where do clans come from?

in “Family Structure, Institutions, and Growth: The Origins and Implications of Western Corporations,” stanford economist avner greif wrote [pgs. 308-09]:

“There is a vast amount of literature that considers the importance of the family as an institution. Little attention, however, has been given to the impact of the family structure and its dynamics on institutions. This limits our ability to understand distinct institutional developments — and hence growth — in the past and present. This paper supports this argument by highlighting the importance of the European family structure in one of the most fundamental institutional changes in history and reflects on its growth-related implications.

“What constituted this change was the emergence of the economic and political corporations in late medieval Europe. Corporations are defined as consistent with their historical meaning: intentionally created, voluntary, interest-based, and self-governed permanent associations. Guilds, fraternities, universities, communes, and city-states are some of the corporations that have historically dominated Europe; businesses and professional associations, business corporations, universities, consumer groups, counties, republics, and democracies are examples of corporations in modern societies….

“In tracing the origins of the European corporations, we focus on their complementarity with the nuclear family. We present the reasons for the decline of kinship groups in medieval Europe and why the resulting nuclear family structure, along with other factors, led to corporations. European economic growth in the late medieval period was based on an unprecedented institutional complex of corporations and nuclear families, which, interestingly, still characterizes the West. More generally, European history suggests that this complex was conducive to long-term growth, although we know little about why this was the case or why it is difficult to transplant this complex to other societies….

“The conquest of the Western Roman Empire by Germanic tribes during the medieval period probably strengthened the importance of kinship groups in Europe. Yet the actions of the church caused the nuclear family — consisting of a husband and wife, children, and sometimes a handful of close relatives — to dominate Europe by the late medieval period.

“The medieval church instituted marriage laws and practices that undermined kinship groups…. The church … restricted marriages among individuals of the same blood (consanguineous marriages), which had historically provided one means of creating and maintaining kinship groups….

“European family structures did not evolve monotonically toward the nuclear family, nor was their evolution geographically or socially uniform (Greif, 2006, chap. 8).** By the late medieval period, however, the nuclear family was dominant. Even among the Germanic tribes, by the eighth century the term ‘family’ denoted one’s immediate family and, shortly afterwards, tribes were no longer institutionally relevant. Thirteenth-century English court rolls reflect that even cousins were as likely to be in the presence of nonkin as with each other. The practices the church advocated (e.g., monogamy) are still the norm in Europe. Consanguineous marriages in contemporary Europe account for less than 1 percent of the total number of marriages, in contrast to Muslim and Middle Eastern countries where such marriages account for between 20 and 50 percent per country (Alan H. Bittles, 1994). Among the anthropologically defined 356 contemporary societies of Euro-Asia and Africa, there is a large and significant negative correlation between the spread of Christianity (for at least 500 years) and the absence of clans and lineages; the level of commercialization, class stratification, and state formation are insignificantly correlated (Andrey V. Korotayev, 2003).”
_____

the presence (or absence) of clans in societies is somehow connected to the mating patterns of societies. in fact, it seems to be that a whole range of kinship-based societal types is somehow connected to a whole range of mating patterns: the “closer” the mating patterns in a society, the more “clannish” it tends to be — the more distant the mating patterns, the less “clannish.”

so we see a spectrum of “clannish” societies ranging from the very individualistic western societies characterized by nuclear families and, crucially, very little inbreeding (cousin marriage, for instance) to very tribal arab or bedouin societies characterized by nested networks of extended families and clans and large tribal organizations and having very high levels of inbreeding (specifically a form of very close cousin marriage which increases the degree of inbreeding). falling somewhere in between these two extremes are groups like the chinese whose society is built mostly around the extended familiy but in some regions of china also clans — or the medieval scots (especially the highland scots) whose society for centuries was built around the clan (h*ck, they even coined the term!). these “in-betweener” groups are, or were, characterized by mid-levels of inbreeding (typically avoiding the very close cousin marriage form of the arabs).

furthermore, not only do the degrees of extended family-ness/clannish-ness/tribal-ness in societies seem to be connected to the degrees of inbreeding in those societies, the degrees of “clannism” also seem to be connected to the degree of inbreeding — the more inbreeding, the less civicness, the less democracy, the more corruption, and so on.

