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Physics Envy Part II: Of Reproductive Patterns...and Cosmic
Microwave Background Radiation |
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‘In a MOLT minute’ ~ Perhaps theorizing about the Big Bang era of the early universe is actually easier than theorizing about the Pleistocene era |
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Einstein working, 20th century |
PENIS ENVY: In Freudian theory, the repressed desire of
females to possess a penis. Penis envy is also used generally to mean a
supposed female envy of men. - The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition. 2002 PHYSICS ENVY: In Moltian theory, the repressed desire of
social scientists to possess a generalized theory. Physics envy is also used
generally to mean the supposed soft scientists’ envy of physicists. - MOLT |
Is
the menstrual suppressionist position simply a bad case of physics envy?
Strassmann's
1997 paper, just by its title alone, has the sweep of a general theory: "The
Biology of Menstruation in Homo Sapiens: Total Lifetime Menses,
Fecundity and Nonsynchrony in a Natural-Fertility Population."
So
does its core argument that:
"Compared
with Western populations which undertake contraception, natural fertility
populations display reproductive patterns similar to those that prevailed over
evolutionary history from the Pleistocene up to the demographic transition to
low fertility (Short, 1976; Strassmann, 1997)."
This
is a theory, as well as a claim to confirmation of that theory,
based on the observed reproductive pattern of Dogon women in the 1980s.
Strassmann
points out the Dogon "have several features that typify human populations
over the evolutionary past," including the "segrega[tion of] menstruating
women in special huts...," and states, "In fact, the presence of
menstrual huts is one of the best indices of the absence of
acculturation..." (or in other words, lack of exposure to other cultures).
Thus, in the absence of "culturation" and
the presence of "several features typical of the evolutionary past,"
the researcher is afforded a "zoom view" of the Pleistocene-era (and
forward) Dogon, interviewing, hormonally assaying and theorizing with
confidence.
An
analogy from physics would be the "zoom view" of the universe's
"Big Bang era" afforded by study of the cosmic microwave
background radiation (CMB), first observed in 1965. NASA's website explains that
by studying fluctuations in CMB, "cosmologists can learn about the origin of
galaxies and large scale structures of galaxies and they can measure the
basic parameters of the
Big Bang theory."
The
problem with this research scenario as it applies to anthropology, is that the
1980s Dogon also have "several features" atypical of the
"evolutionary past." Here are some examples from Strassmann's
original 1990 dissertation on the Dogon:
"...the study population had 460 members. From
the perspective of human evolutionary ecology, 460 people is a very large
population."
"Among
the women, only 41% say they are animist and 59% say they are not...The
nonanimist women are 12% Protestant, 11% Catholic, 7% Moslem, and 30% no
religion...Although a few of the Protestants go to church fairly often,
services for the Catholics are unavailable in the vicinity except on major
holidays. The most commonly cited attraction of Catholicism is the opportunity
to get powdered baby's milk and watering cans..." (p. 47)
"The situation could not be resolved because
the parties in question had abandoned animism and converted to Islam [...]
Nonetheless the rumors made him so angry that he grabbed his rifle and began
waiting..." (p. 44)
"Another
Moslem informant told me that he himself married a pregnant woman...He demanded
that she procure an abortion, but the woman denied she was pregnant. Then he sent
her to live with his relatives in the city. They eventually took her to a
physician who reported that by then she was five months pregnant..." (p.
44)
"An
informant recounted a story that illustrates this point. A man from a village a
few kilometers from Sangui was conscripted by the French and sent to fight in
the First World War. On his return he found his wife pregnant and determined to
divorce her. The Colonials, however, forced him to keep her." (p. 45)
Certainly the above excerpts call into question the
notion that "menstrual hut usage" in and of itself is "one of
the best indices of acculturation." It would seem that the Dogon do
exhibit "culturation," that is, have had and continue to have
"contact with other cultures."
A
little more research along these lines reveals that both Dogon history, as well
as the more general history of Mali, West Africa, where the Dogon live, argue
against the possibility of any unimpeded "zoom view" all the way back
to the Pleistocene.
From
the
"Non
European Components of European Patrimony" website, we learn:
"Archaeological
investigations and anthropological research in the region of Sanga have shown
that in the 15th century the Dogon populated the Bandiagara escarpment. They
slowly replaced a resident population, the Tellum...the Tellum occupation has
been dated to the 11th and 16th centuries (Bedaux 1972 and 1988) [...] At the
time of the first Dogon settlement in the Sanga region the political arena in
the region was dominated by the Empire of Mali, which at this point was on the
verge of disintegration (Ly Tall 1977). After the fall of the Empire of Mali
small, rivaling power centres occupied the political landscape in the 16th and
17th centuries, causing political unrest in the form of wars and slave
raiding..."
And
from the Virginia Museum of
Fine Arts website, we have:
"By the late 18th century, Mali was in a
semianarchic state. Two empires emerged that opposed French invasion, Tukolor
empire of al- Hajj Umar (1794-1864) and the Somori Toure (1870-98). During this
time the region saw a resurgence of Islam. But in 1898 Mali was conquered and
became the French Sudan, part of the Federation of French West
Africa."
An article at Wikipedia describes the Dogon as:
"...a
group of people living in the central plateau region of Mali [...] The past century has seen
significant changes in the social organization, material culture and beliefs of
the Dogon, partly due to Dogon country being one of Mali's major tourist
attractions."
