Interesting. I would opt for a compromise between the two explanations of the Western European Marriage Pattern. In other words, this pattern preceded Christianization and was assimilated into the norms of Western Christianity, which then provided a more effective mechanism for enforcing that pattern.
We have good evidence of this marriage pattern from 9th century France, which corresponds to the time when the Church adopted an extreme ban on cousin marriages. We also have some fragmentary evidence from pre-Christian times. See my note at the end of Schulz's paper: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aau5141
"Unfortunately for them, their entire exercise assumes that the initial conditions of family structures in the West on which the Church acted were endogamous communitarian — thus directly contradicting Emmanuel Todd’s thesis." This is the flaw in your logic. The sons don't have to reside in the same household in order for the theory to hold. Nuclear families were a thing, but they were close to their extended family and usually stayed in the same village. But when you ban 2nd and 3rd cousin marriage that the practice of staying in your small village becomes more difficult. It's not this black and white things are either this or that. It's subtle effects that can add up to great differences. It's not so much about the Catholic church's ban on cousin marriage creating the nuclear family, but about how it cultivated a culture of individualism and weaker extended families that eventually led to a big difference between the Western and Eastern churches. And a big part of the theory is that a lack of strong extended families lead to a rise in strong institutions to pick-up the slack like the church and mutual aid societies.
Woman can be equal but specialized, so men hunt but women have equal power in other field so can't be bossed much. Indian women in some regions produced main amount of food via farming so men almost were subsubserviant. 2. Another factor or at least evidence is if woman wasn't surrounded by nearby huts off mostly husband's family she COULD IN NITE MURRDER HIM WITH ROCK and come morning unless outnumbered by his family survive. Sleeping with potential enemy with her having allies nearby creates equality, a man when asleep is weak and wife with near allies DARE NOT BE ABUSED DURING DAY. Only when women travel far to marry is abuse common..
I mean, the sheer assumption of Hunter-gather societies being sexually egalitarian barely stands up to basic scrutiny. Various Australian Aboriginal nations were polygamous and women were the first bounty carried off in raids and war. Women and men were highly segregated in their social and religious roles with men being forbidden to be in the vicinity of secret women’s business on pain of severe corporal punishment or death and vice versa. Women elders had some domain, it was over concretely women and only by influence and a culture of deterrence to age over men.
Todd's actually weakest on the polygynous family system in sub-Saharan Africa, partly because of weak ideological explananda in the macro-region. If Western individualistic universalism is the fruit of exogamous nuclear anthropological soil, German and Japanese hyper-particularist, inegalitarian ideologies were expressions of the stem family type, socialism of the exogamous communitarian family, and Islam of endogamous communitarian type, then what is the African ideological equivalent that could be traced to the polygynous family type? I don't think he ever solved this problem. Is it possible to identify a macro-regional ideology in this extremely fragmented macro-region? Probably not.
The anomic world of mainland southeast Asia too is better thought of as outside the domain of applicability Todd's theory. That's really what the anomic family type means — that the family system is not strongly polarized along any of Todd's three axes: exogamous-endogamous, nuclear-stem-communitarian, egalitarian-inegalitarian. You can see this as a short coming of Todd's schema, or you can see it as the limits of systematics itself. Every taxonomy has an other/miscellaneous category.
Relatedly, what's missing is detailed work on India — a much more complicated patchwork than Europe. He took a stab at it because of his interest in stable communist influence in Kerala and Bengal, but the Indian scene requires a whole another dimension of analysis — the thousands of jatis (castes) that have their own particular family systems. Understanding the Indian family systems in detail would call for a whole monograph.
Better understanding of the subcontinent would help in understanding the systems in Indochina — a macro-region under the joint long-term influence of both India and China. The US military can probably fund this research given their obsession with the Indo-Pacific as a strategic concept.
Interesting. I would opt for a compromise between the two explanations of the Western European Marriage Pattern. In other words, this pattern preceded Christianization and was assimilated into the norms of Western Christianity, which then provided a more effective mechanism for enforcing that pattern.
