, and business practices. With these details in place, one can approach what Chu calls the “macro-historical” issues [End Page 43] with a much clearer vision of what the rapidly developing global economy and shifting political circumstances meant for the people who lived in this social and cultural milieu. The first two chapters offer overviews of the Minnan (Southern Fujian) region of China and the place of the Chinese in late-Spanish-colonial Manila. In the third chapter, the author uses detailed evidence from the archives to show how the most prominent merchants engaged in credit systems, founded joint stock companies, and employed name changing and citizenship strategies while under Spanish rule. In this context, he introduces, among other individuals, Carlos Palanca Tan Quien-sien as “the consummate border-crossing diasporic subject” (pp. 128–141). While Chu wants us to focus on “everyday commercial and domestic practices,” we cannot help but notice that Carlos (Chen Qianshan) was an exceptionally famous, very controversial figure who engaged in high-level political negotiations as well (see also Wilson, pp. 110–139). He did engage in all the activities that could serve to identify him as a typical Chinese rags-to-riches case, but the point here is to shift the focus of attention from what was well known about him, and could, therefore, be used by the...

When brother–sister marriage becomes incest

This essay traces how marriages between brothers and sisters in the Lao and Thai royal families came to be conceptualised as ‘incest’ and therefore taboo over the first half of the twentieth century. This change was associated with changing royal marriage strategies and changing ideas about the nature of royal persons. The article concludes with some broader theoretical reflections on incest.

Marriage as the Means to Preserve ‘Asian-ness’: The Post-Revolutionary Experience of the Asians of Zanzibar

The question of identity, shaped by issues of race and ethnicity, is paramount in the multi-cultural ethnic landscape of Zanzibar. This article examines how the present-day Asian community of Zanzibar, decimated by the 1964 Revolution, when an African insurgence overthrew the islands’ Arab rule and expelled the majority of Arabs and Asians, survived in Zanzibar in the years following the Revolution and how, through demarcating communal boundaries and exercising specific marriage strategies, it has managed to maintain its distinct Asian identity. The article is based on anthropological fieldwork in Zanzibar.

Boundaries and Opportunities: Comparing Slave Family Formation in the Antebellum South

Our understanding of the marriage strategies and family formation of enslaved people remains clouded by disagreement among contemporary scholars. A perusal of the historical literature suggests that two issues lay at the root of this disagreement: First, scholars disagree over the extent to which slave family life was shaped by the external factors of slavery, or rather slave agency; and second, scholars appear reluctant to abandon their singular views of the slave family. This article addresses both of these gaps by formulating a middle ground in the slave agency debate and by redefining the slave family in plural form. An analysis of the boundaries and opportunities for family formation in northern Virginia and lowcountry South Carolina, this study shows that while the establishment of co-residential two-parent households was the ideal for slaves, not all were able to realize that ideal, and those that could not adapted their marriage strategies and family lives accordingly.

French businessmen in the nineteenth-century Mezzogiorno: technical innovation, sociability, networks and negotiation of identities

This research examines a group of French entrepreneurs who settled in Naples during the sixty years before the Unification of Italy. It compares the marriage strategies, the professional behaviour, and the relations with the public authorities (the Bourbon government, their own consulate, the local courts, etc.) of these French businessmen with the experience and the life-style of other ethnic-national élites also present in the same period in the Mezzogiorno (Swiss, English, etc.). It highlights the considerable capacity for adaptation shown by the French, their integration in the host society, their collaboration with the indigenous population on a professional level, and their particular capacity to negotiate with the locals even their own status as foreigners. These are the elements that not only make the French case unique in the panorama of entrepreneurial minorities active in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, but also enabled many French entrepreneurs to make an important contribution to the business world in pre-Unification Southern Italy.

