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

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sex and “the other”

“the other” is a shapeless concept in anthropology/the social sciences which i never quite understood — prolly ’cause the anthropologists/social scientists don’t understand it themselves. it’s got something to do with how we react to people who are unlike ourselves somehow or in some way … different headdresses or tattoos or taste in music … or something like that. it might’ve been a useful concept if they’d looked at it from the p.o.v. of genetics, but they mostly didn’t so … never mind….

anyway.

in light of the scandals in rotherham, i thought i’d take some time out from the regularly scheduled program to present a couple of very vague ideas i have related to sex and genetic relatedness between individuals/groups. i haven’t really thought through these ideas, so they’re very vague. don’t say i didn’t warn you. (also, could be that actual scientists have already thought through/done lots of research on all of these already and i’m not aware of it. if so, just ignore me.)

vague thought number one:

if the prime directive is to reproduce your genes (or at least those that would have an effect in this case) as much as possible, one tactic in achieving that goal might be to reduce how much your competitors — those individuals unrelated to you who don’t share your genes — manage to reproduce their genes. you could do that by a) killing them, and/or b) preventing them from reproducing in some other way.

one way to prevent “the other” guys from reproducing (so much) would be to mate as much as possible with, if you imagine two neighboring tribes, their usual mates. then, not only do you reduce the actual reproduction of “the other” guys’ genes, you also increase your own and spread your genes even that much further than you would’ve if you just stuck to the members of your own tribe. so it’s possible — possible — then that a special drive for mating with “the other” could’ve been something that was selected for ’cause it might’ve paid off.

however, you would think this would be a better strategy for men than for women since reproduction for human females is such a long, drawn-out, costly affair, whereas men can just spread their seed hither and thither without a care in the world. a drive for sex with “the other” might, then, be stronger in men than in women, and might even result in a certain amount of sexual coercion (to put it nicely) since the women don’t really want to engage in this sex with “the other” so much. and this coercion might be applied more often to unrelated/unlike females than to related/like females a la ghengis khan and his band of literal brothers sweeping across eurasia raping and pillaging wherever they went (that’d be one of the more extreme examples — extreme in terms of behaviors exhibited and in terms of success).
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vague thought number two:

in my world of inbred populations, familial altruism rules the day because it pays more — inclusive fitness-wise — to be altruistic towards your family members, since you share an inordinate number of genes with them compared to non-family members. perhaps, too, in an inbred society it would also pay more to mate with “the other” (as described above) if and when you could since, in an inbred society, the different extended families/clans are less related to one another than families in an outbred society. by mating with your unrelated neighbor’s sister, you’re (heh) screwing him genetically more than a guy in an outbred society would do to his neighbor. in other words, perhaps a stronger drive to mate with “the other” could be selected for in inbred societies because the effect of “vague thought number one” would be amplified. (perhaps this is why peoples in the arab world/middle east cover their women up in burkas — for their own protection just like they often say!)
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vague thought number three:

glenn daniel wilson has suggested that rape is/was a reproductive strategy of — i guess the gameboyz would call them beta males — guys who didn’t have access to females ’cause some alpha males had all or most of the access. maybe, then, the drive to rape is a response to polygamy. maybe. if so, that would certainly seem to fit the arab world and might explain why they are overly protective of their women (burkas, purdah). might even explain what happened in rotherham. i have to admit, i’m not 100% convinced by this one. i think it might be part of the explanation, but not the sole one.
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vague thought number four:

i’ve been meaning to do a post on this, but just haven’t gotten around to it, so i’ll just tack it on here. sex drives and the hajnal line — something which jayman mentioned in the comments here.

you’ve probably all seen henry harpending and greg cochran’s recent (very cool!) discussions about fathers’ ages and mutation rates (most recent example here). my question, wrt the late marriage trend in western europe for both men and women, is: has there been any selection for behaviors related to these late marriages?

if — if — over the last few hundred years, those nw europeans who married (i.e. mated) at a later age were more successful at leaving their genes behind than those who married young, were certain behavioral traits related to this selected for? greater ability to delay gratification, for instance (in this case sexual gratification!)? relatively lower libido (“no sex, please, we’re british!” — see also monty python)? other traits i haven’t thought of?

like jayman said in his comment, in most of the world even today — and in many more parts up until very recently — a 14, 15, 16 year-old girl is/was considered very marriable/matable. maybe nw europeans feel that relatively less so. dunno.

