The Ecological-Evolutionary Typology of Human Societies and the Evolution of Social Inequality

5.2Importance of Self-Reliance and Obedience in Socialization

The SS has data on the values inculcated in childhood. Two of these values are self-reliance and obedience. As a reflection of the stratification system, self-reliance might represent the relative independence of the individual vis-à-vis the social system, perhaps an indicator of relative equality and freedom. One would also expect self-reliance to be emphasized in societies where individuals are likely to face unexpected and threatening circumstances in the course of their daily activities. Obedience, on the other hand, is likely to be emphasized in societies characterized by strong hierarchies. In such societies, obedience may be essential for survival, if only to avoid running afoul of vengeful leaders.
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Figures 5.1 and 5.2 show the mean values of self-reliance and obedience by type of society, with standard errors of estimate. Each variable is calculated as the average of non-missing values for the emphasis on the value in the socialization of early boys, early girls, late boys, and late girls. Figure 5.1 shows a monotonic decrease in the emphasis on reliance from HG to AG. However, mean self-reliance jumps up for FI and HE, up to the same high levels as for HG. In the case of self-reliance one might speculate about the relative importance of the degree of stratification in the social hierarchy, versus imperatives of the production technology, in determining emphasis on self-reliance. It may be that the decline in emphasis on self-reliance from HG to AG is simply due to the fact that daily life produces fewer unexpected events for people in AG than in HG, and is not a reflection of different degrees of inequality.
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Figure 5.2, on the other hand, shows a mirror pattern in which emphasis on obedience increases monotonically from HG to AG. It is tempting to interpret this pattern as reflecting ideological adaptation to types of societies characterized by increasing degrees of stratification. Emphasis on obedience declines precipitously for FI, as if obedience is much less necessary in societies where dealing with natural elements is crucial for survival. Interestingly, mean obedience shoots up for HE to a level as high as the one for AG. This suggests (compare with Figure 5.2) that people in HE societies need both self-reliance and obedience: self-reliance to deal with unexpected natural and human contingencies when alone, and obedience to maneuver within the relatively strong hierarchical order that characterizes these societies.

6Sexual and Reproductive Inequality

6.1Reproductive Inequality and the Accumulation of Women

By "sexual and reproductive inequality" in this paper I will mean inequality among men in access to women for sexual and reproductive purposes in a context of polygyny.¹ In the pre-sociobiological social sciences of the first three quarters of the 20^th Century most social scientists dealt with the variation in marriage customs among human societies in a largely descriptive fashion. It was recognized that most societies admitted polygyny (one man, several wives), a minority prescribed strict monogamy for everyone, and very few practiced polyandry (one woman, several husbands). Variation in marriage customs was viewed as resulting from cultural preferences in the same way as choice of residence at marriage or emphasis on the patrilineal or matrilineal lines in tracing descent. Marriage customs, and polygyny in particular, were typically not viewed as an integral mechanism of stratification systems. This largely descriptive and cultural emphasis is reflected in the kind of data that was considered worth keeping for comparative analysis. In EA, for example, the variable Marital Composition: Monogamy and Polygamy (V9) tells us when polygyny is "occasional", and when polygyny is "sororal" (i.e., there is a preference for multiple wives who are sisters), but provides no information on inequality in the distribution of wives in a society. The category "occasional polygyny", for example, may include situations as disparate as a society where a few good hunters have two wives, and one in which the chief monopolizes for himself hundreds of women while other men must be content with one or none at all. It is clear that information on the distribution of wives among men was not considered relevant or interesting. This is unfortunate, because the distribution of wives can potentially provide measures of social inequality that are at once quantitative and strictly comparable across the most diverse societies.

Traditional views on the significance of multiple wives seem to fall into two categories: (1) multiple wives are a mark of high status, a kind of perk akin to fast cars or a corner office; so for example anthropologist Holmberg (1950, cited by Nolan and Lenski 1999:104) says of the Siriono headman "[a]s a mark of status, however, a headman always possesses more than one wife (pp. 59-60)"; (2) multiple wives can be put to work as producers of goods, so the polygynist is, in effect, a kind of early capitalist exploiting his wives' labor (e.g., Divale 2000:137, V860). While these descriptions may seem facetious they are not. It is in fact fascinating to see grown men (and some women) discussing gravely whether women are more advantageously viewed as status symbols or as producers (all the while trying hard to be Marxist about it all), while any adolescent boy with raging hormones can fantasize a more targeted opinion on the true value of women.

The ascent of the evolutionary perspective in the social sciences (whether under the name of sociobiology, evolutionary psychology, or behavioral ecology) has wiped out many old theoretical cobwebs and restored to the forefront the simple idea that in the human species like many others (but not all) males, investing typically less in the offspring, compete for inseminating females, who invest a great deal in each offspring in terms of gestation and care of the infant. In that view observed patterns of polygyny, described as a given distribution of wives among men, are the outcome of complex and intense processes of competition among men for women. The value of multiple wives is not primarily as a symbol of status, nor as a source of surplus value. Women themselves in their role for sex and reproduction are "the real thing", the very object of all the struggling. Women are valuable for men, worth accumulating and fighting for, because they invest so much effort in their offspring. It is for women's parental investment that, ultimately, men are competing.

In an evolutionary perspective the distribution of wives represents the outcome of competition, and measures of inequality in the distribution of wives are fundamental measures of the extent of inequality in a society. Unfortunately, social scientists until recently caught up in a culturalist perspective have not tried to measure inequality in the distribution of women. In the rest of this section I will use two measures that capture aspects of sexual and reproductive inequality.