Men of Silk: The Hasidic Conquest of Polish Jewish Society (review)

Reviewed by: Men of Silk: The Hasidic Conquest of Polish Jewish Society Gershon Bacon Men of Silk: The Hasidic Conquest of Polish Jewish Society, by Glenn Dynner. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. 384 pp. $65.00. In a bibliographical review essay published a little over a decade ago, David Assaf lamented the imbalance in historical literature about Hasidism. Scholarly attention has been focused primarily on Hasidism's beginnings, with relatively short shrift given to the nineteenth century: "Polish Hasidism, which was the main arena of Hasidism in the nineteenth century, still lacks systematic basic research that will set out the full historical, biographical, and chronological picture, alongside a survey and analysis of the ideological and religious developments in its divisions, courts and many variations" (cited by Dynner, p. 26). We can attribute this imbalance, at least in part, to the desire of the pioneers of research on Hasidism to deal with the movement in its early days, when it was, in their view, a revolutionary and innovative factor, while maintaining their distance from the Hasidism of their own day, which they saw as decadent and fossilized. Thus it is not surprising that Dubnow's magisterial History of Hasidism ends its discussion in the year 1815, just as the movement was beginning its ultimate "conquest" of most of the region. In the past two years there have appeared two works that have made an important contribution towards achieving the goal of a more general picture of Polish Hasidism: the books by Marcin Wodzinski (Haskalah and Hasidism in the Kingdom of Poland: A History of Conflict, 2005) and Glenn Dynner. Despite some major differences of opinion, the two books complement one another and rely on the same combination of internal Hasidic material and a rich variety of Polish archival sources. Together they do much to correct the historical picture of later Hasidism that has suffered from the open hostility of Dubnow, or, alternatively, from the over-identification with the movement based on a tendentious, politicized portrayal, as done by Raphael Mahler. Dynner's book attempts, for the first time and with a great degree of success, to sketch the mechanics of Hasidic ascendancy in Poland. Dynner discusses the nature and extent of Polish Hasidism in its first stages (Chapter 1); the varied methods of Hasidic takeovers in selected Polish communities (Chapter 2); the close connections between part of the new business elite and Hasidism (Chapter 3); the social structure of the Hasidic leadership and the importance of "yihus" (Chapter 4); the attitudes of the leadership to the masses, in image and reality (Chapter 5); and the marketing of Hasidism using various media, ranging from sermonic literature for the intellectual elite to songs and dance for the simple folk (Chapter 6). Three appendices round out [End Page 215] the volume: on marriage strategies among the Hasidic elite in the first generations of Hasidism (which serves as the background for Dynner's discussion of "yihus"); the translation of a fascinating archival document describing the exorcism of a "dibbuk" from the body of a young boy in Warsaw in 1818; and finally, a listing of books by Hasidic authors until 1815. The latter appendix serves to bolster Dynner's argument about the importance of the printed word in Hasidism. He could have strengthened his argument had he also included reprints of kabbalistic texts that presumably would have interested the learned adepts of the new movement. The author mistakenly includes the collection of stories Shivhei ha'Besht (In Praise of the Baal Shem Tov) among those books attributed to the Baal Shem Tov as author (p. 247). Dynner's book is innovative in the wide variety of its sources, ranging from Hasidic tales to British missionary journals and Warsaw police reports, but no less in the treatment of those sources (especially his methodological approach to Hasidic tales). Particularly worthy of mention is his systematic use of Polish archival materials to a degree not yet witnessed in historical literature on Hasidism. The author has a first-rate ability to weave these diverse sources into a smooth and coherent narrative. Of the large number of significant findings in this engaging book, limitations of space allow...

The Human Behavioral Ecology of Contemporary World Issues : Applications to Public Policy and International Development.

Human behavioral ecology (HBE) began as an attempt to explain human economic, reproductive, and social behavior using neodarwinian theory in concert with theory from ecology and economics, and ethnographic methods. HBE has addressed subsistence decision-making, cooperation, life history trade-offs, parental investment, mate choice, and marriage strategies among hunter-gatherers, herders, peasants, and wage earners in rural and urban settings throughout the world. Despite our rich insights into human behavior, HBE has very rarely been used as a tool to help the people with whom we work. This article introduces a special issue of Human Nature which explores the application of HBE to significant world issues through the design and critique of public policy and international development projects. The articles by Tucker, Shenk, Leonetti et al., and Neil were presented at the 104th annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association (AAA) in Washington, D.C., in December 2005, in the first organized session of the nascent Evolutionary Anthropology Section (EAS). We conclude this introduction by summarizing some theoretical challenges to applying HBE, and ways in which evolutionary anthropologists can contribute to solving tough world issues.

