Primogeniture, A Cultural Tool for the Interpretation of Genesis Narratives.

Most of the Genesis narratives can only be understood culturally, without which there would be difficulty in comprehending them. The research used analytical, survey methods to interpret certain passages in the light of the custom of primogeniture, and found out that certain passages like the drama of the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, God's making Cain a vagabond, the genealogy from Adam to Noah (Gen. 5), and many other narratives in Genesis are better interpreted in the light of primogeniture. The research concluded by proving that Primogeniture is a tool for the interpretation of certain Genesis narratives

The Leviathan Becoming a Cephalophore: Primogeniture and the Transition from Sovereignty to Governmentality

For Foucault, Hobbes is important for the transition from sovereignty to governmentality, but he does not always go into great detail how. In“Society Must Be Defended”, Hobbes’s reactions against the politicalhistoricism of his time lead him to an ahistorical foundation to the state. InSecurity, Territory, Population, his contract is emblematic of the art of government still caught in the logic of sovereignty. Management techniques, one of which being inheritance laws like primogeniture, inducing changesin a population’s milieuso that its interest is properly directed allow the art of government to escape this logic. Hobbes supports primogeniture, but its historical position in the common law makes this support unexpected. This article examines the historical context of primogeniture and the reasoning for Hobbes’s support of it in light of Foucault’s claims about him in order to give more precision to those claims. The result is that primogeniture asa law of nature produces the family as an interested unit of the population. Yet this interest is itself historicized,so Hobbes’s attempt to de-historicize politics did not fully succeed

The Leviathan Becoming a Cephalophore: Primogeniture and the Transition from Sovereignty to Governmentality

For Foucault, Hobbes is important for the transition from sovereignty to governmentality, but he does not always go into great detail how. In “Society Must Be Defended”, Hobbes’s reactions against the political historicism of his time lead him to an ahistorical foundation to the state. In Security, Territory, Population, his contract is emblematic of the art of government still caught in the logic of sovereignty. Management techniques, one of which being inheritance laws like primogeniture, inducing changes in a population’s milieu so that its interest is properly directed allow the art of government to escape this logic. Hobbes supports primogeniture, but its historical position in the common law makes this support unexpected. This article examines the historical context of primogeniture and the reasoning for Hobbes’s support of it in light of Foucault’s claims about him in order to give more precision to those claims. The result is that primogeniture as a law of nature produces the family as an interested unit of the population. Yet this interest is itself historicized, so Hobbes’s attempt to de-historicize politics did not fully succeed

Sex, Equality, and Growth (in that order)

We set up a unified growth model capturing the transition of a primitive and egalitarian hunter-gatherer society, into an advanced and despotic early civilization, and finally into a more egalitarian industrial society. Agents are either landowners or landless; both earn income from human capital, but only landowners earn income from land. The central assumption is that the accumulation of human capital increases with the number of people engaged in intellectual activities, "thinking." For an agent to be a thinker he must be sufficiently rich. At early stages of development, when human capital is scarce, only landowners can afford to think. Human capital thus grows with the size of the landowning class. With polygynous mating, rich landowners attract more women than landless, and thus have more offspring. This leads to a slow expansion in the size of the landowning class and thus a gradual increase in the levels of human capital. At some stage human capital may reach a critical level beyond which also landless agents become thinkers. The set a thinkers then suddenly expands, raising human capital productivity and pushing the economy to sustained growth: an industrial revolution. Allowing also for a quantity-quality trade-off in children a demographic transition sets in. But the economy may also follow a path leading to the downfall of the civilization, and a slow transition back into an egalitarian hunter-gatherer state. Which path the economy follows depends on the level of land productivity. An agricultural revolution is thus a necessary precondition for a later industrial revolution.Polygyny, growth, population

Sex, Equality, and Growth (in that order)

We set up a unified growth model capturing the transition of a primitive and egalitarian hunter-gatherer society, into an advanced and despotic early civilization, and finally into a more egalitarian industrial society. Agents are either landowners or landless; both earn income from human capital, but only landowners earn income from land. The central assumption is that the accumulation of human capital increases with the number of people engaged in intellectual activities, ``thinking.'' For an agent to be a thinker he must be sufficiently rich. At early stages of development, when human capital is scarce, only landowners can afford to think. Human capital thus grows with the size of the landowning class. With polygynous mating, rich landowners attract more women than landless, and thus have more offspring. This leads to a slow expansion in the size of the landowning class and thus a gradual increase in the levels of human capital. At some stage human capital may reach a critical level beyond which also landless agents become thinkers. The set a thinkers then suddenly expands, raising human capital productivity and pushing the economy to sustained growth: an industrial revolution. Allowing also for a quantity-quality trade-off in children a demographic transition sets in. But the economy may also follow a path leading to the downfall of the civilization, and a slow transition back into an egalitarian hunter-gatherer state. Which path the economy follows depends on the level of land productivity. An agricultural revolution is thus a necessary precondition for a later industrial revolution.Polygyny, equality, growth, population

Population Growth and Customary Law on Land: The Case of Cordillera Villages in the Philippines

This paper examines how a traditional village deals with the consequences of population growth. The increase in population demands more intensive use of the land which requires the transformation of commonly-owned land into privately-owned land. Customary law contains clear prescriptions about the circumstances under which a couple can privatize land. We estimate this land accumulation rule using date from two villages in the Cordillera Region of the Philippines. In order to study the evolution of the distribution of land, we model the inheritance practices of the community which constitutes another aspect of customary law. Finally, we use the model to show that despite the flexibility of the customary law on land, the present rapid growth of the population given the limited availability of land leads to its breakdown. This could be avoided only if seven out of ten children are able to make a living from occupations other than farming.Population Growth