Lew holds a baby prairie falcon for banding in Wyoming.
"Spousal “Interdependence, Female Power, and Divorce: A Cross-Cultural Examination." Journal of Comparative Family Studies, 1995. Willie Pearson, Jr. is second author.
"Making Historical Connections: Galton's Problem and Opportunity." Cross-Cultural Research, 1996.
Illegitimacy and Social Structures: Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Nonmarital Birth. Bergin and Garvey, 1996.
"Quality and Equality in Marriage: A Cross-Cultural View." Cross-Cultural Research, 1997.
“Assumptions on Sex and Society in the Biosocial Theory of Incest.” Cross-Cultural Research, 1999. Mark A. Schneider is second author.
“Olfaction and Sexual Inhibition.” Human Nature, 2000. Mark A. Schneider is first author.
“Courtship and Marriage.” In C. A. Ember and M. Ember (Eds.) Encyclopedia of Sex and Gender. Plenum, 2003.
“An Exploratory Analysis of Ruby-Throated Hummingbird Migration
Using Stable Hydrogen Isotope Ratios.” Submitted to The Wilson
Bulletin. Cathie A. Hutcheson and Leonard I. Wassenaar are first and
second authors.Areas
of Specialization and Interest
Some of my research continued into my retirement, while other projects began afterwards. Here is a list.
Marriage arrangement 1: Social structural determinants. This project began with the query of why some societies have parents arrange the marriages of youth while others encourage free choice of spouse. Theoretical speculations link arranged marriage to strong male dominance, extended residential family living, and an extreme division of labor by gender. I coded data from ethnographic descriptions. Rather than conceiving of arranged or free-choice marriage as a dichotomy or single dimension, a complex multidimensional coding scheme was used. My preliminary results show little evidence for any of these speculations, indicating a failure of social theory.
Marriage arrangement 2: How social and biological factors interact on age at betrothal. One variable I coded was age at betrothal. Betrothal age around the world is correlated with other marriage arrangement variables, such as whether youth have any voice, whether love is a consideration in marrying, and the like. In this sense, age at betrothal is a key factor underlying other features of spouse selection systems. Upon this realization, moved onto the question of why some societies marry children off early (during infancy or childhood, or about the time of puberty) while others wait until after youth mature sexually. I came to regard female age at betrothal as a fertility regulation device, with earlier betrothal expanding the duration of childbearing years, thus increasing fertility levels. I thought that higher levels of fertility might be important when biological conditions and social practices (e.g., a lengthy ban on sex after childbirth) conspire together to create pressure for earlier entrance in childbearing. The primary biological factors I consider are pathogens that might result in childhood or maternal death, such as malaria, leprosy, and other endemic pathogens in certain world regions. Childhood betrothal for girls and early childbearing might compensate for the reproductive deficit from the other factors. My preliminary results are very encouraging, suggesting that we need to take the interaction of both social and biological factors into account in understanding mate selection systems.
Family values of the ancient Israelites. Most family values of Old Testament times are unlike those invoked by the religious right. I argue that the Israelite definitions of sex and reproduction grew out of the material conditions of their lives. Reproduction was defined using the agrarian metaphor of semen as seed. This metaphor viewed semen as a precious thing and emphasized male agency, female passivity, and patrilines. Reproduction was important for Israel needed warriors and citizens not only because half of children died but also because warfare with, and demonizing of, neighboring societies prevented recruitment of new members from outside. The answer to this dilemma lay in patrilineal expansionist pronatalism--an emphasis on over-reproduction by men to increase the membership of clan and society. Examples of this pronatalism can be seen in Israelite ideas about male (but not female) homosexuality, endogamy, polygynous marriage, in using second marriages (or concubinage) to resolve fertility problems, and in the idea of the fetus and the child as the father’s property.
Recent scholarship on incest taboos. A rare coincidence occurred in 2005: Three books were published on the question of why societies forbid incest among the closest kin. The debate on this issue has last well over a century, but significant publications usually occur infrequently. Three books in one year is a rare event, and on that shows the disjunctions within the scholarship on the topic. I have taken on the task of evaluating these three works and writing a review essay on them for a journal. One book, edited by Wolf and Durham, sets out to assess the state of knowledge about incest taboos and inbreeding avoidance, but their focus is almost solely on biosocial mechanisms. With some qualifications, these authors believe there is a biologically grounded tendency to avoid incest between siblings and parents and children that is the basis for the taboo. Nonetheless they see many gaps and loose ends. A second book, written by Turner and Maryanski, argues that the accumulated evidence and theorizing is good enough to construct a complex theory integrating biological and social factors into an account of how various aspects of incest taboos originated at different times over the long span of human prehistory. They think that Wolf et al. are correct about brother-sister sex avoidance, but believe that other accounts of father-daughter and mother-son incest taboos are needed. A third book, by Gregory Leavitt, criticizes the sociobiologists writing on incest avoidance and taboos, declaring much of their research on humans and other species and its conceptual basis in genetics and evolutionary theory to be invalid.
Hummingbird research. My wife, Cathie Hutcheson, is an avid bander of hummingbirds. She received federal certification for this in 2000. She has captured and banded over 10,000 Ruby-throated Hummingbirds since 2000. I have become her assistant and statistician. We (along with Leonard Wassenaar, a Canadian hydrologist) plan to publish one article soon on hummingbird migration, using the ratio of deuterium to regular hydrogen in feathers of birds captured in Southern Illinois as the indicator of latitude of origin. We plan to extend this research over the coming years to collect feathers from birds on their wintering grounds in southern Mexico and Central America. We should be able to see whether birds hatching at different latitudes in North mix together or separate into different locations in Meso-America. Cathie and I also plan a presentation at the Inland Bird Banding Association Meeting in the fall of 2006 discussing the age sex structure and recapture rates, and how these change month by month, for Cathie’s hummingbird banding in Southern Illinois. Charlotte Roy Nielsen, a researcher at SIUC’s Cooperative Wildlife Lab, is doing a survival analysis and further work on Cathie’s hummingbird banding data.
I still play guitar, dobro, and banjo for the zany music group, Banjovi. Other members are Cathie Hutcheson, Toby Merriman, and Tony Fontana. We mix genres. If we think a song is fun, we play it. Our songs include American folk, old time, bluegrass, country blues, rock, country and western, and a few tin pan alley and big band tunes. Banjovi plays for contradances on alternate months and does a few other gigs a few times a year. Cathie and I also enjoy informal music jams every week and various festivals a few times a year.
Lew and Kyle at the Rivendell Festival
Travel takes a bit of time also. Other than sociology and ornithology conference travel, Cathie and I do occasional birding trips and travel the road to ruins—that is, we visit archaeological sites in this country and in Meso-America when time allows.
Cathie views ruins of a kiva at Chaco Canyon, New Mexico.