Why Polyandry Fails: Sources of Instability in Polyandrous Marriages

@article{Levine1997WhyPF,
  title={Why Polyandry Fails: Sources of Instability in Polyandrous Marriages},
  author={Nancy E. Levine and Joan B. Silk},
  journal={Current Anthropology},
  year={1997},
  volume={38},
  pages={375 - 398}
}
Polyandry has long been viewed as an anomalous form of marriage that raises fundamental questions about variability in human kinship systems. This paper integrates and evaluates a set of hypotheses derived from sociocultural anthropological and evolutionary biological theories of polyandry against data collected on the Nyinba, a well‐studied ethnically Tibetan population living in northwestern Nepal. In this population, polyandry is fraternal; it is the normative form of marriage and highly… Expand
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This work analyzes the stability of polygynous and polyandrous marriage using a game theoretical model previously developed to study monogamy and shows that when females control the transfer of their own resources, monogamy is stable under more general conditions than previously believed. Expand
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