REPLICATING A MODEL OF AVOIDANCES ACROSS CONTINENTS

Bahattin Tolga Oztan and Douglas R. White

Outline

1. Different Theories about Interpreting Kinship Behaviors (Freud, Murdock, R-B, Eggan, Driver)

2. Forager Avoidances and Joking (previous paper)3. SCCS vs. WNAI (W. Indian) Data: Regression

with Autocorrelation, 2Stage OLS (new!) Wife’s Mother Avoidance Model and Results (focus) Husband’s Father Avoidance Model and Results Wife’s Father Husband’s Mother Wife’s Brother’s Wife

4. Conclusion

Theories on Kinship Behavior Previous theories assign causes to avoidances of

different kinds to 1) Connection to specific incest taboos NO

support 2) The presence of different types of marriage NO These are too specific to explain the general

patterns. 3) Rules of residence, or, more generally, the

“main kinship theory” i.e., residence rules -> inheritance -> descent -> Avoidances? Here we add YES! to Driver’s Crow-Omaha findings

Theories on Kinship Behavior We argue that these stereotyped roles

(avoidances that is) represent phases in evolutionary adaption to selection toward larger cooperative community networks, still at relatively small scales, which are then displaced with the emergence of hierarchical political organization between communities.

In Native America this occurs up to the level of v342 =3: Village or band organization is invoked to form alliances with other groups, no higher (=4) Political organization and the formation of alliances with other groups (extralocal communities)

Avoidances expand kin networks V342: “Political organization and the formation of

alliances with other groups (extralocal communities).” WiMo avoidances rise from 3:40 to 16:22 to 13:25 as formation of alliances rise (Fisher exact pval=0.00000027), and then dips (75:44 :: 4:0, pval=.13). This corresponds to the pattern found by (Oztan and White 2013) for the SCCS world sample, where with increase in political hierarchy there is also a rise and then diminution of WiMo and WiFa avoidances.

Many of these societies are foragers, that is, hunters, fishers and gatherers lacking agriculture and pastoralism.

Western Indian Avoidances

For Driver’s (1966) codes on avoidances, in 125 societies, 35% had avoidances. The % is lower (compared to SCCS) because Gifford, Drucker, Driver, Barnett, Steward, Voegelin,

Essen, Harrington and Ray, Kroeber’s Culture Distribution ethnographers, asked yes/no questions about every type of parent-in-law (WiMo, HuFa, WiFa, HuMo), making negatives more common given the missing data for many SCCS ethnographers.

Language autocorrelation…is huge but

Driver’s (1973:356) review of Avoidances noted that correlation with culture

area explained more of the variance than did any

structure-functional variable.

Athapascan (Na-Dene): right

Penutian

autocorrelation Is controlled, a .20 increase of Rsq from .35 to .55.

Language autocorrelation…is huge but

Athapascan (Na-Dene): right

Driver’s (1973:356) review of Avoidances noted that correlation with culture

area explained more of the variance than did any

structure-functional variable.

Penutian

autocorrelation Is controlled, a .20 increase of Rsq from .35 to .55.

Many of the10 Crow Kin-term societies are Athapascan, especially in the south, after migration. Matriliny is effective for defense.

11 of 13 Omaha Kin-term societies are Penutian, especially in the south.

Forager Avoidances and Joking POPULATION DENSITY: Even though we observe more frequent avoidance

relations than joking relations in societies with higher population density, that is not to say that avoidance replaces joking within certain kind of dyads.

When population density rises, population as a whole rises too and as a result more marriages to non-kin occur in the local population. Thus a greater proportion of avoidance rather than joking behaviors will develop as non-kin persons marry

(Joking is more often expressed among those of the same generation connected by parental and grandparental ties whereas avoidances will occur with the broadening of social networks. To the extent that they each extend potentials for cooperation and conflict resolution. Avoidances do so on a more extended scale and Joking on a smaller scale.)

Tenino Case Study: Horizontal Avoidances

Tenino foragers is an exemplary case study among the 24 forager societies we studied in terms of the structure of the avoidance/joking behavior.

The Dallas Tenino are located at the trading center of Northern Oregon on the south side of the Columbia River.

Tenino men do the long distance trading along rivers or trails between communities and women do the local trading within communities.

