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polygyny

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polygyny

1. the practice or condition of being married to more than one wife at the same time
2. the practice in animals of a male mating with more than one female during one breeding season
3. the condition in flowers of having many carpels
Collins Discovery Encyclopedia, 1st edition © HarperCollins Publishers 2005

polygyny

a form of plural marriage where a man has more than one wife. This is viewed as a strategy which allows powerful males to control reproductive resources and to tactically manipulate kin ties. Far more common than its opposite, POLYANDRY, it is a subclass of POLYGAMY.
Collins Dictionary of Sociology, 3rd ed. © HarperCollins Publishers 2000
The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Polygyny

 

the practice of having more than one wife; a form of marriage existing throughout history and found chiefly in patriarchies. In its late forms, polygyny was retained in the class society of certain Muslim peoples of the East as a privilege of the ruling classes. Polygamy, a less precise term, is sometimes used instead of polygyny.

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). © 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
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References in periodicals archive
Because of colonialism, Christianity and western education; the vehicles for westernisation, traditional polygynous marital practices tend to be despised as they are regarded as uncivilised, backwards and counter development.
Among the families above and among other interviewees, the connections of digital money sometimes exclude others such as half-siblings, the polygynous father, cowives, spouses, and in-laws.
While Beaman's work falls under the wide purview of qualitative research, her paper on polygamy does not undertake primary research within Bountiful or any other polygynous community (Beaman 2004).
If female coexistence occurs as documented in other polygynous cervids, then males should display greater frequency and intensity of aggression than females.
While both monogamous and polyandrous marriages exist side by side (together with, to a lesser extent, polygynous marriages) in agricultural areas of Tibet, it is clear from numerous studies that polyandrous marriage units are sought whenever possible.
Conversely, male space use generally increases with age, primarily during the breeding (summer) season due to polygynous mating (Minta, 1993).
Greater Sage-Grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus; hereafter Sage-Grouse) are a polygynous galliform that inhabits the sagebrush steppe of western North America.
She identifies five types of reference to sexual habits by the Polo commentator, labeling them "The Nakedness Topos," "Feminine Promiscuity," "The Communal Woman, "The Cuckold Ideal," and "The Polygynous Household" (125) and shows how each topos operates in her sources.
For polygynous mammals, male dispersal is near-obligatory, whereas female dispersal patterns are nuanced, showing a mixed strategy of dispersal and philopatry (Johnson 1986).
Opie's methods were slightly better at handling the blurry lines between types of mating systems, Nunn says, whereas Lukas' team"reallywants to pin each species into one cubbyhole." For example, Opie's team classified the gray bamboo lemur, which has some variation in its mating habits, as both monogamous and polygynous, while Lukas' team classified this species as not monogamous.
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