My understanding of Henrich’s model says that reducing cousin marriage is a necessary but hardly sufficient condition to replicate WEIRD affluence.
European culture likely had other features which enabled cooperation on larger-than-kin-network scales. Without those features, a society that stops cousin marriage could easily end up with only cooperation within smaller kin networks. We shouldn’t be confident that we understand what the most important features are, much less that we can cause LMICs to have them.
Successful societies ought to be risk-averse about this kind of change. If this cause area is worth pursuing, it should focus on the least successful societies. But those are also the societies that are least willing to listen to WEIRD ideas.
Also, the idea that reduced cousin marriage was due to some random church edict seems to be the most suspicious part of Henrich’s book. See The Explanation of Ideology for some claims that the nuclear family was normal in northwest Europe well before Christianity.
My understanding of Henrich’s model says that reducing cousin marriage is a necessary but hardly sufficient condition to replicate WEIRD affluence.
European culture likely had other features which enabled cooperation on larger-than-kin-network scales. Without those features, a society that stops cousin marriage could easily end up with only cooperation within smaller kin networks. We shouldn’t be confident that we understand what the most important features are, much less that we can cause LMICs to have them.
Successful societies ought to be risk-averse about this kind of change. If this cause area is worth pursuing, it should focus on the least successful societies. But those are also the societies that are least willing to listen to WEIRD ideas.
Also, the idea that reduced cousin marriage was due to some random church edict seems to be the most suspicious part of Henrich’s book. See The Explanation of Ideology for some claims that the nuclear family was normal in northwest Europe well before Christianity.