Nydia Ywalmoriel
07-09-2007, 05:04 PM
Afternoon all :)
While procrastinating finishing a final exam this morning and playing random-collision rat browse, I came across this teaser/excerpt in Psychology Today of Miller and Kanazawa's new book: Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters, which contained some interesting cud-chewing fodder.
For the record, I've read Miller and Kanazawa's studies (neither is an evolutionary biologist btw - Miller was (d. 2003) a social psychologist, Kanazawa is an economist), and feel that they frequently appear to mistake a given effect of a formalized social paradigm on behavior (such as reproductive strategies or completed family outcomes) for biological cause, and often invoke biological determinism inappropriately/erroneously as a result; and that their most recent hypothesis (that 'attractive' people have a higher proportion of daughters) is both flawed in its methodology and fails to show significance, although they have done some brilliant work in the past specific to the social psychology realm.
I also feel that they tend to be too reductionist in general with regard to the value of 'beauty above all else' for females; while not to be discounted, this primacy is to a significant degree an effect seen in societies where women don't have a major place at the power table. In cases where women *have* power/money/status/essential skills these become important selection criteria, (and women who have them tend to themselves select upon more male-typical attributes), and even when where women are largely disenfranchised, non-beauty related selection criteria show up in everything from bride-prices/dowry ("She's got HUGE... tracts of land" ;) ) to very down-to-brass-tacks assessment of how much essential work the woman can do ("She must be strong... to carry wood down from the mountains" (quote from an Afghan man asked in a large scale study of what men look for in women))... but I digress... already ;).
The Psychology Today article: http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/pto-20070622-000002.xml is both tittilating and sure to increase sales of their book, and while I figure it'll be great fun and games to go down and argue the merits of the items on their list point by point, I'd like to concentrate on their contentions dealing with monogamy vs polygyny (social constructs as well as biological realities, to be sure, but close to the nexus of the male-female mating strategy conflict), and I was actually intrigued by one of their hypothesis clusters (as well as amused to see that polyandry, which is much more common than one might think, particularly depending on how one defines it, was dismissed and inappropriately ignored).
In general, the common gestalt in much of the world is that men are 'naturally' polygynous and that if men 'had their way', they would have as many wives/mistresses as they could. While there is certainly biological truth in that (although I've known a few truly and fundamentally monogamous men and in fact been married to one :) ), it ignores, Miller and Kanazawa contend, the biological reality that polygyny does not benefit, but rather harms, the majority of men (at least as far as their reproductive opprotunities go - witness all the young men being cast out of those fundamentalist Mormon polygynous cults for a close-to-home example), and that the majority of modern civilizations are formally codified as monogamous precisely *because* it benefits the majority of men.
Women, on the other hand, benefit (in a strictly biological sense) from polygyny, as it enables them to select more freely from the pool of available men in favor of individuals who possess both good genes and thre ability to provide well for their offspring; additional benefits are provided in the form of extra female hands to help with childrearing and other chores, improving fitness.
And at long last we get to where I was going in all this. Polygyny, if one draws Miller and Kanazawa's points to their logical conclusion, is a double-edged sword, for women in particular; for while it potentially benefits them biologically, when it is formally codified into a society, the results are frequently very harmful to women from a status, freedom, and human rights perspective.
In many subsistence level societies, or, one might argue, modern America and the West, women in fact *do* shop around for the 'best deal' they can make whether the object of their selection is already married or not, either formally (through serial monogamy) or informally; but interestingly, it is precisely in some societies where polygyny is formally accepted and encoded into law, making women 'scarce' to the majority of men, that women have the least control over their fates - relegated not to worthless, but priceless, objects which ironically are treated with contempt born of a deep-seated fear that if women are allowed any rights or education at all that they will use that knowledge/power to select (not them); generations of, for lack of a better word, sour grapes.
Another British (Oxford) sociologist cited in the Psychology Today article (and included in Miller/Kanazawa), Diego Gambetta, goes one further, citing the specific case of Arab Muslim societies with formalized polygyny; and provocatively (and perhaps spuriously, as modern Islamofascism *is* a modern phenomenon), hypothesizes that the reason the overwhelming number of suicide bombers are young Islamic males ties in to lack of prospects for access to women (and the promise of 72 virgins in heaven). This seems to be reaching in my mind because polygyny is *not* practiced with great enough frequency in the modern Islamic world to suck a large enough proportion of women out of the market as to create an army of discontented men on that basis alone; but it is interesting that this same social construct also has extremely punitive laws against adultery or *any* unsanctioned sexual behavior, making such things as prostitution, a common pressure relief valve for excess young buck testosterone, largely unavailable (as well as alcohol, also prohibited under Sharia law!), extreme modesty and movement codes for women, etc. I would submit that it is some of these other features of the social construct, beyond the polygyny itself, that create the true breeding ground for the increased violence of the society and that once again the sociologists are confusing cause and effect... but it has just enough of a ring of truth to it, especially to the uninformed and potentially biased Western mind, to be quite seductive, doesn't it?
