I often mistrust sociology-in-a-nutshell articles, especially when there are concerns about axes to grind (as well as a “look at the strange furriner ways” smell about it), but this NY Times article is still at least an interestnig side-bar:
“It is safer to marry a cousin than a stranger.”
Her reaction was typical in a country where nearly half of marriages are between first or second cousins, a statistic that is one of the more important and least understood differences between Iraq and America. The extraordinarily strong family bonds complicate virtually everything Americans are trying to do here, from finding Saddam Hussein to changing women’s status to creating a liberal democracy.
“Americans just don’t understand what a different world Iraq is because of these highly unusual cousin marriages,” said Robin Fox of Rutgers University, the author of “Kinship and Marriage,” a widely used anthropology textbook. “Liberal democracy is based on the Western idea of autonomous individuals committed to a public good, but that’s not how members of these tight and bounded kin groups see the world. Their world is divided into two groups: kin and strangers.”
Iraqis frequently describe nepotism not as a civic problem but as a moral duty.
(via Cronaca)