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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