it’s not clear what exactly the mechanism(s) behind this inbreeding-leads-to-clannishness pattern is, but since mating patterns are involved, and mating is a very biological process, it seems likely (to me anyway) that the explanation is something biological — i.e. some sort or sorts of evolutionary process/es — like natural selection — resulting in different/different degrees of behavioral traits related to “clannism” in different populations with inbreeding acting as a sort of accelerant for those processes.

clans and clannism, then, are not things that peoples “fall back on” in the absence of a state as mark weiner suggests in The Rule of the Clan [kindle locations 106-108]:

“[I]n the absence of the state, or when states are weak, the individual becomes engulfed within the collective groups on which people must rely to advance their goals and vindicate their interests. Without the authority of the state, a host of discrete communal associations rush to fill the vacuum of power. And for most of human history, the primary such group has been the extended family, the clan.”

rather, people’s attachments to their extended families/clans/tribes — and, more importantly, their tendencies towards clannish behaviors — are likely innate behaviors. and those behaviors likely vary, on average, between populations since (long-term) mating patterns have varied — and, indeed, still vary — between populations.

such innate behaviors cannot be changed overnight — certainly not within a generation or even two (evolution does take some amount of time — but not, necessarily, extremely long amounts of time either) — and definitely not by simply changing a few laws here and there in the hopes of encouraging individualism. as avner greif grasped, although probably not fully because he’s likely missed the underlying biology of what he’s noticed, family structures need to be altered in order to effect changes to larger societal structures (again, all via tweaks to innate behavioral tendencies). and, again, that can’t be done overnight — as greif pointed out, the process in europe began in the early medieval period (with the church’s bans on cousin marriages) and didn’t really start to take hold until the late medieval period — i.e. a 500 year (or, conservatively, a ca. 25 generation) timeline.
_____

see also: Cousin Marriage Conundrum by steve sailer and Why Europe? by michael mitterauer (in particular chapter 3) and Institutions and the Path to the Modern Economy: Lessons from Medieval Trade by avner greif.

**see “mating patterns in europe series” in left-hand column below ↓ for further details.

_{(note: comments do not require an email. busy clan members.)}

western european societal values

following up on the “mexican societal values” post — someone suggested via email that the world values scores on the same “justifed” questions for greece and southern italy might likely be lower than the scores for mexico, while the scores from scandinavian countries and maybe germany might likely be higher than for american whites. i agreed that those two scenarios could possibly be the case. i decided to check.

first of all — no greece in the most recent world values survey (dr*t!). i looked at all the major western european nations i could find in the most recent world values survey wave (2005-2008): finland, france, germany, great britain, italy, the netherlands, norway, spain, and sweden. (documentation of the data can be found here.)

i had planned to sort the data by ethnic group so as to just look at whites, but many of these countries didn’t record the ethnicity of the respondents (*facepalm*). on the first question — “Is it ever justifiable to claim government benefits to which you are not entitled” — for those countries that did ask ethnicity, the total scores were, with the exception of france, pretty similar to the scores for just whites (presumably because, despite all the immigration to europe, it was mostly white europeans that were surveyed)…

nation – total score (whites only score)
france – 51.60% (41.10%)
finland – 55.90% (55.80%)
sweden – 61.60% (62.40%)
great britain – 63.60% (65.50%)
italy – 74.70% (74.70%)

…so i decided to use the total scores for each nation instead of just those for whites. keep this in mind. the scores are, at best, an approximation of how native europeans feel — at worst, they’re way off!

as in the previous post, i looked at four of the “justifiable” questions:

Please tell me for each of the following statements whether you think it can always be justified, never be justified, or something in between [on a scale from 1 to 10, never to always]:

- Claiming government benefits to which you are not entitled.
- Avoiding a fare on public transport.
- Cheating on taxes if you have a chance.
- Someone accepting a bribe in the course of their duties.

here are the results for each country of those who answered “Never justifiable” (click on charts for LARGER versions — you can compare these to the mexican and american scores here)…

- Claiming government benefits to which you are not entitled. – Never justifiable.

- Avoiding a fare on public transport. – Never justifiable.

- Cheating on taxes if you have a chance. – Never justfiable.