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hispanics don’t think of themselves as hispanic

from pew’s When Labels Don’t Fit: Hispanics and Their Views of Identity, 51% of hispanics in the u.s. prefer to refer to themselves by their specific ethnic group (i.e. family’s country of origin):

they also don’t trust other people very much. whereas 35% of americans feel that most people can be trusted, only 12% of hispanics think so. and that includes just 13% of hispanics who were born and raised here but have immigrant parents (pew’s “second generation” hispanics):

and hispanics luuuuuv big government. even 3rd+ generation hispanics prefer big government much more than your average american (58% vs. 41%). no wonder big government loves them:

previously: trust me on this and mexicans think mexicans should be mexican and a sense of entitlement ii

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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

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civicness in mexico

well, this is interesting. checking the world values survey for the “civicness” questions results for mexico (2005), it seems that, in mexico, the most civic people are those that are more indio, while whites are generally the least civic. it’s not the strongest of patterns, but i do think it’s there.

the sample sizes for the “indigenous” group are too small, but i included them anyway ’cause they’re such an interesting group. keep in mind when looking at the table and graphs, though, that the numbers for that group are prolly not representative. still, they do seem to fall in line with the general pattern of: more indio=more civic >> less indio=less civic.

here’s a table for ya (click on image for LARGER view):

the average scores for mexico in total are lower than those for white americans in all of the categories except for church going and sport/recreation (gooooaaaallll!). the number of active members of labor unions is slightly higher in mexico than amongst white americans. the number of active members in a political party amongst whites in the u.s is almost double that of mexicans. (mexicans are more active in political parties than the chinese in vancouver, though!)

similarly, the average scores for whites in mexico are generally lower than those for white americans except, again, for church going and sport/recreation. again, the number of active members in a political party amongst whites in the u.s. is almost double that of whites in mexico. the art/music/education scores in the two groups are pretty close.

if the internet is telling the truth, most of the early spanish settlers in mexico came from andalusia and extremadura, which were both, of course, a part of al-andalus in the medieval period during which time the local population picked up on the cousin-marrying practices of the arab conquerers — at least in andalusia they did anyway. in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, spanish immigrants to the new world came from places like galicia and asturias. not sure what the long-term mating practices in those places have been, but i suspect a history of close marriages in galicia. don’t quote me on that though. the point being that, in general, the spanish settlers in mexico didn’t have the outbreeding history of the anglos further north in the americas.

hispanics in the u.s. — who are not all mexicans, of course — score higher than mexicans on being active members in: church/religious organizations, labor unions and, mostly notably, political parties (12.40% for hispanics in the u.s. versus 9.70% in mexico). the rest of the scores are lower for hispanics in the u.s. than for mexicans in mexico. i’ll have to try to see if i can work out the scores for the different hispanic groups in the u.s. (mexican vs. puerto rican for instance).

enough talk. here are some charts comparing the civicness of the different groups in mexico. i threw in white americans, too, to make it interesting (click on graphs for LARGER views):

previously: civic societies and civic societies ii and civicness in the u.s. by race and la endogamia en la españa medieval

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mating patterns in colonial mexico: yucatec maya population size

here we go. from Maya Society under Colonial Rule: The Collective Enterprise of Survival [pg. 59], three sets of yucatec maya population size estimates/educated guesstimates (take your pick!) for the colonial period (click on chart for LARGER view):

i thought i could combine these numbers with restall’s info on mayan family/mating patterns, which are based upon census and testamentary records, and see, maybe, just how close the mating patterns were amongst the colonial maya. here’s what restall had to say:

– there were a total of 270 patronym groups (chibalob) in the yucatan living in 200 communities (cah).
– a typical cah would have had 30-40 patronym groups in it.
– a typical family would have marriage alliances with four or five other patronym groups.
– people generally didn’t marry outside of their cah (village, barrio, community).

you had to marry outside your patronym group, and it’s likely that a good number of marriages were between maternal cousins (i know – i haven’t posted about this yet – sorry!). it was probably the preferred form of marriage anyway, although that doesn’t mean that everyone married a maternal cousin.

how many individuals are typically of reproductive age in any given society? were in colonial maya society? i have no idea. let’s assume — and this probably wasn’t true — but let’s assume that they had a stable population — not expanding, not contracting (just for the sake of argument). if we divy up the population’s age cohorts by five — 0-5, 5-10, 10-15, etc. — going up to, let’s say, age 70, we’ve got 21.4% of the population in the 10-25 marrying age range. (the colonial maya weren’t polygamous, btw — the pre-columbian aztecs were though.)

