Stepfamilies and cultural transmission dynamics in Congo Basin hunter-gatherers

Bibliographic Data

ID3038930
AuthorsA H Boyette (0000-0003-0306-6841, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology), Laurel Fogarty (0000-0002-9378-083X, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology), Amandine Visine (0000-0002-3088-7744, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology), Haneul Jang (0000-0001-5994-6413, Toulouse School of Economics)
Year2023
Volume9
Issue3-4
Pages323-348
Publication date2023-08-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueHunter Gatherer Research (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1476-4253 • E-ISSN: 2056-3264
PublisherLiverpool University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.3828/hgr.2024.28
OpenAlexW4404992182
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited75

Generally high rates of adult mortality coupled with cultural approval of divorce/remarriage mean that alternatives to the 'nuclear model' of the family can be common in contemporary hunter-gatherer communities. While many studies of hunter-gatherer societies have emphasised the flexible, cooperative nature of childcare, research has not specifically considered how step-parents navigate their unique roles in the lives of their own or their partner's children. Additionally, research has only just begun to investigate the ways in which cooperative caretaking interacts with the dynamics of cultural evolution in hunter-gatherer societies. For instance, vertical cultural transmission (ie learning from parents) has repeatedly been shown as important among hunter-gatherers. Yet, the implications of alternative family forms for the dynamics of cultural transmission are unclear. For instance, step-parents may enhance the spread and longevity of novel cultural traits by moving from a social role associated with oblique cultural transmission to one associated with vertical transmission from the perspective of their stepchildren. In this paper, we 1) present a mathematical model of cultural transmission under conditions where step-parenting is more or less common but step-parents can transmit culture in the same way as parents versus other adults (eg through vertical versus oblique cultural transmission), and then 2) present a preliminary survey of the frequency of alternative families from two BaYaka communities in northern Republic of the Congo. Our modelling shows that remarriage and step-parenting can increase the frequency of a new cultural trait and its eventual mean frequency in a population. Validating the premise of the model, our data confirm that high rates of divorce, adult mortality and remarriage mean that many BaYaka children in our sample live with step-parents. We then discuss how our model and the demographic data can be interpreted considering the ethnographic reality of the study communities and the region, and how this provides the potential for step-parenting to facilitate cultural adaptation. We conclude that the integration of data on family diversity and demography with cultural evolutionary modelling can further our understanding of cultural transmission in hunter-gatherer societies and beyond

Biology · Cultural transmission in animals · Dynamics (music) · Ethnology · Evolutionary biology · Geography · Sociology · Stepfamily · Telecommunications · Transmission (telecommunications) · Computer Science · Language and cultural evolution · Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology · Psychology · Rangeland Management and Livestock Ecology · Social Psychology

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