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… 
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