Partible Paternity and Anthropological Theory: The Construction of an Ethnographic Fantasy

79 Pages·2009·0.31 MB·English

by  Warren Shapiro

PartiblePaternityPODPBK.qxd 3/31/09 3:33 PM Page 1
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“Anthropology began as serious academic science. It looks to be ending in romantic primitivist
fantasies for academic bobos with exotic notions of the human family, plus swinging visions
of life down on the commune. That an influential popular science magazine channels material
from this dubious sources to its 700,000 readers is only one of the disturbing revelations in
Warren Shapiro’s sharply written and challenging study.”
—Roger Sandall, author of The Culture Cult PATERNITY AND
“The clarity and balance of presentation of various views will greatly facilitate the readers’
comprehension and stimulate lively discussion in the classroom.”
—Harold Scheffler, professor of anthropology, Yale University
“He pulls no punches and minces no words, but his hard-hitting essay makes important points
about human social behavior and current academic attitudes.”
ANTHROPOLOGICAL
—Herbert Lewis, emeritus professor of anthropology, University of Wisconsin–Madison
“In this small but impressive volume, Shapiro critiques the notion of partible paternity using
an approach informed by ethnographic inclusiveness and a carefully measured application of
fate from biosocial research.”
—Paul Heyer, professor of communication studies, Wilfred Laurier University, Canada
THEORY
“Written with an icy logic . . . [this book] . . . challenges a broad range of postmodern projects.
The book is contentious, it takes no prisoners, and it will be controversial.”
—Thomas Gregor, professor of anthropology, Vanderbilt University
Partible Paternity and Anthropological Theory discusses the conception “partible paternity”
within Amazonian Indian communities. “Partible paternity” is the idea that several sexual acts
are necessary to produce a fetus and that the mother may have these with several men, who
in turn have several sexual partners as well. Victorian anthropologists viewed this situation as
“group marriage,” a hypothetical state in which individual marriage and the family did not
exist and which, presumably, once characterized Western society. The notion of “group marriage”
was demolished by 1920, when it was shown that individual marriage and the family exist
The Construction of an
nearly everywhere. More recently, however, the idea has been resurrected by Stephen
Beckerman and Paul Valentine in their book Cultures of Multiple Fathers. This book argues
that Beckerman and Valentine are completely wrong—in Amazonia, the family exists every- Ethnographic Fantasy
where, and the occasional trysts which result in shared paternity are subject to male sexual
jealousy.
WARREN SHAPIROis emeritus professor of anthropology at Rutgers University. He has written
on kinship and anthropological theory for over four decades; his works include three other
books and dozens of articles in both professional and popular journals and magazines.
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Partible Paternity and
Anthropological Theory
The Construction of an
Ethnographic Fantasy
Warren Shapiro
UNIVERSITY PRESS OF AMERICA,® INC.
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Most (cultural) anthropologists reject the basic concepts of sociobiology
. . . and have turned their backs on sociobiologists rather than involve them
in serious discussion. This seems a strategic mistake . . . (Peletz 1995, 366)

Contents
List of Tables vii
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
1 Three Primitivist Projects 3
2 The Grand Claims of Beckerman and Valentine 11
3 The Northwest Amazon Cases 23
4 Other Pertinent Cases: General Considerations 31
5 Evidence Re Focality in Kin Classification Simpliciter 33
6 Evidence Re Focality in Kin Classification Stemming from
Partible Paternity 37
7 Evidence Re the Residential and Symbolic Isolation of the
Sexually Bonded Pair and Dependent Offspring 41
8 Evidence Re Sexual Jealousy 45
9 Evidence Re the Denigration of Women 47
10 Miscellaneous Evidence 51
11 Conclusion 55
Bibliography 57
v

List of Tables
Table 3.1. My Tabulation
Table 4.1. Names and Locations of Amazonian Populations with Partible
Paternity Outside the Northwest Amazon
vii

Acknowledgments
Portions of this book were read at a kinship symposium in Memory of Per
Hage at the American Anthropological Association meetings in 2006. I am
greatly indebted to the following individuals who have worked in Amazonia
for unpublished information they supplied to me via email: Bob Carneiro,
Janet Chernela, Lori Cormier, Bill Crocker, Bill Fisher, Tom Gregor, Kim
Hill, Waud Kracke, Laura Rival, Tony Seeger, Janet Siskind, Allie Stearman,
Terry Turner, and Aparecida Vilaça. Tom Gregor needs to be singled for his
very considerable encouragement as well. Hal Scheffler provided his usual
thorough and penetrating review of the original manuscript. Others who read
and commented on it include Herbert Bell, Vicky Burbank, Herb Damsky,
Bev Gaglione, Ward Goodenough, Brian Kinstler, Tom Parides, Laura Rival,
Mel Spiro, Melvin Stanger, and George Will. My niece, Lisa Lauer, who has
far greater computer skills than I, did the final typing of the manuscript.
ix