REPRODUCTION
IN STRATIFIED SYSTEMS:
DOWRY - establishes a conjugal fund
BRIDE WEALTH -allows removal of the bride and
compensates her family for her capacities to work, reproduce, facilitates
patrilocality
BRIDE SERVICE -recognition of paternity, often means
many years of matrlineal residence
Guaranteed access to resources, rank and limit
numbers of those who will inherit
primogeniture,
ultimo geniture
female
infanticide
hypergyny,
women marry up, cf. our society
dowry
competition
migration
conservatories
reproductive
strategy - no temporal delay, nothing to wait for, reproduce as many as you can
- survival or success or children random event, not in the ability of parents
to influence
Impact of relations between adults and children,
much more complicated strategies, balancing children:
predicted
number of surviving children against predicted resources
stratification
of family formation strategies: dowry,
bride wealth, bride service,
patrilocal vs.
matrilocal, dowry doesn't buy matrilocality
Population explosion - out of lower level
reproductive strategy
- large numbers of children surviving, no cultural constraints leading parents to cut back, especially under colonizing conditions; black plague, growth of cities for surplus populations cities as population sinks.
Low Population Density cf. High Density systems
LD HD
not enough people too many people versus
resources
land a free good, access open to all, access to resources carefully
passed between
usufruct system of basic resource generations, limitation of
number of
potential
inheritors, demographic
or
fertility transition long preceded
birth
control in the west, large farm
families
of the 19th c. typical of
colonizers
kinship
more lineal,usually male
positional success, lateral inheritance,
family estate, passed down
sex linked, social focus on peers not sex linked, daughters
can inherit
widow inheritance, levirate social focus
vertical
no alienation of birth right disinheritance,
birth right defined, bastardy
wealth - measured in human beings wealth measured in access
and control of resources
fosterage, no adoption adoption, children without
birthrights or no
children unlikely to leave hands of access to resources
available for adoption,
relatives except as apprentices or adoption of nonkin very
late in human history
as hostages used
mainly to fill gaps in descent lines
due
to overnarrowing
bridge wealth or bride service dowry, female
infanticide
Universal marriage for women and usually Designated reproduction, high
percentage of
early reproduction celibates and late
marriage, wait for
access
to resources (farm)
Real differences in
the quality of men, hypergyny
dowry
system
Female incapacitation.
Slide list:
1. Decorated female Kung, nudity and jewelry
The female body is not a threat to the social order; they wear clothing not to hide but wear jewelry to enhance
Attempt to exclude men. Women unveil at home with each other. The practice is based on the belief that women are highly erotic to men; their hair, hands, feet, drive men to a frenzy and that women are unable to say no.
Designated as Paramilitary women, highly unlikely. Wearing clothing which is very incapacitating: veils, silks and high heels
7. Elaborate clothing: Hererro
8. Footbinding:
example of female incapacitation
Most extreme at the top of social pyramid, where women can afford to be totally dependent.
9. Footbinding china, 2000 year old pattern
erotic, beautiful, odes
Highest class had 3” feet and were carried; middle class had 5” middle class, cane; regular farmers couldn’t afford to bind feet because female labor too valuable.
10. Painful, growth patterns, young girls
Communist china
11. Corseting
16th-end of 19th century in Europe, same pattern of intensity increasing with brief respite in the early 19th c
hour glass figure, hoop skirts, exaggeration of Singh’s waist to hip ratio
12. Began at puberty with a training corset
13. Muscles of the back and stomach are permanently affected.
14. Intensity by class—peasants wore corsets for special occasions and church (similar to stiletto heels today), nobility wore them day and night, attaining a 12” waist.
15. Beach in Israel: Israeli sunbathers and traditional Muslim woman
Impact on social stratification:
Women move up through powers of reproduction
Polygyny - men at the top have multiple wives and many children while men at the bottom often assume celibate roles with higher mortality (church, military, conquest).