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Indeed, in a 2005 Radio Netherlands article by Helene Sharp, Assistant Professor Isaiah Dougnon at the University of Bamako explains: "Our local culture has a force but people also want to integrate new cultures from Asia and Europe. If you go to Dogon country they talk about culture, culture, culture, but if you look at their way of life, they also want to live like Europeans." |
Given the above, one is hard-pressed to see how the degree
of similarity between the 1980s Dogon reproductive pattern and that of their
Pleistocene-era (and forward) ancestors can be easily assessed.
To illustrate the difficulty, let's look at what Dr. Coutinho has to say about another African people, the !Kung San:
"According to anthropologist R. B. Lee, who studied the !Kung San, a nomadic people who live in Africa, the spacing of four or more years between children of these hunter-gatherers is a result of lactation [...] Although they have an average of only four children during their reproductive life, each child is breast-fed for many years...When the !Kung become sedentary, the interval between children reduces because maternal fat reserves increase, hastening the return of ovulation."
If we assume that during some interval between the Pleistocene era and the present day, there was a Dogon population in which women were having "an average of only four children during their reproductive life," as opposed to the "8.6 +/- 0.3" of the 1980s Dogon, something interesting happens: Relative to our hypothetical 4-offspring prehistoric Dogon, the 1980s Dogon reproductive pattern is equally dissimilar, compared to the "modern contracepting population" of the US, and its 1.8 average birth rate - although in opposite directions: the 1980s Dogon were having slightly more than twice as many offspring as our hypothetical prehistoric Dogon, whereas "modern contracepting populations" are having slightly less than half as many.
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Hypothetical Prehistoric Dogon Average Number of Live Births Per Woman |
1980s Dogon Average Number of Live Births Per Woman |
"Modern Contracepting" Population Fertility Rate (US) |
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4.0 |
8.6 ± 0.3 > 2 • 4.0 |
1.8 < 1/2 • 4.0 |
It has been argued that the reason for the lower !Kung average is due to contemporary "infectious sterility" and therefore should be rejected as representative of prehistoric birth averages.
However,
is it true that there were no prehistoric factors impacting fertility rates? In
his chapter "Paleodemography of the Americas: From ancient times to colonialism and
beyond," in "The Backbone
of History: Health and Nutrition in the Western Hemisphere," Robert McCaa writes:
"The correlation between low fertility and [population] size should not be surprising. In the demographic lottery of the ancient world, small communities had more to gain, and to lose, than larger ones. The discovery or development of a new ecological niche could lead to a baby boomlet, the incorporation of outsiders, or the retention of the native born. Micro-communities were as easily extinguished by the sudden exhaustion of food supplies, the loss of a water supply, mass violence, an outbreak of botulism, or simply a hiving-off to a more promising site. Smaller populations were both blessed and cursed by greater variability in underlying demographic dynamics..."
Further,
in
"Early
Paleoindian Women, Children, Mobility and Fertility," Todd A. Surovell argues
that:
"Clearly, it is time to abandon blanket statements that fertility will always be low for mobile hunter-gatherers. If high mobility is defined as frequent movement of residential camps, then the data suggest that the high mobility and high fertility are quite compatible."
Yet, at the same time, Surovell states that:
"However, not all hunter-gatherers adopt such a
strategy. Some hunter-gatherers are highly mobile, others are sedentary, and
still others switch seasonally from high to low mobility strategies (Binford 1980;
Kelly 1983, 1995)."
Returning
now to the idea of the "zoom view" into the evolutionary past, both
of the human reproductive pattern (afforded by the study of contemporary
hunter-gatherer and/or sedentary agriculturalist populations) and the universe (afforded
by study of the cosmic microwave background radiation), we can start to see how
the theorizing of menstrual suppressionists differs from that of physicists:
Whereas physicists engage in constructing a dynamic history of
the early universe, generating vast arrays of interrelated equations,
menstrual suppressionists instead construct a "history" consisting of
a single equation:
x > y
with x = pre-demographic transition
reproductive pattern
and y = post-demographic transition reproductive pattern
Therefore,
that exogenous hormones (i.e., "modern contraception") belongs to an entire class of
factors impacting fertility, becomes obscured, and we are left with a classic
(and static) “story of the
fall,” insufficient
basis for a general scientific theory.
Thus, MOLT detects a degree of physics envy in the menstrual suppressionist position.
WRITE YOUR OWN INTRO:
1)
As pointed out by menstrual suppression advocates, prehistoric women in general
certainly experienced more lactational amenorrhea than women in contemporary
industrial societies. Assume that hormonal induction of milk secretion is possible and safe
in human females. Now imagine you are the author of a wildly popular and
controversial book, "Lactation: A Useful Secretion?"
In
your intro to "Is Menstruation Obsolete?," argue that Dr. Coutinho
didn't go far enough, and argue that women should have (for example) a minimum
of 4 years of hormonally-induced lactational amenorrhea between the ages of
20-30, regardless of birth history. Discuss the “rich legacy” of beliefs surrounding
lactation, as well as the taboos.
Some
argue that widespread use of menstrual-suppressive contraception would allow
more women to donate blood at Blood Banks. In your intro, argue for creation of
"Milk Banks," whereby the milk produced by the lactationally-amenorrheic-but-not-breastfeeding
women can be used to the benefit of humankind.
2)
Imagine that Judy Grahn's “Blood, Bread
and Roses: How Menstruation Created the World” and Dr. Coutinho's “Is
Menstruation Obsolete?” are being sold as a boxed set. In your intro to the
latter book, discuss its similarities to, and departures from, the narrative
created in “Blood, Bread and Roses.”
“MOLT minute” graphic
courtesy of http://www.clipart.co.uk/