- Someone accepting a bribe in the course of their duties. – Never justifiable.

the netherlands ftw! but what’s with all the high scores from italy?! isn’t that interesting?! we all know that italy is pretty corrupt — maybe even they are just sick and tired of all the corruption? dunno.

all of these western european nations scored higher than mexico on the first two questions: claiming government benefits and avoiding a fare — although the swedes came pretty close to white mexicans when it came to avoiding a fare on public transport.

only italy and the netherlands scored higher than white americans wrt claiming government benefits — and germany, italy, and the netherlands scored higher than white americans on the avoiding a fare question. swedes scored lower than white americans.

except for the netherlands, italy, and spain, most of the europeans scored around the same as mexicans wrt cheating on taxes. go figure! they all scored lower than white americans.

and sweden, france, germany, great britain, and even finland scored very like mexicans when it came to accepting a bribe — quite a few of them think that sometimes it could be justified. and again, except for the italians and the dutch, everyone scored lower than white americans.

so, no — on the whole, scandinavians and germans don’t outscore white americans on these societal values questions. the dutch generally do, though — as do frequently the italians!
_____

what about southern italians versus mexicans? here are the results for some of the different regions of italy (i excluded those regions where the sample size was less than 50). i’ve color-coded the regions — north=blue, central=green, south=red:

- Claiming government benefits to which you are not entitled. – Never justifiable.

- Avoiding a fare on public transport. – Never justifiable.

- Cheating on taxes if you have a chance. – Never justfiable.

- Someone accepting a bribe in the course of their duties. – Never justifiable.

all italians — including southern italians — score much, much higher than mexicans on the claiming government benefits question — like by thirty to forty percentage points. similar story for avoiding a public fare, although lazio and tuscany in central italy scored only ca. ten to fifteen points higher than (white) mexicans in this case.

more italians — including sicilians — agree with mexicans on the cheating on taxes question. this time, lazio, tuscany, and lombardy all scored very much the same as mexicans. and all italians say that they are not tolerant of bribe taking much more so than mexicans — especially southern italians (sicilians and puglians) — even though they don’t seem to be able to (heh) put their money where their mouths are.

the interesting divide in italy appears to be not so much a north-south divide as a central area vs. north/south. while venice and lombardy in the north did tend to score highest most of the time, it was the central regions of tuscany and lazio that tended to score lowest, not the southern regions.
_____

what would be interesting to know is how these various groups (italians, swedes, etc.) feel about these issue in the united states — iow, how would italian-americans respond? i’ll try to see if i can find out. stay tuned!
_____

previously: mexican societal values and more nepotism in southern than in northern italy… and democracy in italy

_{(note: comments do not require an email. terracina duomo in lazia.)}

mexican societal values

i thought i’d dip into the world values survey again to see what mexicans think/feel about certain behavioral norms/illegal activities in society as compared to americans (both white and black).

we’ve seen before that mexicans of all colors are less civic-minded than white americans, and that mexicans are more extended-family oriented than white americans (see also here). but what do mexicans think about the breaking of certain laws in society? how justifiable do they feel certain actions might be?

i looked at the world values survey 2005 and 2006 for the u.s. and mexico (you can read all about the two surveys in the technical reports here — they appear to be sound surveys to me). what i looked at were four of the “justifiable” questions:

Please tell me for each of the following statements whether you think it can always be justified, never be justified, or something in between [on a scale from 1 to 10, never to always]:

- Claiming government benefits to which you are not entitled.
- Avoiding a fare on public transport.
- Cheating on taxes if you have a chance.
- Someone accepting a bribe in the course of their duties.

here are the results of those who answered “Never justifiable” by sub-population for each of the questions. moreno oscuro=dark mestizo, moreno claro=light mestizo. i left out the indigenous group in mexico because the sample size was too small. the sample sizes are n=ca. 130-830.

- Claiming government benefits to which you are not entitled. – Never justifiable.

so only ca. 30-40% of mexicans (depending on their skin color) think that claiming gov’t benefits to which one is not entitled is never justifiable. otoh, nearly 70% of white americans think such a behavior is never justifiable.

- Avoiding a fare on public transport. – Never justifiable.

again, a ten to twenty point difference between the various mexican sub-groups and white americans.

- Cheating on taxes if you have a chance. – Never justfiable.

the ranges are closer wrt cheating on taxes, but still, more white americans feel it’s never justifiable than these three various groups of mexicans.

