Department of Anthropology, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843, USA.
Hum Nat. 2011 Jul;22(1-2):89-107. doi: 10.1007/s12110-011-9104-x.
The human ability to form large, coordinated groups is among our most impressive social adaptations. Larger groups facilitate synergistic economies of scale for cooperative breeding, such economic tasks as group hunting, and success in conflict with other groups. In many organisms, genetic relationships provide the structure for sociality to evolve via the process of kin selection, and this is the case, to a certain extent, for humans. But assortment by genetic affiliation is not the only mechanism that can bring people together. Affinity based on symbolically mediated and socially constructed identity, or cultural kinship, structures much of human ultrasociality. This paper examines how genetic kinship and two kinds of cultural kinship--affinal kinship and descent--structure the network of cooperating whale hunters in the village of Lamalera, Indonesia. Social network analyses show that each mechanism of assortment produces characteristic networks of different sizes, each more or less conducive to the task of hunting whales. Assortment via close genetic kin relationships (r = 0.5) produces a smaller, denser network. Assortment via less-close kin relations (r = 0.125) produces a larger but less dense network. Affinal networks are small and diffuse; lineage networks are larger, discrete, and very dense. The roles that genetic and cultural kinship play for structuring human sociality is discussed in the context of these results.
人类形成大型协调群体的能力是我们最令人印象深刻的社会适应之一。更大的群体为合作繁殖、如群体狩猎等经济任务以及与其他群体的冲突成功提供了协同的规模经济。在许多生物体中，遗传关系通过亲缘选择过程为社会性的进化提供了结构，在某种程度上，人类也是如此。但是，基于遗传亲缘关系的分类并不是将人们聚集在一起的唯一机制。基于象征性中介和社会构建的身份或文化亲属关系的亲和力，构成了人类超社会性的很大一部分。本文考察了遗传亲属关系以及两种文化亲属关系——姻亲关系和血统——如何构建印度尼西亚拉马拉拉村合作捕鲸者的网络。社会网络分析表明，每种分类机制都会产生具有不同大小特征的网络，每个网络或多或少有利于捕鲸任务。通过密切的遗传亲属关系（r=0.5）进行分类会产生更小、更密集的网络。通过不太密切的亲属关系（r=0.125）进行分类会产生更大但不那么密集的网络。姻亲网络小而分散；世系网络更大、离散且非常密集。本文在这些结果的背景下讨论了遗传和文化亲属关系在构建人类社会性方面所起的作用。
