Cover: Primeval Kinship: How Pair-Bonding Gave Birth to Human Society, from Harvard University PressCover: Primeval Kinship in PAPERBACK

Primeval Kinship

How Pair-Bonding Gave Birth to Human Society

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PAPERBACK

$24.00 • £17.95 • €21.60

ISBN 9780674046412

Publication: March 2010

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368 pages

6-1/8 x 9-1/4 inches

17 line illustrations

World

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    • Preface
      • 1. The Question of the Origin of Human Society
        • A Forsaken Quest
        • The Deep Structure of Human Societies
    • I. Primatologists As Evolutionary Historians
      • 2. Primatology and the Evolution of Human Behavior
        • The Phylogenetic Decomposition Principle
        • Reconstructing the Exogamy Configuration
      • 3. The Uterine Kinship Legacy
        • Primatological Theories and Primate Legacies
        • Appraising Primate Kinship
        • The Domain of Uterine Kindred in Primates
        • How Are Uterine Kin Recognized?
        • The Origin of Group-wide Kinship Structures
      • 4. From Biological to Cultural Kinship
        • Beyond Consanguineal Kinship
        • The “Genealogical Unity of Mankind”
        • The Bilateral Character of Human Kinship
      • 5. The Incest Avoidance Legacy
        • Elements of a Primatological Theory of Incest Avoidance
        • Humankind’s Primate Heritage
      • 6. From Behavioral Regularities to Institutionalized Rules
        • The Anthropologists’ Treatment of the Primate Data
        • The Westermarck Knot
        • The Morality Problem
        • Lessons from Comparative Anatomy
    • II. The Exogamy Configuration Decomposed
      • 7. Lévi-Strauss and the Deep Structure of Human Society
        • Reciprocal Exogamy as a Deep Structuring Principle
        • Reciprocal Exogamy as Archaic
        • The Convergence beyond the Critiques
        • Lévi-Strauss and the Primate Data
      • 8. Human Society Out of the Evolutionary Vacuum
        • Leslie White and the Primate Origins of Exogamy
        • Elman Service and the Primitive Exogamous Band
        • Robin Fox and the Initial Deconstruction of Exogamy
      • 9. The Building Blocks of Exogamy
        • Pinpointing the Distinctiveness of Exogamy
        • Reconstructing Human Society: The Task Ahead
        • A Once Irreducible System
    • III. The Exogamy Configuration Reconstructed
      • 10. The Ancestral Male Kin Group Hypothesis
        • The Patrilocal Band Model
        • Male Philopatry in Apes
        • The Homology Hypothesis
        • Updating the Ancestral Male Kin Group Hypothesis
        • The Gorilla Alternative
      • 11. The Evolutionary History of Pair-Bonding
        • The “Invariant Core of the Family”
        • Pair-Bonds as Parental Partnerships
        • The Pitfall of the Modern Family Reference
        • A Two-Step Evolutionary Sequence
        • Monogamy as a Special Case of Polygyny
        • The Evolutionary History of the Sexual Division of Labor
      • 12. Pair-Bonding and the Reinvention of Kinship
        • The Fundamental Equation of the Exogamy Configuration
        • Kinship in the Ancestral Male Kin Group
        • Fatherhood
        • The Institutionalized Denial of Paternity
        • The Development of Agnatic Kinship Structures
      • 13. Biparentality and the Transformation of Siblingships
        • Chimpanzee Siblingships
        • Fatherhood and the Evolution of Strong Brotherhoods
        • Fatherhood and the Brother–Sister Bond
        • The Added Effect of Shorter Interbirth Intervals
      • 14. Beyond the Local Group: The Rise of the Tribe
        • Male Pacification as a Prerequisite for the Tribe
        • Females as Peacemakers: The Consanguinity Route
        • Females as Peacemakers: The Affinity Route
        • The Initial Impetus
        • The Prelinguistic Tribe
      • 15. From Male Philopatry to Residential Diversity
        • Some Serious Discrepancies
        • The Emergence of Residential Diversity
        • Ancestral Patrilocality and Grandmothering
      • 16. Brothers, Sisters, and the Founding Principle of Exogamy
        • The First Step: Outmarriage
        • Affinal Brotherhoods and the Origin of Exogamy Rules
        • From Siblings-in-Law to Cross-Cousins
        • The “Atom of Kinship” Revisited
    • IV. Unilineal Descent
      • 17. Filiation, Descent, and Ideology
        • The African Model of Unilineal Descent Groups
        • The Chestnut within the Model
      • 18. The Primate Origins of Unilineal Descent Groups
        • Group Membership through Birth
        • Kinship-Based Segmentation
        • The Genealogical Boundaries of Exogamy
        • The Unisexual Transmission of Status
        • Primitive Corporateness
        • A Multilevel Structure of Solidarity
      • 19. The Evolutionary History of Human Descent
        • Female Kin Groups as Precultural Matriclans
        • The Residential Basis of Proto–Descent Groups
        • The Latent Patriclan
        • Matrilineality as a Male Affair
      • 20. Conclusion: Human Society as Contingent
    • References
    • Index

    Awards

    • 2010 W.W. Howells Book Prize, Biological Anthropology Section of the American Anthropological Association
    • Honorable Mention, 2008 Association of American Publishers PROSE Award, Biological Sciences Category
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