Duran Bell

Hunting and nuclear families: some lessons from the Hadza about men's work

Hadza hunter-gatherers display economic and social features usually assumed to indicate the dependence of wives and children on provisioning husbands and fathers. The wives and children of better Hadza hunters have been found to be better-nourished, consistent with the assumption that men hunt to provision their families. Yet, as is common among foragers, the Hadza share meat widely. Analyses of meat-sharing data confirm that little of the meat from large prey went to the hunters own household. These analyses also show that neither a mans hunting success nor the time he spent hunting made any difference in how much meat his family got from the kills of others. Here we address questions posed by this set of observations. What explains the better nutrition of the children of better hunters if they did not get differential rations of meat? If better hunters got no more meat for their effort and poorer hunters were not punished with less, what incentive could account for the continuing disproportionate contribution that some men made to the groups nutrition? If women were not dependent on their husbands hunting success for meat, an obvious incentive for women to marry hunters disappears. We briefly consider the implications of these patterns for the evolution of marriage and nuclear families.

The Intake Dispositions of Juvenile Offenders

This article presents the analysis of intake dispositions for a sample of 533 juvenile suspects. By using multinomial logit analysis, we found strong statistical confirmation of the relevance of prior record and demeanor of youth during intake for the selection of intake options by officers in Los Angeles County. The analysis indicates that when other factors are held constant, there is no consistent pattern of differential treatment between black and Mexican-American youth. However, whites are less likely to receive counsel and release, the most lenient option, and a detain petition, the most severe option.

Modes of exchange: Gift and commodity

Abstract In order to understand the differences between gift exchange and commodity exchange, it is useful to consider gift exchange in a formal analytical fashion that permits immediate comparison with the standard formal model of commodity exchange. However, this cannot be done without serious distortion if the neoclassical model of commodity exchange is imposed on the analysis of gifts. Rather, one requires a model of gift exchange to which the specific characteristics of commodity exchange can be appended. Our first task is to disprove the age-old conception that mutually satisfactory (equilibrium) gift exchange relations arise from a balancing of “benefits” between parties; and then we prove that altruism cannot be distinguished from self-interest in an equilibrium exchange relation. We show that if one applies the two forms of exchange, gift and commodity, to a specific exchange process, the resulting exchange ratios may appear to be similar. However, gift exchange differs quite fundamentally from commodity exchange in terms of the rules that characterize equilibrium relations and in terms of the methods by which persons seek to increase their relative gains from trade.

Defining Marriage and Legitimacy

A cross‐culturally valid conception of marriage must begin with a definition of husband‐wife and with a distinction between spouses and lovers. From this perspective we find that marriage is an institution by which men are provided (socially supported) rights to women. Typically, this institution is embedded within a domestic group wherein a multiplicity of other rights and responsibilities are assigned. Hence, the definition of marriage attributable to E. R. Leach confounds domestic rights (which may exist in the absence of marriage) with marital rights. Notes and Queries and Kathleen Gough define marriage by reference to the legitimacy of children. However, legitimacy is a construct oriented toward restricting access to resources on the basis of parentage. In particular, characteristics of parentage are used strategically as a basis for delimiting the set of offspring admissible into the corporate groups to which their fathers or in matrilineal systems their mothers belong. The extent to which legitimacy is tied to marriage is a strategic variable in the control of dominants within a social system. It is often associated with marriage but sometimes not.

Miaohui, the Temples Meeting Festival in North China

We examine the multiple purposes and modalities that converge during a circuit of festivals, miaohui, which temples organize in recognition of local gods and which are attended reciprocally by temple representatives from the surrounding area in North China. The festivals involve intense expressions of devotion to one or more deities, while offering an opportunity for representatives of other villages to seek recognition through rather boisterous drumming and prolonged choreographed dancing. We note also the emergence of Mao as a great god whose legacy as Chairman of the CCP is projected in order to legitimate current Party leadership and their policy of reform while concurrently acting as a powerful denial of those same policies from the perspective of villagers.

Destroying the Remembered and Recovering the Forgotten in Chai Between Traditionalism and Modernity in Beijing

Beijing is currently undergoing a host of dramatic changes, as reflected in the popular symbol chai (see pdf for characters). Chai means destruction; but it also refers to antiquated things or ideas that should be destroyed. By presenting chai, one is able to arouse into memory certain forgotten things that previously rested in the background. However, the reconstructed forgotten memories that one actually remembers differ from the actually forgotten. In this way prevailing Chinese conceptions of contemporary social transformations can be configured into recollections of constructed images of the past; and the past can be lost while being remembered. In this article, this process of creative remembering and forgetting will be illustrated by reference to changes in customs and residential ownership. We shall argue that traditionalism and modernity in contemporary China should be seen as circular transformations between remembering and forgetting.

The structure of rights in the context of private property

Abstract Some rights to resources adhere to individuals on the basis of ascribed characteristics—these are rights of person. These rights are not subject to voluntary alienation. And there are rights that adhere to specific characteristics of resources and are subject to alienation. These are rights in property. However, there has been a systematic tendency to promote property rights at the expense of the rights of person and, in so doing, confound the analysis of the commons, of common property, and of private property. Given a delineation of fundamental concepts, this paper examines critically the foundational works of Demsetz and Coase and shows that their theoretical arguments depend on an implicit denial of all rights of person. It is shown, however, that rights of person are not properly analyzable by the standards that apply to rights in property and that the optimal policy to pursue in contemporary society is to determine a desired configuration rights and responsibilities in combination with rights in property.