Cover: Primeval Kinship: How Pair-Bonding Gave Birth to Human Society, from Harvard University Press Cover: 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
    Celebrating 100 Years of Excellence in Publishing: Harvard University Press Centennial, 1913-2013 [Picture of birthday cake]