For if polygyny and its resulting scarcity is to blame for the increased violence of men (and reduced status for women), then what does one make of *voluntary* scarcity creation (of females through female infanticide, feticide, or neglect) on a large scale, such as happens in India, China, and to a much less reported degree in South America? Why aren't these cultures creating suicide bombers? (I'm speaking independently of the whole 'why does female infanticide happen' issue, which is a whole separate can of worms)
Regarding the whole monogamy/polygamy debate (and I've changed terms here because I'm now being inclusive of both genders), I find it interesting that some of the very social phenomena we currently see in the West that many decry as signs of 'degeneracy' actually show signs of being a very healthy compromise for both genders with regard to the reproductive fitness dance, and throw us clear back to the pattern we engaged in as subsistence level indigenous peoples (and which can still be seen in certain tribes today); that one's formal marriage status is becoming increasingly irrelevant (or if not irrelevant, worked around via serial monogamy) with regard to selecting who one is going to parent with and parental investment strategies (particularly by men) are also undergoing a shift.
This has gone on way too long as usual, and I have a lot more to say on the topic, but I'd just like to add as a snarky aside to point #5 on the Psychology Today 'hot list' ("Having sons reduces the liklihood of divorce") that I was secretly, in the depths of my bitter little heart, gleeful to hear that Al Gore's son (his 5th child, Mr Environment kept on going for that boy) went into drug rehab following troubles with the law last week. What were your first four beautiful children with the double X, eh Mr. Gore? Chopped liver?
/delicately wipes foam from mouth :)
I guess I'd better get back to this stinking mess of grading, and hope you guys have as much, erm, fun with this basket of snakes as I did...
Regards,
Nydia
While procrastinating finishing a final exam this morning and playing random-collision rat browse, I came across this teaser/excerpt in Psychology Today of Miller and Kanazawa's new book: Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters, which contained some interesting cud-chewing fodder.
For the record, I've read Miller and Kanazawa's studies (neither is an evolutionary biologist btw - Miller was (d. 2003) a social psychologist, Kanazawa is an economist), and feel that they frequently appear to mistake a given effect of a formalized social paradigm on behavior (such as reproductive strategies or completed family outcomes) for biological cause, and often invoke biological determinism inappropriately/erroneously as a result; and that their most recent hypothesis (that 'attractive' people have a higher proportion of daughters) is both flawed in its methodology and fails to show significance, although they have done some brilliant work in the past specific to the social psychology realm.
I also feel that they tend to be too reductionist in general with regard to the value of 'beauty above all else' for females; while not to be discounted, this primacy is to a significant degree an effect seen in societies where women don't have a major place at the power table. In cases where women *have* power/money/status/essential skills these become important selection criteria, (and women who have them tend to themselves select upon more male-typical attributes), and even when where women are largely disenfranchised, non-beauty related selection criteria show up in everything from bride-prices/dowry ("She's got HUGE... tracts of land" ;) ) to very down-to-brass-tacks assessment of how much essential work the woman can do ("She must be strong... to carry wood down from the mountains" (quote from an Afghan man asked in a large scale study of what men look for in women))... but I digress... already ;).
The Psychology Today article: http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/pto-20070622-000002.xml is both tittilating and sure to increase sales of their book, and while I figure it'll be great fun and games to go down and argue the merits of the items on their list point by point, I'd like to concentrate on their contentions dealing with monogamy vs polygyny (social constructs as well as biological realities, to be sure, but close to the nexus of the male-female mating strategy conflict), and I was actually intrigued by one of their hypothesis clusters (as well as amused to see that polyandry, which is much more common than one might think, particularly depending on how one defines it, was dismissed and inappropriately ignored).