- Someone accepting a bribe in the course of their duties. – Never justifiable.

again, at least a ten, if not twenty, point spread between when it comes to thinking bribe taking can be justifiable.

it seems, then, that most mexicans — from white mexicans to dark-skinned mestizos (don’t know about the purely indigenous groups) — more ofen than white americans, feel that various types of cheating in society can be justified to some degree or another.

previously: civicness in mexico and familism in the u.s. of a. and anglo-american vs. mexican family values and hispanic family values

_{(note: comments do not require an email. likelihood of bribing mexican traffic police.)}

kinship in anglo-saxon society

why are the english so special? why do they have such a strong sense of individualism (see here and here and here and here)? or are so civic-minded? why do they live in (absolute) nuclear families? why are they not clannish or tribal? why are they so nonviolent — and why did their levels of violence start to decrease so long ago? how come it was the english who pretty much invented liberal democracy?

i think a lot of these things have to do with england’s outbreeding project which began sometime in the early medieval period (see here and here), but could there have been something special about the pre-christian anglo-saxons (or danes — think the danelaw — see this comment and subsequent discussion)? were they individualistic, civic-minded, living in nuclear family groups, not clannish or tribal, nonviolent, and liberally democratic? or, perhaps, predisposed to these things in some way?

well, i can hardly answer all of those in just a blog post (and, to be honest, i don’t know the answer to most of them), but i’ll try to address a couple of them by taking a look at anglo-saxon kinship (the anglo-saxons after they got to england). i’ll be mostly working from lorraine lancaster’s two articles: Kinship in Anglo-Saxon Society I and Kinship in Anglo-Saxon Society II. from what i can make out, lancaster’s work on anglo-saxon kinship between ca. the 600s-1000s, which was published in 1958, is still considered to be the definitive one — anything i read about anglo-saxon society and/or kinship always refers back to her. so, let’s see what she had to say.
_____

kinship terms for collateral kin

in this previous post, we saw how kinship terms amongst germans on the continent became less precise over the course of the middle ages. the different terms for “father’s brother” and “mother’s brother” were collapsed into a single term for “uncle.” similarly, previously existing differentiating terms for the various cousins — “father’s brother’s daughter” or “mother’s brother’s daughter” — got collapsed into just “cousin.”

there are probably a lot of good reasons for having separate, distinct terms for all your family members, but one of the most important ones (i think) is to distinguish for yourself and everybody around you who can marry whom (see also julian pitt-rivers’ “The Kith and the Kin”). so, in societies where a certain form of cousin marriage is preferred — like father’s brother’s daughter (fbd) marriage amongst the arabs (see here) or mother’s brother’s daughter (mbd) marriage traditionally amongst the chinese (see here and here) — all of the cousins get specific names (this is known as the sudanese kinship form). (check out all the names for paternal and maternal relatives in the chinese kinship system!)

another way of naming kin is the system most common in the west, and the system we have in the english speaking world, and that is where we do not distinguish between different uncles or aunts or cousins. one’s cousin is one’s cousin, end of discussion. this is probably a result of the fact that, throughout the medieval period in europe, cousin marriage was prohibited by the church and frequently by secular authorities as well. since it became no longer necessary to distinguish one cousin from another — since ALL of them were off-limits to marry — they all eventually became known as simply “cousins” (or whatever term you happen use in your western european language). (this is known as the eskimo kinship form, btw — although why lewis h. morgan dubbed it that i don’t know since most of the eskimo groups i’ve read about don’t use this form!)

so what about the anglo-saxons in early medieval england? well, wikipedia tells us that they used the sudanese kinship system. and from lorraine lancaster [I - pg. 237]:

“There was a distinction drawn between ‘father’s brother’ and ‘mother’s brother’ which is not preserved in the modern English ‘uncle’ (<Latin *avunculus*). A father's brother was *fædera* and a mother's brother, *eam*…. The terms *nefa* and *genefa* seem to have been general ones, applicable to both a brother's and a sister's son, but *suhterga* and *geswiria* served to specify a brother's son and the term *swustorsunu* was, as its form suggests, only applicable to a sister's son.

“It is most significant that a term existed (*suhter-(ge)fæderan*) to refer to the relationship between a man and his father's brother. There was no special term to refer to the corresponding relationship on Ego's mother's side.

