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Current
Anthropology
1997
Haviland, William A. On the Haviland offers a brief discussion and criticism
of Arthur Demarest’s The
Maya State, adding his thoughts to a wider discussion on Mayan
social and political organization and challenging cultural evolutionist
theories that continue to mar a comprehensive understanding of the
history of Mayan social organization. The author maintains that Classic
Maya political organization does not conform to one model, and that,
like all societies, the Maya have always been, and continue to be,
a diverse and constantly changing cultural group, whose social and
political structure have taken many shapes throughout history. To make his case, Haviland compares aspects of the ethnological histories
of three Mayan sites, underlining different characteristics of each
which speak to their different functions, organization and level
of centralization. The examples prove that each went through a number
of phases of social structure, based upon numerous interactive cultural
and political process which cannot be studied
or measured in a linear sense. His examples address the problematic
tendency to place Mayan culture within an evolutionary framework,
in which the highly centralized habitation centers represent the
highest step in the (fictional) cultural evolution of the Maya people.
Haviland’s evidence, which includes several
cross-cultural references, succeeds in deconstructing Western notions
and assumptions of cultural development and social structure. The
author constructs a convincing argument against cultural evolutionist
assumptions by offering comprehensive examples of variation within
Maya (and other cultural entities’) political organization. In doing
so, he clearly establishes the non-linear nature of social/political
organization. CLARITY:
5
Hawkes, K. J. F. O’Connell, and N.
G. Blurton Jones. Hadza Women’s Time Allocation, Offspring Provisioning, and the
Evolution of Long Postmenopausal Life Spans. Current Anthropology August-October 1997. Vol.
38(4): 551-577. Kristen Hawkes, James F. O’Connell and Nicholas G. Blurton investigate
the patterns of women’s time allocation
and the effects of provisioning on the health and nutrition of their
children. Inspired by a distinction that exists between human and
other female primates, the researchers focused on mother-child food
sharing and longer postmenopausal life spans when observing the lives
of Hadza women in At five different Hadza camps,
the researchers collected information on time allocation by performing
random “camp scans” at particular times of day, during which they
would make detailed observations. Their
field notes included individual locations and activities, which tools
and facilities were being used, and who was present and who was absent.
The researchers also engaged in “focal-person follows” to collect
their information. One of the researchers would travel with one or
more of the individuals on day-trips or away from camp, taking detailed
records similar to those observed in the After processing the data, Hawkes et
al. found that maternal foraging strategies affect the health and
nutrition of her children. The time and energy needed to nurse and
care for a newborn baby decreases the mother’s involvement
in maintaining the nutrition of her weaned offspring, but the increased
efforts of the grandmother at the birth of a new child prove to offset
the mother’s reduction. They paid particularly close attention
to their methods, specifically to detect possible disparities caused
by the age and sex of individuals being studied and to the influence
of “seasonal” variations such as climate, methods of food collection
and camp size that may have affected the outcome of their work. In
addition, the authors discussed the potential influences of longer
life spans and menopause on the mother’s provisioning
efforts and the consequential weight changes in her children.
CommentsCommentators Michael Gurven,
Kim Hill, Raymond Hames and Takayoshi Kano are similarly concerned with the lack of attention
that is given to paternal influences on Hadza children
in the research. In addition, Gurven and
Hill recommend performing later studies on how the grandmother ’s
contribution increases the children’s overall
fitness. Hames expresses
discomfort and uncertainty in some of the analyzed data presented
in the article, and Response
Hawkes et
al. respond to these comments by restating and clarifying the main
points of their article. They specifically address each of the comments,
giving particular emphasis to the distinction among primates in mother-child
food sharing strategies, the adolescent contributions of foraging efforts,
and the patrimonial involvement commonly found in hunter-gatherer societies.