In general, the common gestalt in much of the world is that men are 'naturally' polygynous and that if men 'had their way', they would have as many wives/mistresses as they could. While there is certainly biological truth in that (although I've known a few truly and fundamentally monogamous men and in fact been married to one :) ), it ignores, Miller and Kanazawa contend, the biological reality that polygyny does not benefit, but rather harms, the majority of men (at least as far as their reproductive opprotunities go - witness all the young men being cast out of those fundamentalist Mormon polygynous cults for a close-to-home example), and that the majority of modern civilizations are formally codified as monogamous precisely *because* it benefits the majority of men.
Women, on the other hand, benefit (in a strictly biological sense) from polygyny, as it enables them to select more freely from the pool of available men in favor of individuals who possess both good genes and thre ability to provide well for their offspring; additional benefits are provided in the form of extra female hands to help with childrearing and other chores, improving fitness.
And at long last we get to where I was going in all this. Polygyny, if one draws Miller and Kanazawa's points to their logical conclusion, is a double-edged sword, for women in particular; for while it potentially benefits them biologically, when it is formally codified into a society, the results are frequently very harmful to women from a status, freedom, and human rights perspective.
In many subsistence level societies, or, one might argue, modern America and the West, women in fact *do* shop around for the 'best deal' they can make whether the object of their selection is already married or not, either formally (through serial monogamy) or informally; but interestingly, it is precisely in some societies where polygyny is formally accepted and encoded into law, making women 'scarce' to the majority of men, that women have the least control over their fates - relegated not to worthless, but priceless, objects which ironically are treated with contempt born of a deep-seated fear that if women are allowed any rights or education at all that they will use that knowledge/power to select (not them); generations of, for lack of a better word, sour grapes.
Another British (Oxford) sociologist cited in the Psychology Today article (and included in Miller/Kanazawa), Diego Gambetta, goes one further, citing the specific case of Arab Muslim societies with formalized polygyny; and provocatively (and perhaps spuriously, as modern Islamofascism *is* a modern phenomenon), hypothesizes that the reason the overwhelming number of suicide bombers are young Islamic males ties in to lack of prospects for access to women (and the promise of 72 virgins in heaven). This seems to be reaching in my mind because polygyny is *not* practiced with great enough frequency in the modern Islamic world to suck a large enough proportion of women out of the market as to create an army of discontented men on that basis alone; but it is interesting that this same social construct also has extremely punitive laws against adultery or *any* unsanctioned sexual behavior, making such things as prostitution, a common pressure relief valve for excess young buck testosterone, largely unavailable (as well as alcohol, also prohibited under Sharia law!), extreme modesty and movement codes for women, etc. I would submit that it is some of these other features of the social construct, beyond the polygyny itself, that create the true breeding ground for the increased violence of the society and that once again the sociologists are confusing cause and effect... but it has just enough of a ring of truth to it, especially to the uninformed and potentially biased Western mind, to be quite seductive, doesn't it?
For if polygyny and its resulting scarcity is to blame for the increased violence of men (and reduced status for women), then what does one make of *voluntary* scarcity creation (of females through female infanticide, feticide, or neglect) on a large scale, such as happens in India, China, and to a much less reported degree in South America? Why aren't these cultures creating suicide bombers? (I'm speaking independently of the whole 'why does female infanticide happen' issue, which is a whole separate can of worms)
Regarding the whole monogamy/polygamy debate (and I've changed terms here because I'm now being inclusive of both genders), I find it interesting that some of the very social phenomena we currently see in the West that many decry as signs of 'degeneracy' actually show signs of being a very healthy compromise for both genders with regard to the reproductive fitness dance, and throw us clear back to the pattern we engaged in as subsistence level indigenous peoples (and which can still be seen in certain tribes today); that one's formal marriage status is becoming increasingly irrelevant (or if not irrelevant, worked around via serial monogamy) with regard to selecting who one is going to parent with and parental investment strategies (particularly by men) are also undergoing a shift.
This has gone on way too long as usual, and I have a lot more to say on the topic, but I'd just like to add as a snarky aside to point #5 on the Psychology Today 'hot list' ("Having sons reduces the liklihood of divorce") that I was secretly, in the depths of my bitter little heart, gleeful to hear that Al Gore's son (his 5th child, Mr Environment kept on going for that boy) went into drug rehab following troubles with the law last week. What were your first four beautiful children with the double X, eh Mr. Gore? Chopped liver?
/delicately wipes foam from mouth :)
I guess I'd better get back to this stinking mess of grading, and hope you guys have as much, erm, fun with this basket of snakes as I did...
Regards,
Nydia