“The words *nift* and *nefena* appear to have applied to either a brother's or a sister's daughter, in the same manner as we use 'niece'. But the more specific terms *brodor-dohtor* (‘brother’s daughter’) and *sweostor-dohtor* (‘sister’s daughter’) were also used….

“*Sugterga*, which we have already noted in the context of brother’s son, could also express the relationship of those whose fathers were brothers, that is, parallel cousins on the father’s side. Another term for this relationship was *fæderan sunu* (i.e. ‘father’s brother’s son’). The corresponding relationship of parallel cousins on the mother’s side could also be specifically denoted: The word *sweor* (also used for ‘father-in-law’) represented a cousin german, probably on the mother’s side, while such a cousin could be more accurately described as *gesweostrenu bearn* (‘child of sisters’) or *moddrian sunu* (‘mother’s sister’s son’).“

this is very similar to the sort of cousin naming system that arabs today have — there aren’t unique words for “father’s brother’s son,” but the relationship is simply spelled out quite literally:

- father’s brother’s son = fæderan sunu = ibn ʿamm.

it’s likely, therefore, given the cousin naming system of the anglo-saxons — and the fact that the church offered dispensations to newly converted anglo-saxons who were married to their cousins, as well as the fact that many secular laws were passed in several of the anglo-saxon kingdoms banning cousin marriage (see here and here) — that cousin marriage was not uncommon amongst the pre-christian — and post-christian for a while! — anglo-saxons.

interestingly, lancaster points out that there weren’t any (many?) terms for more distant cousins in old english. there didn’t seem to be a way to say, for instance, “first cousin once-removed” amongst the anglo-saxons.

this leads into the idea of the anglo-saxon kindred (and their bilateral kinship reckoning) … which i’ll get into in my next post. stay tuned!

update 12/11: see also kinship in anglo-saxon society ii
_____

previously: english individualism and english individualism ii and english individualism iii and anglo-saxon mating patterns and more on anglo-saxon mating patterns

_{(note: comments do not require an email. the specials.)}

krvna osveta

anonymous has been under the false impression that i think that all balkan peoples are exactly the same. of course, nothing could be further from the truth (i’m hbd chick, after all! — emphasis on the “D” in this instance), which i’ve explained to him (her?) here. also, to date i’ve written a couple of posts on the greeks (here and here) and one on albanians. if i thought all balkan populations were the same, i wouldn’t have bothered to do that, would i?

anyway — what i do think is that there are, indeed, some underlying behavioral tendencies which all of the balkan populations share — tendencies towards clannishness and, in some cases, even a more extreme tribalism. after all, it’s not a coincidence that the word we use for balkanization is BALKANization. but there is variation in the balkan populations: from the apparently very clannish mountain dwelling albanians to the less-so-but-still-rather clannish greeks. the serbs fall in here somewhere as well, a good portion of them closer to the greeks in behavior, but some of them more like the mountain albanians, which i’ll get to below.

first of all, what am i talking about here when i refer to clannish behaviors? what i mean is that some human populations here on planet earth (a majority, in fact, i think) are so family-oriented — extended family-oriented, often to the point of actually living in clan or tribal groups — that they fail, to some degree or another, at contributing voluntarily to a successful commonweal (to use m.g.’s phrasing!). clannish groups, to some degree or another, don’t manage liberal democracy, the avoidance of corruption, to have very civic societies, or to peacefully coexist with neighboring clans/tribes. i don’t think that other behaviors — like creating great art or science or building a large civilization — are, necessarily, hindered by clannishness. the chinese/han chinese, for instance, appear to have been marrying cousins/been clannish for a couple thousand years and it didn’t get (too much) in their way.

i also happen to think (theorize) that you get (different degrees of) clannishness by long-term inbreeding (regularly marrying first or second cousins) and/or long-term endogamous mating (regularly marrying something like third to fifth cousins); but even if that is not correct (which is, of course, entirely possible!), it is still very clear that clannish societies don’t do well in the areas mentioned above (not that liberal democracy, a lack of corruption, civicness or peaceful coexistence are necessary in life — just that, if, for whatever reasons, achieving one or more of those is your goal in life, being clannish ain’t gonna get you there!).

if westermeyer is right that mountainous populations inbreed more than lowland populations — and there are good indications that he is — then we shouldn’t be surprised that balkan populations have a history of close mating patterns…