In the kinship network, exchanges occur between male partners in long-distance gift-giving notably by WiBr/SiHu.

Tenino Case Study

HZH WBW

Trade Partnership

Avoidance Gift Giving

We argued previously that Avoidances provide a stronger form or at least broader spread of kinship network bonding than Joking.

Eggan, like Radcliffe-Brown, regarded Avoidance as a special form of Respect behaviors “involve[ing] the members of the elementary family as well as parents-in-law….”

Given their perspectives, as we noted above, managing the avoidance of conflict between affinals by the medium of one or more Avoidance behaviors, has the potential of expanding ties between families that both enlarge the circle of alliances and avoid conflict with affinals.

SCCS Data: Regression & Autocorrelation

Previously, we modeled 5 in-law avoidance behaviors as dependent variables. (WiMo,HuFa,WiFa,HuMo,WiBrWi)

Both the Autocorrelation Regression Models remove network lag effects –namely effects of ecology, language and distance – which often cause Galton’s effect and confound results.

SCCS Data: Logistic and Autocorrelation Regression

SCCS Data: Previous Autocorrelation Regression

1 Variables 2 WiMo 3 WiFa 4 HuFa 5 HuMo 6 WBW 7 Sum Frequency

LoPopDen X X X X     4

Lo Hunting   X X X     3

JurisHier1 X X     -X   3

JurisHier2 X       -X   2

JH1 X JH2 -X       -X   2

NuclearFam X         2

LoPDSquared     X X     2

Bio.2     X X     2

Distance 0 0 80% 80% 80% 20% 3x80%

Language 65% 20% 0 0 0 0 1X65%

Ecology 35% 80% 20% 20% 20% 80% 1x80%

Sum 5 3 4 4 3 1 21/40

Cases:Av/total 25/60 7/35 14/50 3/33 7/13    

Frequency of shared predictors for different Avoidance Models

New WNAI Autocorrelation Regression

Crow-Omaha terminology interacts with extended networks to predict WiMo Avoidances in shaping dispersive or integrative networks, and so do matrilineality. Lower Population density (v288) befits forager societies with less political rather than . A later improved model gave similar results.

WNAI Regression Diagnostics

The only weaknesses in the model are (1) Wald: some additional variables may be missing.

(2) The error terms (residuals) are heteroskedastic and not normally distributed.

Conclusion Eggan’s and R-Bs descriptions of mother-in-law avoidance is

that of respectful distance, having nothing to do with conflicts involving co-residence with parents-in-law. There is no evidence In the WNAI or SCCS samples, that these relationships arise from projection of incest taboos, as Murdock and Westermark believed, nor that matrilocal or patrilocal residence that localize women or men are significant predictors of Avoidance, e.g., of the Wife’s Mother or Husband’s Father.

Matrilineality, however, which disperses matrilineage men, is a predictor of avoidance and creates effective defense against raiding, again linking avoidances to extended kin networks.

This fits with extended political alliance networks (v342) and Crow-Omaha extended kinship terminologies as the context of Avoidances in North America, more specific than in the SCCS.

Conclusions, continued

We take the evidence of decline in the evolution of Avoidances with greater complexity to be due to the competition from other forms of integrative hierarchy with the expansion of political complexity.

Avoidance relationships are not based on fear but on respect, and gift-giving following stability in a recent marriage may lead to annulment of Avoidance.

The theory supported here is that of Fred Eggan and Radcliffe-Brown, both for the SCCS and WNAI.

Overall, it is clear that stereotyped Joking behavior promotes cooperation through sexual and nonsexual jesting between close marriageable relatives, and tends to be found in forager societies with small population density, mostly below the threshold at which foragers are forced to aggregate into more fixed communities.

Avoidance behavior occurs most commonly among foragers and their historical descendants, such as horse nomads of the Plains, all of whom are well above the forager packing density. Their origin is in fishing and gathering societies with fixed settlements or seasonal migrations and cohesive groups, often with nuclear families and bilateral kinship networks rather than lineages. Avoidances promote cooperation at a larger scale than Joking because they are associated with marriages that link families who need not be kin-related beforehand, which is a more common occurrence with a kinship network of relatives, e.g., cross-cousins, who are marriageable.

Questions/Discussions

ANY QUESTIONS?