not selfish gene theory!

[Maureen Therese Anderson]

Hi Charles:

>Charles: Sounds like Sahlinsism. Nature is a necessary but not sufficient
>condition for determining human activity. Or since nature is a constant
>throughout the human species, it as a constant cannot explain the
>differences between different cultures or societies. A variable can't be
>explained by a constant ( Leslie White)

mta: Yes a Sahlinsism, but at such a level of generality many other isms as
well, e.g., the "emergent levels" analysis could just as easily come from a
Roy Bhaskar vat or from many others.

>((((((((((((((

>Charles [re kinship as culture not bio]: Maureen, doesn't the logic of
>marrying out come in here too ? The logic of the incest taboo ? Marriages
>are for peace between different groups.
>
>If human conduct were based on the selfish gene, individuals would be
>motivated to reproduce with their closest biological associates , so as to
>maximize fertility for their genes or genes closest to their's, no ? But
>instead we have the incest taboo, forbidding sex with those genetically
>close.

mta: Yeah I agree, incest avoidance is another huge nail in the selfish-gene
coffin, but maybe a nail that simultaneously shows how the emergent
"culture" level doesn't mean we're cut loose from our biology.  In fact it
might be a good example of interplay between our biological
givens and that "culture" level.

Because as I understand it, current kinship theory (or more precisely:
theory I'm familiar with and find plausible) pokes holes in the
"alliance-theory of incest taboo" as well.  Not least because L-S's theory
ends up conflating "incest avoidance" with exogamy and sex with marriage
(both "taboos" in kinship analysis, and anyway the latter something every
highschool kid knows ain't true).  But L-S's basic insight is still key in
these incest-theories since it draws out the salience of a family being
product of spouses from two different families, presents a dynamic model of
family structure, with on-going dialectics between inter- and intrafamily
relations.

And actually the whole thing meets up with what you were saying over on the
Ehrenreich thread about the relatively long childhoods of humans.  This
prolonged dependence, a *biological* fact, has a "cultural" corollary:
human kids are socialized.  Socialization theories of incest-avoidance
look at how family dependency is a relationship that's inherently
contradictory: prolonged dependence (involving lots of introjection)
is a requirement, but at the same time it's a training for independence,
for partially repudiating those attachments for relations outside the
family.  It seems to call for a complex psychological capacity to
withstand the affective ambivalence, a capacity that seems to not be very
compatible with the emotional structure of sex-the-activity.  Such an
incompatibility would make incestuous "marriages" a dicey proposition.
However since we're taking about a psychological tendency, not genetic
hard-wiring, incest can and does take place even where it's proscribed.
And this kind of perspective also accounts for the fact that in places
where incest isn't "culturally" forbidden, there's both a very strong
pattern of exogamy in place, as well as a clear distinction between sex and
marriage (or put differently: where sexuality isn't made into a social
metaphor for "reproduction," as it's been in the Christian West).

So here's a broad "cultural" tendency which is informed by our biology (=
species need for long, socializing childhoods), but "biological" only in an
indirect, limiting way and not an "instinct."  In fact, far from hard-wired,
"culture" ocassionally overrides this bio-psychological-social
tendency.  There are a number of places where incest has been culturally
prescribed--most famously those Egyptian brother-sister marriages, but
likewise with Incas, Hawaiians, etc.  As cultural practice it's mostly but
not exclusively associated with (power-preserving) royalty.

btw, Charles, a related point.  In another thread you proposed that
as long as there's no male supremacy there's nothing wrong with a div of
labor between productive-men and reproductive-women.  I'd be careful about
going too far with that one.  Or put differently, I'd be careful about how
difficult it would ever be to realize that "as long as."  Women's
association with biological reproduction and child-rearing (which is all
about  _social_ production and reproduction, but of course that's
downplayed) associates them more with the domestic sphere and "intra"-group
relations.  That becomes their specialized domain.  Meanwhile
men become more associated with intergroup-relations and the
"public" sphere.  That becomes their relative specialty.

There seems to be a symbolic assymetry built into that dynamic, one which
precludes the kind of separate-but-equal you were speculating on--an
assymetry that disadvatages the ones less involved in the "higher" levels of
social organization.  By higher level I don't mean morally higher (lots of
capitalist ideology of course posits the domestic sphere as the morally
pure realm and sanctifies its women), but higher in the sense of
involvement in higher levels of encompassment of the whole social formation
(of which "domestic" units form parts).  From the point of view of the
extra-domestic level, the domestic level is the "marked" one, and
the public, "inter-group" level the proverbial "unmarked" one.  And this
seems to be the case in both class and non-class societies.  So while we
should of course be struggling to show all the hard energies that go into
women's work in the domestic sphere, we should bear in mind that as long
as women are more confined to the domestic sphere, the basic assymetry will
probably remain.


Maureen