…which is what i have found so far: at least some greeks have (or had up until recently) a preference for third cousin marriage; bosnian muslims have a preference for marrying in-laws (i.e. maternal relatives); and both macedonians and albanians seem to be ok with marriage to maternal relatives, too.

and, as we’ve seen before, the genetics back up this idea that balkan populations have been inbreeding/endogamously mating much more than other populations in europe — here’s a nice map of the within-country identical by descent rates for various european populations — the larger the circle, the more genes that are identical by descent in that population (albanians ftw!):

_____

so what about the serbs?

well, most (all?) serbs, of course, are christians, and have been since sometime around the seventh-ninth centuries — so right there we can safely guess that they’ve been at the receiving end of some sort of cousin marriage ban/s down through the centuries since that point. the conversion of serbs to christianity happened later than populations further west in europe, so they probably haven’t been subjected to the cousin bans for as long as, say, the english or the french.

a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, i wrote an introductory post on mating patterns in medieval eastern europe. here’s what i had found out about the serbs:

“levin also points out that the serbs seemed to, overall, have more regulations about cousin marriage than either the russians or bulgarians. the serbian church had heavy penances for even second cousin marriage, so perhaps the serbs have been outbreeding for longer than the russians.”

why the serbs were more focused on eliminating cousin marriage than the russians or bulgarians, i don’t know. but it’s interesting. the other question, of course, is how well were these regulations enforced? at this point i don’t know — and it may be difficult to find out — but going forward i will be keeping an eye out for any info on that. i think, though, that it’s safe to guess that, at least compared to most other balkan/eastern european populations, with the likely exception of the greeks, the serbs might have a relatively long history (800-1000 years?) of some amount of outbreeding (at least avoidance of first and second cousin marriage).

so how do the serbs fare when it comes to liberal democracy, corruption, civicness and inter-clan fighting? well, the serbs aren’t included in the woodley & bell paper on consanguinity and democracy, so i’ll have to skip that one.

corruption? not so good. serbia ranks #86 on transparency international’s corruption perceptions index. that’s far below the u.k. @16 or the u.s. @24. better than albania, though, which came in @95. but worse than greece @80.

civicness? not so good either. at or below the eastern european average on all the civicness questions — mostly below — and the east european averages are well below the averages for the anglo world. better than russia or bulgaria for many of the questions, though. (interestingly, stronger in church/religious org. and sports than labor unions.):

and how about inter-clan fighting or blood feuds (which are so popular in albania and were even in parts of greece)? well, it’s complicated.

some serbs — those in montenegro — along with the montenegrins and albanians there — did seem to practice krvna osveta or vendetta from the medieval period into the nineteenth century, but not (so much?) the serbs in serbia. the serb population in montenegro was comprised of clans and they fought with other clans, both fellow serbs and clans from other ethnic groups.

why the difference between serbs in serbia and serbs in montenegro? well, perhaps the serbs in montenegro simply felt more annoyed at having to live alongside other (hostile) ethnic groups and, so, battles ensued. or…

…”serbia” has moved around quite a bit over the centuries, but it has been more-or-less centered around where serbia is today:

as you can see, large areas of “serbia” — to the north — have often been located on the pannonian plain. those serbs who were a part of the kingdom of hungary definitely were flatlanders. perhaps this is why the serbians, historically, have been inclined towards outbreeding — a lot of them have been living in the lowlands. and, perhaps, the stringent regulations against cousin marriage issued by the medieval serbian orthodox church were directed mostly to the mountain dwelling serbs. dunno. but, certainly, that montenegro seems to be almost entirely covered in mountains (MONTEnegro), once again might fit the pattern of uplanders inbreeding and lowlanders not-so-much (montenegro serbians being more clannish, thus prolly inbreeding? serbian serbians not so clannish, thus prolly outbreeding more?).

serbians in serbia might not engage in vendetta today — or even in their recent past — but they do have some tendencies in that direction, like the royal blood feud between the houses of karađorđević and obrenović. the karađorđević-obrenović feud was something like what the plantagenets would’ve gotten up to, only in the nineteenth century rather than the fifteenth.

also, from that font of all knowledge, wikipedia:

“Another related feature, often lamented by Serbs themselves, is disunity and discord; as Slobodan Naumović puts it, ‘Disunity and discord have acquired in the Serbian popular imaginary a notorious, quasi-demiurgic status. They are often perceived as being the chief malefactors in Serbian history, causing political or military defeats, and threatening to tear Serbian society completely apart.’ That disunity is often quoted as the source of Serbian historic tragedies, from the Battle of Kosovo in 1389 to Yugoslav wars in 1990s. Even the contemporary notion of ‘two Serbias’ — one supposedly national, liberal and Eurocentric, and the other conservative, nationalist and Euroskeptic — seems to be the extension of the said discord. Popular proverbs ‘two Serbs, three political parties’ and ‘God save us from Serbs that may unite!’, and even the unofficial Serbian motto ‘only unity saves Serbs’ (Samo sloga Srbina spasava) illustrate the national frustration with the inability to unite over important issues.”

yup.

previously: mating patterns in medieval eastern europe and balkan endogamy and more on albanians and ελλάδα and more on greece and this one’s for g.w. and the flatlanders vs. the mountain people

_{(note: comments do not require an email. my favorite serbian thing!)}

good civicness vs. bad civicness

from Civic Engagement and Corruption in 20 European Democracies: Separating the Bright from the Dark Side? [pdf] i learn that there is GOOD (inclusive) civicness and there is BAD (exclusive) civicness [pg. 65]:

“The idea underlying the inclusive/exclusive networks distinction then is that groups focusing on individual-oriented goods such as personal materials, status or group identity goods are more likely to generate exclusiveness.”

the problem is that studies have shown that, while the inclusive networks are associated with lower corruption in any given society, “involvement with the latter [exclusive networks] actually shows the reverse tendency” [pg. 73].

oh dear.

inclusive civicness networks include: sport / outdoor hobby groups; cultural organizations; humanitarian organizations / charities; environmental groups; church / religious organizations; political parties; and science / education / youth groups.

exclusive civicness networks include: trade unions; business / professional / farmer organizations; consumer / auto groups; and social clubs / young / elderly / women.

i like to think of them as group-oriented vs. more personally-oriented groups (see what i mean?).

looking back on a previous post on civicness patterns around the world, we see that this does seem to fit:

- the anglo world, which is known for being not-sooo-corrupt, has relatively low participation rates in labor unions (10.1%) — exclusive civicness networks — compared to very high participation rates in inclusive civicness networks like humanitarian organizations/charities (19.8%) or sports groups (28.5%);

- meanwhile, eastern europe, which is known for being pretty-durned-corrupt, has relatively high participation rates in labor unions (5.1%) compared to low participation rates in humanitarian organizations/charities (2.7%) or sports groups (7.1%) (kinda);

- same holds true for india — relatively high participation rates in labor unions (15.7%) versus comparatively lower participation rates in humanitarian organizations/charities (10.8%) or sports groups (15.9%) — and also pretty corrupt.

and looking at civicness amongst the races in the u.s.:

- whites have a relatively low participation rates in labor unions (7%), with pretty high participation rates in humanitarian organizations/charities (16.5%) and sports groups (17.1%).

- both blacks and hispanics have relatively high participation rates in labor unions (10.3% and 8.6% respectively), with comparatively low participation rates in humanitarian organizations/charities (11.7% and 6.8%) and sports groups (14.9% [kinda] and 8.6%).

this pattern is definitely something i’ll be keeping a look out for in future posts on civicness!

see also: “Applying the concepts of bonding and bridging social capital to empirical research” by sonja zmerli, 2003, european political science 2(3).

previously: civic societies and civic societies ii

_{(note: comments do not require an email. GBoF!)}

civicness in france by region

here are the results of the world values survey‘s civicness questions for france (2006) by region.

these data cover whites in france only. i’m pretty sure that doesn’t include north africans (berbers/arabs from algeria, for instance) because literally just a couple of the white respondents said they were muslims. so these data should really represent mostly ethnic french folks, with maybe some other europeans thrown in here and there. unlike in the post for spain, the samples sizes for all the (NUTS) regions of france were 50+. the pale yellow highlights indicate the region that had the highest score for a particular question (click on charts for LARGER views):

here’s a map of the average civicness scores for each region. note that, while the color scheme here is the same one i used on the map of spain, the scale is different. for instance, the least civic region in france (paris) is more civic than the most civic region in spain (catalonia):

the first thing to notice is that the civicness scores for ethnic french folks are lower than those of the anglo world across the board — often a lot lower. the french scores are lower than those of great britain (which i haven’t broken down by region/ethnicity yet — you’re next, g.b.!) — and, except for membership in a sport/recreation organization, lower than those for white americans. for example, in 2006, 17.10% of white americans said they were active members of a political party, while only 2.60% of whites in france said so.