We have good evidence of this marriage pattern from 9th century France, which corresponds to the time when the Church adopted an extreme ban on cousin marriages. We also have some fragmentary evidence from pre-Christian times. See my note at the end of Schulz's paper: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aau5141
"Unfortunately for them, their entire exercise assumes that the initial conditions of family structures in the West on which the Church acted were endogamous communitarian — thus directly contradicting Emmanuel Todd’s thesis." This is the flaw in your logic. The sons don't have to reside in the same household in order for the theory to hold. Nuclear families were a thing, but they were close to their extended family and usually stayed in the same village. But when you ban 2nd and 3rd cousin marriage that the practice of staying in your small village becomes more difficult. It's not this black and white things are either this or that. It's subtle effects that can add up to great differences. It's not so much about the Catholic church's ban on cousin marriage creating the nuclear family, but about how it cultivated a culture of individualism and weaker extended families that eventually led to a big difference between the Western and Eastern churches. And a big part of the theory is that a lack of strong extended families lead to a rise in strong institutions to pick-up the slack like the church and mutual aid societies.
Weirdest people vs Todd's family structures and Todd wins... impressive.
Woman can be equal but specialized, so men hunt but women have equal power in other field so can't be bossed much. Indian women in some regions produced main amount of food via farming so men almost were subsubserviant. 2. Another factor or at least evidence is if woman wasn't surrounded by nearby huts off mostly husband's family she COULD IN NITE MURRDER HIM WITH ROCK and come morning unless outnumbered by his family survive. Sleeping with potential enemy with her having allies nearby creates equality, a man when asleep is weak and wife with near allies DARE NOT BE ABUSED DURING DAY. Only when women travel far to marry is abuse common..
I mean, the sheer assumption of Hunter-gather societies being sexually egalitarian barely stands up to basic scrutiny. Various Australian Aboriginal nations were polygamous and women were the first bounty carried off in raids and war. Women and men were highly segregated in their social and religious roles with men being forbidden to be in the vicinity of secret women’s business on pain of severe corporal punishment or death and vice versa. Women elders had some domain, it was over concretely women and only by influence and a culture of deterrence to age over men.
"In forthcoming work, David Le Bris and Victor Gay show"
Is a preprint available?
Not yet, unfortunately.
Brilliant. Excellent piece on inflation, too.
Excellent piece. Todd is a critically important thinker who should be better known.
I’m kind of bothered by why “African” isn’t analyzed further.
Todd's actually weakest on the polygynous family system in sub-Saharan Africa, partly because of weak ideological explananda in the macro-region. If Western individualistic universalism is the fruit of exogamous nuclear anthropological soil, German and Japanese hyper-particularist, inegalitarian ideologies were expressions of the stem family type, socialism of the exogamous communitarian family, and Islam of endogamous communitarian type, then what is the African ideological equivalent that could be traced to the polygynous family type? I don't think he ever solved this problem. Is it possible to identify a macro-regional ideology in this extremely fragmented macro-region? Probably not.
The anomic world of mainland southeast Asia too is better thought of as outside the domain of applicability Todd's theory. That's really what the anomic family type means — that the family system is not strongly polarized along any of Todd's three axes: exogamous-endogamous, nuclear-stem-communitarian, egalitarian-inegalitarian. You can see this as a short coming of Todd's schema, or you can see it as the limits of systematics itself. Every taxonomy has an other/miscellaneous category.
Relatedly, what's missing is detailed work on India — a much more complicated patchwork than Europe. He took a stab at it because of his interest in stable communist influence in Kerala and Bengal, but the Indian scene requires a whole another dimension of analysis — the thousands of jatis (castes) that have their own particular family systems. Understanding the Indian family systems in detail would call for a whole monograph.
Better understanding of the subcontinent would help in understanding the systems in Indochina — a macro-region under the joint long-term influence of both India and China. The US military can probably fund this research given their obsession with the Indo-Pacific as a strategic concept.