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Abstract
Increased access to defensible material wealth is hypothesised to escalate inequality. Market integration, which creates novel opportunities in cash economies, provides a means of testing this hypothesis. Using demographic data collected from 505 households among the matrilineal and patrilineal Mosuo in 2017, we test whether market integration is associated with increased material wealth, whether increased material wealth is associated with wealth inequality, and whether being in a matrilineal vs. patrilineal kinship system alters the relationship between wealth and inequality. We find evidence that market integration, measured as distance to the nearest source of tourism and primary source of household income, is associated with increased household income and 'modern' asset value. Both village-level market integration and mean asset value were associated negatively, rather than positively, with inequality, contrary to predictions. Finally, income, modern wealth and inequality were higher in matrilineal communities that were located closer to the centre of tourism and where tourism has long provided a relatively stable source of income. However, we also observed exacerbated inequality with increasing farm animal value in patriliny. We conclude that the forces affecting wealth and inequality depend on local context and that the importance of local institutions is obscured by aggregate statistics drawn from modern nation states.

Although cooperative social networks are considered key to human evolution, emphasis has usually been placed on the functions of men's cooperative networks. What do women's networks look like? Do they differ from men's networks and what does this suggest about evolutionarily inherited gender differences in reproductive and social strategies? In this paper, we test the 'universal gender differences' hypothesis positing gender-specific network structures against the 'gender reversal' hypothesis that posits that women's networks look more 'masculine' under matriliny. Specifically, we ask whether men's friendship networks are always larger than women's networks and we investigate measures of centrality by gender and descent system. To do so, we use tools from social network analysis and data on men's and women's friendship ties in matrilineal and patrilineal Mosuo communities. In tentative support of the gender reversal hypothesis, we find that women's friendship networks in matriliny are relatively large. Measures of centrality and generalized linear models otherwise reveal greater differences between communities than between men and women. The data and analyses we present are primarily descriptive given limitations of sample size and sampling strategy. Nonetheless, our results provide support for the flexible application of social relationships across genders and clearly challenge the predominant narrative of universal gender differences across space and time.

Transitions to matriliny are said to be relatively rare. This evidence is sometimes used to support arguments that perceive matriliny as a problematic and unstable system of kinship. In this article, we use an evolutionary perspective to trace changes in kinship to and from matriliny among the Mosuo of Southwest China as potentially adaptive. The Mosuo are famous for practicing a relatively rare form of female-biased kinship involving matrilineal descent and inheritance, natalocal residence, and a non-marital reproductive system ('walking marriage' or sese). Less well documented is their patrilineal subpopulation, who practice male-biased, patrilineal inheritance and descent, patrilocal residence, and exclusive marriage. Our analysis supports the existence of a prior transition to matriliny at least a millennium ago among Mosuo residing in the Yongning Basin, followed by a subsequent transition to patriliny among Mosuo residing in the more rugged mountainous terrain near Labai. We argue that these transitions make sense in light of economic, social, and political conditions that disfavor versus favor disproportionate investments in men, in matriliny versus patriliny, respectively. We conclude that additional evidence of such transitions would shed light on explanations of variation in kinship and that convergent approaches involving analysis of genetic, archaeological, and ethnohistorical data would provide holistic understandings of kinship and social change. ; Published version