They end their response with a few brief answers to specific questions
regarding issues such as the presence of grandmother’s who
were not assisting nursing mothers, the return rates of food collection
for childbearing versus postmenopausal mothers, time allocation among
other members of the camp, and the precision and detail of their research
and techniques of analysis. ANNA PIERCE
Levine, Nancy E. Silk, Joan Why Polyandry Fails: Source of Instability in Polyandrous Marriages. Current Anthropology. June, 1997 38 (3) 375-398 The goal set by Levine and Silk in this paper is to connect the theoretical perspectives of evolutionary biology and sociocultural anthropology and apply these to the study of “human kinship behavior” in Nyinba polyandrous marriages. The attempt made is to identify factors (individual and household) that influence the stability of polyandrous marriages. The study is broken down into the following categories; causes of polyandry, sources of stress in polyandrous marriages, setting and sources of data and causes of dissolution of polyandrous marriages. It is this last category that is the main focus of this article. The causes of dissolution are categorized into sub-sections: size of the sibling group, disparities in age among husbands and wives, reproductive success and kinship among co-husbands. The causes of polyandry are explained through issues of land ownership and stressed that polyandrous marriages are beneficial for “economic success” in areas where resource is scarce. However, they argue that the functional explanations of human polyandry (by sociocultural anthropologists) are “difficult to establish a connection between specific economic, ecological or demographic variables and the presence or absence of polyandry”(pg.376). The most convincing data produced was the perspective of the Nyinba peoples, in relation to the factors that influence the stability of polyandrous marriages. The factors include the size of the sibling group, the closeness of kinship among co-husbands, the extent of landholdings, the success of the relationship with the common wife and the presence of absence of “own children” within the marriage. This ethnographic source provides excellent hypotheses about factors that influence stability in polyandrous marriages. Also, there is an agreement between sociocultural and evolutionary biological models of polyandry that predict differences in age between husbands and wives will influence stability. Comparisons were drawn between polyandrous men (those who’s marriages are not divided) and active partitioners (those who instigate partitions). Among the men who instigated partitions 82% were younger than their first wife, while only 33 % were younger than their new wife. These men left first wives who were 5.7 years older and married again to women who were 3.6 years younger than them. This is one source of data to prove that age does play an important role in the failure of polyandrous marriages. The test done to predict the degree of relatedness among co-husbands and the influence on stability in polyandrous marriages was done with an “average degree of relatedness” among co-husbands in intact, conjoint and partitioned households (384). This survey was done with only a small amount of households. The result was that there was “no consistent tendency for men to increase or decrease there relatedness to their co-husbands when they realign their marriages” (p379). In conclusion, the decisions made for Nyimba men to leave their polyandrous marriages are influenced by associations with sibling groups and relationships with older wives which reduce the chance of reproducing in a polyandrous marriage. When partition occurs, this seems to act as a “remedy” for these circumstances as they marry women younger than the first wife, and usually produce more children. Findings suggest that the most important factor in separations in polyandrous marriages is the “reproductive disadvantages” experienced by younger men. This is consistent with evolutionary theory predictions, but is not prominent information in sociocultural theory. This leads to the understanding that trying to bridge the two theories is very difficult, yet the differences found between the two may “enhance” understandings of human behavior. Comments: Comments from the summaries completed by individuals from anthropological backgrounds raised some excellent arguments. Questions about the nature of the authors analysis was raised by Fessler and Hewlett, in relation to the need for an “integrative theoretical framework to link perspectives of evolutionary biology and sociocultural anthropology”. Also, comments from Borgerhoff Mulder and Haddix state that results do not support the hypotheses created by the authors; brothers share “paternity due to economic and demographic circumstances” that may limit the chance of a monogamous family being successful. Srivastava raises an important point that polyandry must be understood in terms of domestic developmental cycles. With a few exceptions (as listed above) the main argument presented by the commentators was that there was a definite need for larger “samples” and more extensive analysis, as the size of the population studied could not develop a strong evaluation of why polyandrous marriages fail. Response: Levin
and silk respond to their critics by first, acknowledging the points
raised for means of improvement, and then by discussing (briefly) reasons
why certain data was unattainable. Also admitting that the “scope of
their analysis” and the “strength of their conclusions” were limited
by the fact that “partition is a relatively uncommon event among the Nyinba”.
Also, is the fact that the group being analyzed was too small to produce
sufficient findings. They are in agreement
that more extensive information about issues that affect the “dynamics
of polyandry” (in the JENNIFER STANLEY
Wilson, David Sloan. Hunting, Sharing, and Multilevel Selection: The Tolerated-Theft Model Revisited. Current Anthropology, 1997 39 (1): 73-97. Wilson,
an evolutionary biologist, aims to elucidate some of the confusion
between process and perspective in evolutionary theories of social
behavior. He proposes to accomplish this by examining process
and perspective in food acquisition and sharing in hunter-gatherer
societies, with special emphasis on revising Blurton Jones’s
tolerated-theft model. One
of Comments Comments
are provided by Michael Alvard; Henry Harpending; Christopher Boehm; K. Hawkes,
R. L. Bliege Bird and D.W. Bird; and Eric
Alden Smith. They are in general agreement that Reply CLARITY: 4 DAVID
CHAUDOIR
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