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Christian Moon's avatar

Wealthy societies tend to stigmatise divorce. Let’s de-stigmatise divorce and see what happens to wealth.

Why are you like this?

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Unirt's avatar
3dEdited

Surely she was talking about different wealthy societies than ours, those that existed a long time ago? When I think about what I've read from anthropologists' accounts of non-wealthy societies, it seems women had better chances of escape. Yanomamö women mistreated by husbands sometimes took their kids and marched through the jungle to another group. Sounds much harder to pull off if you're a woman in a tight, well-organized and wealthy clan society.

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Trey Fitzpatrick's avatar

Great piece thank you. As I'm sure you're aware, Joseph Henrich in "The WEIRDest People in the World" touches on similar themes of family structure, the Church's crushing of cousin marriage, etc. New subscriber, am going over your previous articles now, thank you very much, looking forward to your book.

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TBri's avatar

So an obvious question is, what happened to the younger sons, who didn't inherit much?

Girls had value as possible bargaining chips. Younger sons were likely more a danger to family stability than a benefit.

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Seth Benzell's avatar

You might be interested in my paper on royal marriages in Europe -- happy to answer any questions about it: https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/app.20180521

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Alice Evans's avatar

Hello Seth, yes! It’s hyperlinked above, under “Similarly in Europe, royal inter-marriages fostered peace”. 😀

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Seth Benzell's avatar

Ahh sorry I missed that- glad you enjoyed the article, great post!

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Alice Evans's avatar

Blame my very short writing style!

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Graham Cunningham's avatar

An interesting post with its wide geographical scope. I tried to do something similar in this recent post: https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/life-in-the-shadows-of-metoo

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TGGP's avatar

> economic independence

That looks like a link, but it only contains the string "http://In Ireland, the right to divorce was introduced in 1996,"

What was it supposed to link to?

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TGGP's avatar

I see this has now been updated.

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John McIntire's avatar

Point 1 not your strongest. Semi-arid West &. Central Africa (Dakar to Lake Chad) is highly patrilocal and patrilineal with arranged marriages fairly common, plow is recent, irrigation recent and limited, pack animals historical. Divorce common though repressed in sense that divorced woman’s family does not want to take her back without some compensation. Another form of repressing divorce is that step-father unwilling to adopt the children of a divorced woman. We were in the Zarmaganda (western Niger) early 80s, Oz colleague happened to refer to some minor unrelated annoyance as “like a stone in my shoe”. Local survey worker (had lived in Northern Nigeria, spoke good English) explained “Careful with that expression around the Zarma” He said that “the stone in the shoe” in Zarma can refer to the children of a divorced woman who are an impediment to her re-marriage.

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Alice Evans's avatar

But they have herds, no? Inherited wealth.

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John McIntire's avatar

Yes, herds universal as form of inherited wealth among the stock-keeping people (Peulh, Touareg, others) but highly-skewed ownership among farming peoples (Zarma, Mossi, Hausa, Bambara, etc) means that a few of the farmers may have many animals (whom they often give to stock-keepers to manage while most of the farmers have no stock at all or only a few (sheep, goats, poultry).

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Alice Evans's avatar

So that’s why I said “ Sons were scions of the family line, inherited land/ herds, and remained with their clan.”

But yes, I can make that v clear in the point 1. Land and herds are both inherited wealth.

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John McIntire's avatar

Dont know how you maintain this fabulous energy and understanding of so much ! Can’t wait for your book.

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MamaBear's avatar

Why would the step father adopt the kids? I’d expect the husband to keep them, with the blood staying within the family, and the wife gets to remarry sans children.

Women will tolerate another woman’s children easier than a man. Also left risk of abuse or sex.

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