Societal Complexity and Familial Complexity: Evidence for the Curvilinear Hypothesis

Abstract

Theory and anecdotal evidence have led ethnologists from Lowie to the present to conclude that the relation between societal complexity and familial complexity is curvilinear, with minima at the extremes of societal complexity (hunting-gathering and urban-industrial) and a maximum at some intermediate level. To date, however, more systematic empirical studies have led to various and, seemingly, contradictory conclusions. With a new coding of Murdock's Ethnographic Atlas for the technological component of societal complexity and for familial complexity, we are able to show a point of inflection within the range of preindustrial societies. With Marsh's spliced index of societal differentiation, we show the same nonmonotonic relationship for societies ranging from hunting and gathering to Israel and Japan.