Foot-binding and FGC persisted as game-theoretic equilibria, not cultural preference
Evidence
Foot-binding in China and female genital cutting in West Africa, he argued, were sustained not by cultural preference for suffering but by a marital convention. In communities where every family participated, a family that refused to bind its daughter’s feet was effectively removing her from the marriage market, because potential husbands’ families expected the practice and would not consider girls who had not undergone it. Unilateral deviation imposed heavy individual costs. The practice persisted not because everyone preferred it, but because everyone was trapped in the same game-theoretic equilibrium. — , The Rod and the Child, 7331
Categorization
- XREF: Explains the marital-convention mechanism that also drives the inter-community diffusion logic in the Tostan case. — connects to: Self-binding in advance defeats temptation that cannot be resisted at the moment — , A Year of World Stories, 14165; Persistent practices are held in place by conditional preferences about social costs — , The Rod and the Child: A Global History…, 7322; Social competition environments evolve in tandem with weapons, unlike fluctuating physical environments — Emlen, Douglas J, Animal Weapons_ The Evolution of Battle, 182 (+4 more)
Related
Broader Connections
- Social competition environments evolve in tandem with weapons, unlike fluctuating physical environments
#corroborates(0.45) — Emlen, Douglas J, Animal Weapons_ The Evolution of Battle, 182 - Procedural regulation of birching normalized rather than mitigated its violence
#complicates(0.40) — , The Rod and the Child, 9128