AN    INTERNATIONAL     JOURNAL     OF
CULTURAL  AND SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY

Volume 50, no. 4 (Fall 2011)

MATERIAL RESOURCE INVESTMENTS AT MARRIAGE: EVOLUTIONARY, SOCIAL, AND ECOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES

Brad R. Huber
College of Charleston

William F. Danaher
College of Charleston

William L. Breedlove
Independent Scholar

Marriage transactions (e.g., bride wealth, dowry) using cross-cultural data from the 60-culture Probability Sample Files of the Human Relations Area Files (HRAF) are considered from a neo-Darwinian perspective, focusing on the theories of kin and sexual selection. These theories account for a worldwide pattern of transferring wealth (1) from the groom’s family to the bride’s, and (2) from the couple’s parents to the bride and groom. Multiple regression analyses show that social and ecological factors can intensify or weaken this general pattern. These variables are a society’s paternal confidence level, polygyny rate, and amount of pathogen stress. Divorce rate and age at time of marriage were not significant predictors. (Kin selection, sexual selection, polygyny, paternal confidence, pathogen stress).

RE-UNITING FAMILY AMONG RURAL MIGRANTS IN BEIJING

Ka-ming Wu
Chinese University of Hong Kong

Po-lin Pauline Sung Chan
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University

Juan Chen
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University

Self-employed migrants who have worked in Beijing for two decades have settled in an intersecting area between rural and urban areas. Based on extensive field research and in-depth interviews, this article examines the workers’ attempts to define their urban living space and resist discrimination. The research shows that veteran migrants re-unite with their children and wives in an outlying, "sub-urban" area of the city, where cheap accommodations, public education, and an informal economy are present. The area is where migrants make claims on citizenship through asserting their parental responsibility and identity. (Rural migrants, re-uniting family, suburban citizenship).

BECOMING MANTA: ARCHAEOLOGY, PLACE, AND MEANINGS OF INDIGENEITY

Daniel Bauer
University of Southern Indiana

This article examines the recent representations of Manta identity in rural coastal Ecuador as a process of secondary ethnogenesis. It emphasizes the role that archaeology has played in its emergence and analyzes how a place-based notion of identity forms. The residents of Pueblo Manta communities draw conceptual links between the archaeological record and their knowledge of the region’s prehistory as these relate to personal experiences to conceptualize their identity. They exemplify how local identity is interpreted and reinterpreted both for the individual and the collective. (Ethnogenesis, place, identity, archaeology, Ecuador).

PARENTING PRACTICES AND CHINESE SINGLETON ADULTS

Sun Yuezhu
University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Since the Reform Era, Chinese society has witnessed a rise of individualism. The family has transformed from a unit of economic production to a center of emotion. Based on ethnographic research with 24 second-generation Chinese singletons, this essay explores parent-child relations in contemporary Beijing through the memories of young singleton adults. This research identifies two cultural modes of parenting and demonstrates the central role of emotions in both. It also illustrates the psychological dynamics of individuals when confronted with multiple cultural models. (One-Child Policy, urban Chinese, parent-child relations, intimacy).