Die huwelik in die eerste-eeuse Mediterreense wêreld (I): Vroue in ’n man se wêreld

Marriage in the first-century Mediterranean world (1): Females in a male world
 
 This article is the first of a three-part series that aims to stimulate the hermeneutical debate in the church about marriage. Attention is given to four aspects of the cultural world of the Bible that are relevant for an understanding of the institution of marriage as presented in Biblical texts: marriage as embedded in the social institution of the family (kinship), the role of honor and shame, dyadic personality and the different marriage strategies that can be discerned throughout Biblical times. The article concludes with a few remarks on the effects the above “cultural scripts” had on the understanding of marriage as an institution and the position of women in marriage.

“Who Can Be Added”: The Effects of Refugee Status Determination and Third Country Resettlement Processes on the Marriage Strategies, Rites, and Customs of the Southern Sudanese in Cairo

This study, based on ethnographic research, examines how refugee status determination and third country resettlement processes influence the marriage practices of the southern Sudanese refugee community in Cairo. The study showed that because of their inability to attain socio- economic integration into the host community combined with the growing insecurity of the environment of Cairo for refugees, many southern Sudanese have had to reevaluate their traditional marriage practices and family values to qualify for resettlement and escape to a better life. For example, the expectation of resettlement can directly affect courtship strategies, dowry payments, and couples’ decisions regarding having children. Guidelines of UNHCR and/or resettlement countries play a considerable role in these decisions, as do rumours about marriage certification and difficulty in finding suitable partners in the West. In some instances, marriage becomes a business arrangement to secure resettlement. Refugee status denial sometimes has a negative impact on marriage, with spouses blaming each other for performing badly at the status determination interview, leading in some cases to violence and divorce. Sudanese youth with denied refugee status have particular difficulties as their hopes for a brighter future are dashed and with it their prospects of a normal family life.

The Savoyard Cousins: A Comparison of the Careers and Relative Success of the Grandson (Grandison) and Champvent (Chavent) Families in England

In the mid-thirteenth century members of two branches of a family based in Savoy came to England and, through royal service, they reached baronial rank. One family, the Grandsons, thoroughly embedded itself in England and its members are recalled even today while the other, the Champvents, lapsed into obscurity, the name disappearing from the records after 1410. To discover why, this article looks at the significance of royal service to the families, the amount of royal patronage they received, their marriage strategies, how they related to the localities into which they were implanted, the extent to which religious loyalties and family piety illustrated their attitudes and whether they cut their ties with their former home lands.

“Everything They Hate”: Michèle, Mildred, and Elite Haitian Marrying Strategies in Historical Perspective

This article explores the extent to which the 1980 marriage of Haitian president Jean-Claude Duvalier contributed to his political demise in February 1986. The author argues that the marriage was a strategic mistake by the Haitian president, because it formalized an alliance between himself and a political kinship group (the Bennetts) that alienated his most important base of support, the black middling classes. This article also suggests that a similar mistake was committed in 1996 by President Jean-Bertrand Aristide when he married his U.S. legal advisor, Mildred Trouillot. These marriage strategies, however, can only be understood in the context of the historical class and color divisions that have remained an integral part of the Haitian sociopolitical sphere of the urban elite.

Pyrenean Marriage Strategies in the Nineteenth Century: The French Basque Case

Marriage strategies in the rural Basque country of the nineteenth century differed according to social background and gender. Propertied families had more diversified strategies than landless families as a result of persistent single inheritance practices, population growth, urbanization, and industrialization which generated massive emigration. Propertied families helped some of their children to settle in local rural villages and others to emigrate to cities (women) or to America (men). Landless families, by contrast, continued to settle most of their children in local rural villages, others emigrating to America only later in the century, avoiding the cities at all cost. Men, no matter their social background, benefited the most from new economic opportunities because most of them married into families of equal or higher status. Women, by contrast, did not have equal opportunities because few married upward and outside their professional group. When women did not marry within their socio-professional group or remain single, they married into families of lower status (more often than men).