Saturday, February 15, 2014

Burakumin, Paekchong, and Cagots

This is the first of a series of ebooks. You can access an Epub version here or a PDF here. Below is the foreword.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Foreword

 
The Burakumin of Japan, the Paekchong of Korea, and the Cagots of France … What do they have in common? All three were despised castes—closed groups of people who married among themselves. A despised caste is not just a low class. Otherwise, it would always be gaining and losing members, with some moving up and out and others down and in. As Gregory Clark has shown, the English lower class is descended largely from people who were middle or even upper class a few centuries before. This may seem strange if you equate the middle class with voluntary childlessness, but until the late 19th century they were the ones who had the most children—even more so if we look only at children who lived to adulthood. The resulting demographic overflow continually spilled over into the lower class.

In contrast, not much new blood flows into a despised caste, at least not on an ongoing basis. Social stigma discourages people from marrying out or marrying in. Nor does one enter simply by virtue of being poor, since the fear of losing caste keeps out most of the downwardly mobile. Despite this lack of new blood, a despised caste can perpetuate itself indefinitely because its members usually have enough resources—through their monopoly over equally despised occupations—to get married, form families, and have enough children to replace themselves. This was not the case with urban lower classes of pre-industrial times, which typically had large numbers of childless single men.

Because a caste is closed and self-perpetuating, it may preserve genetic traits that disappear everywhere else. It thus becomes more and more different not because it is changing but because its host population is changing.

But how can a population change over a few centuries? Didn’t human nature assume its present form back in the Pleistocene when cultural evolution took over from genetic evolution? In reality, these two evolutionary processes have reinforced each other. Human genetic evolution actually accelerated 40,000 years ago and even more so 10,000 years ago, apparently in response to a growing diversity of cultural environments.

What about Richard Lewontin’s finding that human genes vary much more within populations than between populations? Isn’t that proof that genetic evolution stagnated while humans were spreading over the earth and forming the many populations we see today? Lewontin’s finding is correct but does not mean what it seems to mean. Indeed, the same genetic overlap has been found between many species that are nonetheless distinct anatomically, morphologically, and behaviorally. Genetic variation between populations differs qualitatively from genetic variation within populations. In the first case, genes vary across a boundary that separates different environments and, thus, different selection pressures. This kind of genetic variation is shaped by selection and gives rise to real phenotypic differences. The situation is something else entirely when genes vary among individuals who belong to the same population and face similar selection pressures. That kind of variation matters much less, the actual phenotypic differences often being trivial or nonexistent.

Human evolution is a logarithmic curve where most of the interesting changes have happened since the advent of farming and complex societies. Homo sapiens was not a culmination but rather a beginning … of gene-culture co-evolution. There are many ways to study this co-evolution, but one way is to look at the different evolutionary trajectories followed by castes and their host populations.

14 comments:

Simon in London said...

Great post!

Scott McGreal said...

I clicked on the download link and the dropbox page only shows a jpeg image of the front cover. I can't seem to download the actual ebook itself. Looks like an interesting read anyway.

Katy said...

Ditto. The dropbox link is just to the jpeg of the cover :-(

SD said...

I look forward to reading this. As others have pointed out, all I'm getting is the jpeg of the cover.
And I'd also like to hear your views on the largest of such marginalised groups, the Dalits of India.

SD said...

not much new blood flows into a despised caste, at least not on an ongoing basis...
One of the few ways 'new blood' flows into a despised caste is when an upper caste guy decides to fool around with his cleaning girl. That happens quite a lot, sometimes with and sometimes against her wishes. Young, attractive despised caste girls have always been perceived as morally lax and fair game.

Peter Fros_ said...

Sorry folks. I'm still navigating my way through stuff like Dropbox and Epub. The link should work now. I also have a PDF version at ResearchGate.

ben10 said...

can you give the link to the pdf?
Windows can't open the file in the dropbox

Anonymous said...

It's not a pdf, it's an epub. You need an epub reader, there are plenty of those available online for free.

b10 said...

yeah but freeware = spyware + zillions of self-servicing updates and since Peter mentioned a pdf, why not to ask?

bleach said...

The pictures didn't make it into the file, but the captions for the pictures are still there.

Peter Fros_ said...

Ben,

You have to join ResearchGate to view the publications I have there. It doesn't cost anything to join.

I see the illustrations in the ebook from my computer. I'll try from another computer to see what shows on the screen.

Sean said...

I just downloaded a reader here, it works fine.

Sean said...

"Genetic variation between populations differs qualitatively from genetic variation within populations. In the first case, genes vary across a boundary that separates different environments and, thus, different selection pressures. This kind of genetic variation is shaped by selection and gives rise to real phenotypic differences. The situation is something else entirely when genes vary among individuals who belong to the same population and face similar selection pressures. That kind of variation matters much less, the actual phenotypic differences often being trivial or nonexistent." I don't see where you have cited anyone for that idea?

On the other hand, citing obscure anonymous bloggers like Jayman is a real mistake. But that's just my opinion. By the way, I like the reader, it's restful on the eyes and makes it easier to concentrate.

Anonymous said...

"In the first case, genes vary across a boundary that separates different environments and, thus, different selection pressures. This kind of genetic variation is shaped by selection and gives rise to real phenotypic differences. The situation is something else entirely when genes vary among individuals who belong to the same population and face similar selection pressures. That kind of variation matters much less, the actual phenotypic differences often being trivial or nonexistent."

That's partly begging the question. First, "qualitative" here is nothing but a reiteration of "adaptive", which is a less vague description to what the difference actually is, and yet, it's not all the difference between different environments that is adaptive/"qualitative", due to genetic drift and founder effects. And finally, "qualitative", being really just "partly adaptive" is relative to the environment, therefore "trivial" phenotypic differences within a given environment may be the ones selected for or against in another, and yet they remain exactly the same, only differing in relative frequencies.

Additionally, when we're flirting with explanations of behavioral differences, it's really important not to forget that the main organ responsible for behavior is almost by its very definition an adaptation to confer malleability of behavior, adapting it non-genetically to different situations and environments. And when we're thinking of human behavior specifically, life-history, culture, and economy, will generally suffice for the most parsimonious explanations, with a reduced role for genetics. Twin studies can be misleading here as it compares entire clonal phenotypes and conflates clonal genetic copies with an imprecise notion of "genetic similarity", when "shuffling" the same genes with the rest of the populational genetic variation will weaken the effect of each single gene on the final phenotype. Popular expositions of the subject will also focus on the most curious cases, in a way that's reminiscent of the stories about the coincidences between the two Laura Buxtons, while neglecting differences that may be just as astounding for the stereotypes of twins.