Demographic Regimes and Kinship Systems

University Of California-Berkeley, Berkeley CA

Investigators

Abstract

Kinship systems which define sets of allies and potential enemies play a central role in the life of anthropological populations, from foragers to nomads to peasants. The number and kinds of kin in a society are produced by the demographic rates of its population. Such populations are usually small, poorly buffered from environmental fluctuations, and subject to random variation in rates. This pilot research tests through simulation the effects of unstable booms and busts in demographic rates on the number of siblings, cousins, and other relatives in small populations. The model will distinguish cohort effects from period effects and will control the effects of randomness due to small sample sizes. Using the simulation program SOCSIM, the researcher will vary fertility, incest prohibitions, patterns of exogamy and random demographic shocks. The fundamental question to be examined is whether the simple picture of sharp kinship responses to demographic change, and thus the plausible political outcomes of such changes, would remain detectable under realistic conditions of randomness and small population change. This exploratory research has implications for our understanding of native models of kinship which group different genealogical types into the same named social role categories, thus overriding demographic inequalities by linguistic classification.