Small nit --- On Sat, Oct 6, 2012, at 12:29 AM, Sarbajit Roy wrote:
> Apparently the LDS / Mormons use the same method. You are correct only in the case of "fundamentalist" offshoots - like Warren Jeffs and his FLDS church where plural marriage was used as a kind of social control and propagation of the leader's genes. All of these groups have been excommunicated from the mainstream church. With the individual exceptions (including perhaps the founder of the church) the practice of polygamy in Utah - before it was outlawed - was centered around social welfare - a very large surplus of elderly women, past child bearing years, with no means of supporting themselves. I received a grant about fifteen years ago and did an ethnography of contemporary plural marriages in the Western U.S. - about a third of them had no association/affiliation with Mormonism. With the exception of the fundamentalist breakaways - plural marriage seems to have very little to do with either religion or sex - it is first and foremost and economic institution - and a source of significant wealth. This is probably not true in cultures where women are sequestered and restricted, i.e. cannot be engines of economic gain. davew > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