wrt the flatlanders vs. mountain people theory, it looks to me as though the mountain dwellers of france, all of whom have a recent history of close mating — the auvergnats, those in alpine regions, and populations in the east, like in parts of lorraine — prove to be true to form in being less civic than the more lowland regions further to the west:

the most civic region of france — “paris east” (captain picardy, champagne-ardenne, and burgundy) — apart from being something of a lowland region, also appears to have been a part of early medieval austrasia. the population of this area is, therefore, likely, due to the “invention” of manorialism in this region, to have had one of the longest histories of outbreeding/nuclear family structures in nw europe. (however, as charles donahue has shown, during the medieval period, the people of this region practiced arranged marriages much more often than in england during the same time period, so marriage wasn’t quite as “free” historically in this region as amongst the english.)

the least civic region of france is paris — but, of course, paris is a thoroughly multi-cultural city, and so its residents probably suffer from putnam’s lack of trust [opens pdf] that arises naturally in diverse societies.

the next least civic region of france is nord-pas-de-calais which is also multi-cultural in its own way being comprised historically of both french and flemish speakers. (there are also, apparently, a lot of other europeans, and more recent immigrants from africa/latin america, living in the region.) again, diversity does not normally make for civic societies.

it might also be that the french flemings, like their distant neighbors/cousins(?) the frisians, had a longer history of inbreeding than other populations in northern france. i’m not sure about that since i don’t have any mating info on the french flemings — and i don’t know, either, what sort of territory they traditionally occupied (was it swampy like the frisians? and did they, therefore, miss out on manorialism like the frisians?).

oh — and remember how french canadians don’t seem to be very civic or trusting/charitable compared to anglo-canadians? well, isn’t it interesting that the same holds true for french people in france vs. anglos? and remember where in france most of the ancestors of french canadians hailed from? — the area outlined in red on this map? that is smack in the middle of a slightly upland, not-so-very civic region in france today: “paris west” at 8.93%.

previously: civic societies and civicness in the u.s. by race and the flatlanders vs. the mountain people and meanwhile, in france… and the auvergnat pashtuns and medieval manoralism and the hajnal line and “l’explication de l’idéologie” and more on medieval england and france and what’s up with french candians? and canadiens and canadiens again

_{(note: comments do not require an email. frenchman.)}

civicness in spain by region

here are the results for the world values survey‘s civicness questions for spain (2007) by region.

i couldn’t sort the results by ethnic group (don’t think they asked that of the people in spain), but i think the vast, vast majority of them must be ethnic spaniards since nearly all of the respondents were roman catholic (and not muslim or something like that). i skipped any region that didn’t have at least 50 respondents. the pale yellow highlights indicate the region that had the highest score for a particular question (click on charts for LARGER view):

i made a map of the regional averages for all these civicness scores. darker shades mean more civicness, lighter shades less. white means not enough data available for those regions. here’s a map with the names of the regions of spain if you don’t know them off the top of your head. (~_^) galicia, btw, should be a lighter shade than the basque region, but that might not be so clear on my map. catalonia ftw! (~_^):

the civicness scores for spain are, across the board, much lower than those we find anywhere in the anglo world including the u.s. it’s hard to tell if there’s a north-south and/or east-west civicness divide in spain because there’s no data for so many of the regions; but it is interesting, i think, that the most southern and most western regions (andalusia and galicia) have such low scores while catalonia in the northeast and madrid have the highest scores. andalusia has had a long history of close marriages, and i suspect the galicians, too, but i’ll have to get back to you on that.

i also think it’s interesting that andalusia and galicia are two of the regions from which many of the spanish settlers in mexico originated — and, as we saw the other day, whites in mexico have some of the lowest civicness scores in that country, relatively speaking. mexico, however, generally has higher civicness scores than spain. go figure.

previously: civic societies and civicness in mexico and la endogamia en la españa medieval and northern vs. southern spanish iq, redux

_{(note: comments do not require an email. tower house in galicia.)}