so — 200,000 maya in 270 patronym groups = ca. 740 individuals in each patronym group. 21.4% of that gives you ca. 158 people of reproductive age per patronym group. an equal number of men and women? maybe, maybe not — but let’s say yes, so that’s ca. 79 reproductive men and women per each patronym group. and your patronym group was connected to something like five others according to restall, so that’s a potential 395 individuals you could marry. sounds pretty good!

but remember, the maya usually didn’t marry outside their cah. that’s 200,000 people across 200 cah, so 1,000 people in each cah. divided between 30-40 patronym groups — let’s call it 35 — so 28-29 individuals in each patronym group in each cah. 21.4% of those are in the marriage age range = six individuals (three men, three women). times the five patronym groups that your patronym group is allied to leaves you with just 15 possible spouses for you to choose from. that’s a pretty narrow range. generation after generation.

and chances are, people would’ve married one of their maternal cousins anyway.

colonial yucatec maya marriage patterns, over a three-hundred or so year period (1550-1850), were probably either quite inbred and/or very endogamous.

previously: mating patterns in colonial mexico: the mayans

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canadiens again

i decided to look at the “civicness” numbers for canadians by province in the world values survey (2006 wave for canada). these are the questions i looked at:

“Now I am going to read out a list of voluntary organizations; for each one, could you tell me whether you are a member, an active member, an inactive member or not a member of that type of organization?

– Church or religious organization
– Sport or recreation organization
– Art, music or educational organization
– Labour union
– Political party
– Environmental organization
– Professional association
– Charitable/humanitarian organization”

for each province, i broke down the numbers for active members only by size of town where the interview was conducted (see x-axis on chart below). what i was trying to get around was françois’ montreal problem — i.e. that the civicness numbers for quebec might be so low because of the presence of multi-culti montreal. (i’ve already shown, though, that ontarians don’t seem to have much of a problem with the presence of multi-culti toronto in their province.)

so, now that i’ve got some numbers for small town quebec (and other provinces) we can ask: are the québécois who don’t live in montreal more civic than their counterparts who do live in montreal, and are they more or less civic than other canadians?

before i try to answer that, let me say that there are lots — LOTS — of problems with this data set, so take this whole post with a big block of freshly mined salt. for one thing, the sample sizes for some of the provinces were so small, i just had to skip them entirely (egs. prince edward island – n=7; newfoundland – n=37). also, some of the data that i did use aren’t so hot either — example: sample size for quebec towns sized 50,000-100,000 – n=10. but, hey — what’s an hbd chick to do?

also, i couldn’t filter out the responses of non-white canadians, so the numbers for quebec do not represent just ethnic québécois. same story for the other provinces. however, 87% of the respondents from canada on the 2006 wvs were white, so we are looking at a strong majority of white canadians here.

so when you look at the chart below — squint!

without further ado, here are the average “civicness” scores by town size for quebec, ontario and alberta (click on graph for LARGER, not-so-fuzzy view):

as you can see, the civicness in small town quebec looks to be ’round about the same as in ontario or alberta — maybe/probably. living in a small-ish town in any of these places would probably feel pretty similar, civicness-wise. the scores do diverge, though, the larger the town/city size, until the difference is ca. twelve points when we get to the largest cities. perhaps that’s due to the multi-cultural nature of the largest cities, but then why are ontario’s numbers so high when they’ve got one of the most vibrant cities on the planet?

no. my guess — and this is just a guess — is that civicness in small-town quebec works quite well because french canadians have a good dose of “genes for familial altruism” (whatever they might be), either thanks to their french ancestors and/or because of the bottleneck and subsequent inbreeding that the population experienced once in the new world, and in small-town quebec they’re still living quite near extended family members, so they’re all quite civic. however, for the very same reason, civicness fails (compared to anglo-canadians) in urban quebec when they’re presented with lots of non-relatives. in contrast, anglo-canadian civicness scores get even better when they get out there in the Big World amongst other individualists like themselves.

the extended family was extremely important for a large part of quebec’s history, which rings familial altruism bells for me. i think that the good folks of quebec are some of my inbreeders — and that’s why they’re not very trusting (of outsiders) and not very civic when they get around different sorts of folks (like in big cities).

oh, and — death to america!

previously: canadiens and what’s up with french canadians? and civic societies

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the flatlanders vs. the mountain people

**update below**

following up from this…

“These data again demonstrate the political role of preferred marriage forms. Exogamy and lack of cousin marriage within large lowland nation-states aid in uniting disparate clans and villages. By contrast, the absence of exogamy and the presence of preferred cousin marriage intensify relationships within the small upland social units.”

