On Natural Selection and the Inheritance of Wealth [and Comments and Reply]

Hartung, John; Abelson, Andrew; Basu, Amitabha; Basu, Mahadeb P.; Beals, Kenneth L.; Chiarelli, B.; Curtain, Cyril C.; Edwards, Charles R.; Fix, Alan G.; Korey, Kenneth A.; Majumder, Partha P.; Mavalwala, Jamshed; Sharma, Abhimanyu; Wood, Corinne Shear

doi:10.1086/201799

Cited by 122 publications

(48 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…However, wealth inheritance to daughters is rare, probably because of the additional benefits of wealth to sons compared to daughters. Wealth often has more effect on male RS than female RS; in such cases, parents will maximise their inclusive fitness by transmitting wealth to sons (Hartung, 1976(Hartung, , 1982Mace, 1996;Trivers & Willard, 1973).…”

Section: Daughter-biased Grandparental and Parental Investmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Matriliny as daughter-biased investment

Holden

Sear

Mace

2003

Evolution and Human Behavior

139

127

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From an evolutionary perspective, matriliny presents a puzzle because men in matrilineal societies transmit wealth to their sisters' sons, to whom they are only half as related as to their own sons. It has been argued that such systems would only maximise fitness under unrealistically high levels of paternity uncertainty. In this paper, we propose that matriliny can arise from daughterbiased investment by parents and/or grandparents. We show that daughter-biased investment is adaptive if the marginal benefit of wealth to sons (compared to daughters) does not outweigh the risk of nonpaternity in sons' offspring. We argue that such conditions will be rare where resourceholding polygyny is prevalent but could otherwise be widespread under even moderate levels of paternity uncertainty. The daughter-biased investment model explains two well-known characteristics of matrilineal descent: (a) matriliny's association with high levels of paternity uncertainty and (b) matriliny's ecological correlates, including its association with horticulture, its rarity in pastoralist and agro-pastoralist societies, and the tendency for matriliny to be replaced by sonbiased inheritance during economic development. We present data on wealth, sex, and reproductive success (RS) in two African societies, the matrilineal Chewa in Malawi and patrilineal Gabbra in Kenya, which support the daughter-biased investment theory. D

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Section: Daughter-biased Grandparental and Parental Investmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Matriliny as daughter-biased investment

Holden

Sear

Mace

2003

Evolution and Human Behavior

139

127

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“…In particular, explanations were offered for `kinship' patterns; unilineal descent (matrilineal and patrilineal descent groups), and phenomena such as the avunculate (the `mother's brother'). These Darwinian Anthropology approaches all followed essentially the same format and assumptions, and were initiated by Richard Alexander's early paper discussing potential application of Inclusive Fitness theory (here conceptualised as `kin selection') to human data (Alexander 1974;Greene 1978;Kurland 1979;Irons 1979;Gaulin & Schlegel 1980, Flinn 1981, Hartung 1985.…”

Section: Darwinian Anthropology -Overviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This is problematic both in the concept of an `individual strategy' itself, and for the fact that it inevitably has to focus the analysis on the strategies of individual males or females, or both. Most of the Darwinian Anthropology treatments focussed on the strategy of males, as Hartung (1985) pointed out. This was typical of sociobiological approaches (see Zihlman 1981, chapter 1.3.2)…”

Section: Emphasis In Original)mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…(Flinn 1981,448) Although their intention is not to question the assumed biological norms of male-female bonding that their own model relies upon, between them these treatments amply demonstrate that sexual bonding norms are non-exclusive in many societies. Overall, is such a substantial incidence of non-exclusive sexual relationships in various human societies really best understood as a culturally imposed (Hartung 1985) straying away from a more natural (and adaptive) pattern of sexual exclusivity?…”

Section: The Sexual Relationshipmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Avuncular inheritance is indeed crossculturally associated with conditions conductive to low levels of paternity confidence (Flinn, 1981;Gaulin & Schlegel, 1980), and if those levels are seldom or never quite low enough to make the sisters' sons closer kinsmen than wives' sons, we should remember that these inheritance decisions are not the man's alone and that his parents can always be surer of their relationship to his sister's children than to his own children (Flinn, 1981;Hartung, 1985). " (Daly et al 1997,274) Daly and Wilson go on to question the accuracy of Sahlins' (1976) summary that human `kinship' patterns are potentially independent of consanguinity.…”

Section: Proximate Mechanismsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Social Bonding and Nurture Kinship: Compatibility between Cultural and Biological Approaches

Holland

2004

SSRN Journal

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Abstract''`ýýThe current thesis aims to clarify some aspects of the relationship between biology and social bonds. The central task is to demonstrate that, despite clear problems of some past approaches claiming to represent biology, there is non-reductive compatibility between the perspective from cultural approaches documenting processes of social bonding in humans and the perspective from basic biological theory. In demonstrating this compatibility, the thesis also attempts to contribute to delineating the utility and limits of applying insights from biology to understanding aspects of human social behaviour, and to sociological study in general. The areas of social bonding and social relationships under focus are mainly at the level of individuals and primary social groups, rather than a structural-functional approach often employed in classical sociology of the family and comparative sociology.The thesis initially reviews recent cultural approaches to understanding social bonding, and notes the potential academic value of a clarification of the association between social kinship and physical ('related by blood') kinship. In reviewing biological theory on social bonding and social behaviour, it is argued that classic sociobiological interpretations of this biological theory are erroneous in some crucial respects, and a different interpretation is argued for. Evidence on processes mediating social bonding in social mammals and particularly in primates is reviewed. It is demonstrated that circumstantial, social and contextual 'cues' typically mediate the formation of primary social bonds in these species, not genealogical relationship per se, and that these findings are compatible with basic biological theory. In the human case, it is demonstrated that the current interpretation of biological theory is also compatible with established disciplines closely associated with detailing mechanisms of social bonding (such as attachment theory). The consensus here is again that social bonds are mediated by various social and contextual cues rather than genealogical relationship per se. Various useful feedback has been provided by reviewers of earlier drafts of the thesis.My thanks especially to

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