Polyandry (Robert Quinlan, ANTH 468,
[***] indicates alternative links
Note: I’ll finish this page later. This outline should
be useful to you for now.
Tibetan Polyandry:
Some background
·
High in
·
Scarce land with
limited uses
·
Low productivity
·
Highly seasonal
agricultural production
·
Unusual system of
land tenure and taxation based on feudal system with an overlord who controls
everything
·
http://tibet.cn/en/news/phn/pnt/W020051027612250580639.jpg
Sexual division of labor:
Men’s work
Trading,
herding, ploughing planting, terrace construction
Women everything
else?
Serfs under control of powerful overlord:
Dü-jung (small smoke) majority of inhabitants
·
Have rights to
use small plots of land for own purposes in exchange for periodic labor to the
overlord
·
Or they paid
there way out of service and leased small plots (2 acres)
·
Land rights were
not inherited among the dü-jung
·
Married
monogamously
·
Married for love
·
Neolocal
Thongpa (people of the house)
·
Also serfs
·
Give larger
parcels 20-300 acres and permanent rights
·
Could inherit
land
·
Heavy tax burden
·
Could not abandon
land in favor other form of living i.e. rights to inherit land tied them to it
·
Arranged marriage
with much parental manipulation
·
Marriage was
highly variable from monogamy to sororal polygyny to fraternal polyandry.
·
Neolocality was
strictly forbidden
·
Patrilocal or
matrilocal for monogamy
·
Matrilocal for
polygyny
·
Patrilocal for
polyandry
·
Chimdro village
52% fraternal
polyandry, 48% monogamy
·
If wife’s parents
had no son, then a man could move in and be the only husband
·
If husband
parents only had one son then woman could move in and be only wife
A study of the D’ing-ri
valley (1970’s) showed mixed population of dü-jung and thongpa 72% of marriages
were monogamous, 8% polygynous (thongpa), 20% polyandry.
Conjoint marriages found
H=W=H=W
Benefit
·
More labor
·
Economic
diversification, apparently some husbands can specialize
·
Keep family land holdings
intact
Costs
·
Polyandrous
marriages are filled with conflict and strife.
·
Surplus sons were
sometimes killed
Important point: 31% of thongpa women
have illegitimate children – meaning they have no land rights, but implying
sexual outlets outside of marriage for men.
Natural experiment when thongpa moved to
India
·
A group of
thongpa moved over the boarder into
·
Given 1 acre
plots as permanent but not inheritable possessions – just like dü-jung
·
After a few years
in the new environment there was not a single case of polyandry among the
refugees.
·
Overlapping
reproductive interest of the family as a unit
·
Kin selection
·
But individual is
the strongest level of selection
·
Polyandry
conflicts with individual fitness interests
·
Polyandry is only
a stable solution in a specific environment with imposed rules for land tenure
and personal freedom in a feudal system
Polyandry seems irrational at first glance,
but let’s have a look at two simulations (from
·
Assumes 5 acres
of family land
·
M indicates the
number of marriages in one family (group of brothers) in one generation (figure
1)
·
Multiple
marriages initially benefits grand-parental fitness, but more allowing more
than one marriage quickly leads to lineage extinction.
·
Polyandry (M=1) maximizes
long-term fitness
Figure 1. Simulation of polyandry and long-term
fitness assuming 5 acres of land (
http://www.case.edu/affil/tibet/tibetanSociety/images/paran.2002.jpg
http://zt.tibet.cn/tibetzt/woman/album/pic/006/006.jpg
http://img1.travelblog.org/Photos/1878/13079/t/56571-Typical-Tibetan-house-1.jpg
http://www.mark-ju.net/diary/2004/images2/tibetan_house.jpg
http://www.amoymagic.com/Tibet/tibfamily.jpg
http://www.anthro.ucdavis.edu/card/usprc/images/terraces.jpg