…where in the world should we expect to find cousin marriage/inbreeding/endogamy vs. lack of cousin marriage/outbreeding/exogamy? note that i think this lowland/upland dichotomy particularly applies to agriculturalists vs. agri-pastoralists/pastoralists and (maybe) not so much to hunter-gatherers, so i’m ignoring hunter-gatherers for right now. (click on map for LARGER view):

>> inbreeding <<

– saudi arabia, yemen, oman, uae: check. especially, once-upon-a-time (i.e. before the spread of islam), in the western and southern regions of the arabian peninsula. dunno if that is true or not.

– the middle east: check. but not, once-upon-a-time (i.e. before the coming of islam?), in egypt. dunno if that is true or not.

– turkey, iran, turkmenistan, afghanistan, pakistan: check.

– southern, but not northern, india: check.

– ethiopia, most of east africa heading southwards except for coastal areas: the amhara of ethiopia (and ethiopian jews) have rules against close endogamy, but that’s probably/possibly largely a result of the introduction of christianity. other groups in ethiopia certainly practice endogamy. dunno about the rest of east africa.

– nepal, bhutan, other groups in the himalayas: i happen to know that the nepalese have a tradition of cousin marriage, just haven’t gotten around to posting about it yet. dunno about bhutan or other himalayan folks.

– northern parts of southeast asia, vietnam (talk about very stubborn guerrilas!), northern thailand: check.

– indonesia: more on borneo than most of the other islands. no idea.

– southern and western china, but not northeast china (including manchuria): my impression from the reading so far is that clans, so probably the cousin marriage that definitely occurred/s in china, were historically more prevelant in southern than northern china. further research is required. (~_^)

– japan: check.

– southern europe: spain, southern france, central and southern italy including sicily and sardinia, greece, the balkans — check, check, check, check, check. if you haven’t already, see mating patterns in europe series in left-hand column below ↓.

– alpine countries: switzerland, austria, etc. not sure.

– northern europe: scotland, wales, parts of ireland, norway. — check, check, check, not sure. again, see mating pattern in europe series.

– russian federation (better map here): from the urals westwards generally yes, although there are patches of lowland areas in the west. the west siberian plain should be a large area of outbreeding until you get to the central siberian plateau (unless western russians settled there bringing their marriage traditions with them?). dunno the details.

– north africa: esp. in the atlas mountains. not sure what the berber mating patterns were pre-islam. the cousin marriage rates are high today.

>> outbreeding <<

– northern europe: england, northern france, belgium, the netherlands, denmark, northern germany, northern poland — check, check, check, check, check, check, more-or-less. especially since the medieval period, but there was most likely cousin marriage/endogamy in all of these places pre-christianity. see mating patterns in europe series.

– iraq: around the tigris and euphrates — the garden of eden. lots of inbreeding, in fact, but that may have been introduced by the arabs along with islam — certainly father’s brother’s daughter (fbd) marriage likely was. dunno what the marriage practices of the populations there were pre-islam. i wonder what they were in ancient sumerian, etc., times? dunno.

– large parts of west africa: dunno. there appears to be some high cousin marriage rates in parts of guinea and nigeria, but that’s just where there are some highlands in west africa. dunno for sure.

– central africa: niger/chad area. dunno.

– coastal east africa: dunno.

– libya and egypt: pre-islam. dunno.

– northern india: check. relative to their neighbors anyway.

– parts of russia: see comments above in inbreeding section.

– northern china: see comments above in inbreeding section.

– parts of southeast asia: check.

– parts of indonesia: in particular the southeastern part of sumatra. dunno.
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**update 09/14: oops — forgot the new world (remember – agriculturalists only):

– western/southwestern north america, mesoamerica, anybody in the andes: should’ve been inbreeders. dunno for sure.

– eastern north america: groups in the midwest ought to have been outbreeders, relatively speaking. anybody in appalachia ought to have been inbreeding. florida groups (were they agriculturalists?) should’ve been outbreeders — according to this theory anyway. dunno for sure.
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previously: this one’s for g.w.

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