More cows, more wives
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More cows, more wives
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Re: More cows, more wives
#2Not an anthropologist - but instead of "How farming promotes inequality", I'd frame it as "How resource-producing capital promotes inequality". It could be livestock in a migratory herding society, or boats and nets when those were critical for fishing, or whatever.
> In contemporary Western societies, unigeniture is either considered wrong or is illegal; we no longer differentiate between legitimate and illegitimate offspring...
At best, those are common ideals in Western society. Try talking to an old attorney who does family law.
Also worth a mention - in primitive conditions, polygamy can speed the spread of highly beneficial genes through the society. The textbook case is immune system genes - historically, disease killed a lot of our ancestors.
Re: More cows, more wives
#3Eden was probably just a metaphor for life before agriculture
Re: More cows, more wives
#4[flagged]
Re: More cows, more wives
#5Not an anthropologist - but instead of "How farming promotes inequality", I'd frame it as "How resource-producing capital promotes inequality". It could be livestock in a migratory herding society, or boats and nets when those were critical for fishing, or whatever. > In contemporary Western societies, unigeniture is either considered wrong or is illegal; we no longer differentiate between legitimate and illegitimate…
> I'd frame it as "How resource-producing capital promotes inequality". It could be livestock in a migratory herding society, or boats and nets when those were critical for fishing, or whatever.
I agree, but nitpick: capital by definition can be put to use to produce or gather something. So resource-producing capital is redundant.
Re: More cows, more wives
#6> So how does one explain the parts of the world, like Europe and large parts of Asia, that are unequal yet predominantly monogamous?
Note that when we talk about polygamy in the past, it's about, like in TFA, a man with many wives. Not a woman with many men.
How does the modern "free" and "liberated" world reconcile that with feminism? When we talk about modern-day polygamous societies, it's basically islam. And islam is a highly patriarcal society.
So what's the take of feminists on these facts?
Re: More cows, more wives
#7> So how does one explain the parts of the world, like Europe and large parts of Asia, that are unequal yet predominantly monogamous? Note that when we talk about polygamy in the past, it's about, like in TFA, a man with many wives. Not a woman with many men. How does the modern "free" and "liberated" world reconcile that with feminism? When we talk about modern-day polygamous societies, it's basically islam. And isl…
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Re: More cows, more wives
#8Enjoyable read. I've long since been wondering whether the low birth rates have something to do with the insecurity that surrounds modern day marriages. If you're a woman you don't want to invest in children, only to be divorced and left to raise the child of your now No.1 enemy. If you're a man, the insecurity is around whether the child is yours and also whether your wife will later divorce you and your child be taken away from you (sure visitation rights, but pratically the child grows up in the household of another man, if she remarries).
Re: More cows, more wives
#9Enjoyable read. I've long since been wondering whether the low birth rates have something to do with the insecurity that surrounds modern day marriages. If you're a woman you don't want to invest in children, only to be divorced and left to raise the child of your now No.1 enemy. If you're a man, the insecurity is around whether the child is yours and also whether your wife will later divorce you and your child be ta…
75% of divorces are initiated by women in the US. If college educated that number jumps to 90%. Divorce as an mechanism, is almost entirely used by women.
Re: More cows, more wives
#10Not an anthropologist - but instead of "How farming promotes inequality", I'd frame it as "How resource-producing capital promotes inequality". It could be livestock in a migratory herding society, or boats and nets when those were critical for fishing, or whatever. > In contemporary Western societies, unigeniture is either considered wrong or is illegal; we no longer differentiate between legitimate and illegitimate…
> I'd frame it as "How resource-producing capital promotes inequality". It could be livestock in a migratory herding society, or boats and nets when those were critical for fishing, or whatever. I agree, but nitpick: capital by definition can be put to use to produce or gather something. So resource-producing capital is redundant.
Yes-ish? I'm not a CPA or MBA (ditto most folks here) but looked at a few online dictionaries for "capital". From cases like gold in a hunter-gatherer society - a status-signaling luxury and trade good, but you probably can't get much more than perishable foods or nicer stone tools in exchange - it seemed worth the clarifying/emphasizing redundancy.