This volume explores the forms of knowledge generated by exoticizing the subject studied. It analyzes monogamy in Western cultures from a cultural distance. First, from the cultural perspective of a Kenyan writer who underlines the moral evils unwittingly generated by a system imposing universal monogamy and generating annual cohorts of illegitimate children. Then, the essay considers the case of France, which, starting in the 1970’s, changed its laws regarding children born out of wedlock. Such children have now become legitimate. Unwittingly, this has allowed for polygyny or polyandry to become legal options for French males and females. The analysis is further extended to Western Europe, two Latin American nations and to the contemporary U.S.A. with its polyamory movement, where legal outcomes similar to those of France have occurred. The volume examines monogamy by using the epistemological approach that is typically used in the anthropological study of cultures other than one’s own, showing how exotic and strange the system of monogamy can look, when observed from afar, from the eyes of many non-Westerners. It gives insight into planes of the human Western experience that would normally remain invisible. Students and teachers will delight in the close-to-home debates stimulated by this evocative thought-provoking essay.

Few people realize that polygamy continues to exist in the United States. Thus, world-wide attention focused on the State of Texas in 2008 as agents surrounded the compound of The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (FLDS) and took custody of more than 400 children. Several members of this schismatic religious group, whose women adorned themselves in "prairie dresses," admitted to practicing polygamy. The state justified the raid on charges that underage marriage was being forced on young women. A year later, however, all but one of the children had been returned to their parents and only ten men were charged with crimes, some barely related to the original charges. This book reveals the history, culture, and sometimes an insider's look at the polygamous groups located primarily in the western parts of the United States. The contributors to this volume are historians, anthropologists, and sociologists familiar with the various groups. A legal scholar also addresses the legality of the Texas raid and a geneticist examines the paternity issues. Together, these authors provide a much needed understanding of the surprisingly large number of groups and individuals who live a quiet polygamous life style in the United States.

"Polygamy?" says the mainstream Mormon Church. "We gave that up long ago." Not so, claims noted LDS poet and author Carol Lynn Pearson, who examines the issue as it has never been examined before. Any member of the LDS Church today who enters the practice of polygamy is immediately excommunicated. However, Pearson claims, polygamy itself has never been excommunicated, but has an honored and protected place at the table. It has only been postponed, a fact confirmed by thousands of "eternal sealings" giving a man an assurance that he will claim as wives in heaven the two, three, or even more women he has sequentially married during his lifetime. No such opportunity is available to women. Through her own personal stories, those of her ancestors, and the thousands of stories that came to her through an Internet survey, Pearson shows the power of the Ghost of Eternal Polygamy as it not only waits on the other side to greet the most righteous in heaven, but also haunts the living-hiding in the recesses of the Mormon psyche, inflicting profound pain and fear, assuring women that they are still objects, harming or destroying marriages, bringing chaos to family relationships, leading many to lose faith in the church and in God. Mormon historian and author Dr. Gregory Prince says of The Ghost of Eternal Polygamy: "Carol Lynn Pearson has hit a home run in her quest to illuminate both the damage that Mormonism's de facto practice of polygamy continues to inflict, and the route to a better, more humane place. Those who truly hope for eternal polygamy or who resent any call to institutional reform will be upset, but countless others will rejoice that she has shown 'a more excellent way.' "

He runs his own business and coaches Little League. She drives a minivan, and she'd be lost without her trusty BlackBerry. They go on date nights. Their kids attend public schools, play sports, and take music lessons. They live in a roomy house in the ‘burbs. They're about as mainstream as families come. They're also polygamists. Love Times Three, the first-ever memoir of a polygamous family, is a riveting inside look at a world most of us can hardly imagine, revealing the extraordinary workings of the Dargers' day-to-day life. In this intimate, inside story, the Dargers explain why they chose this path despite the pressures of keeping their relationships secret and the jealousy and personal challenges that naturally ensue, why they believe polygamy should be an accepted lifestyle, and, ultimately, why they hope that by revealing their way of life in public, laws that criminalize their lifestyle might change.

A provocative look at the costs and benefits of polygamy among western fundamentalist Mormon women

What do we really know about modern practicing polygamists--not fictional ones like the Henrickson family on HBO's Big Love? We've seen the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in the news, the underage brides in pioneer dresses on a Texas ranch. But the FLDS is just one of many groups that have broken with mainstream Mormonism to follow those parts of Joseph Smith's doctrine disavowed by the LDS Church. Gaining unprecedented access to these communities, journalist Sanjiv Bhattacharya reveals a shadow country teeming with small town messiahs, dark secrets, and stories both heartbreaking and strange. Polygamy's dark side--incest, forced marriages, and physical abuse--is laid bare. But Bhattacharya also finds warmth in the fundamentalist diaspora and even finds himself taking an ideological stand for polygamy's legalization. More than just an expose of Mormon polygamy, Secrets and Wives is the personal journey of a foreign atheist and liberal, a stranger in a strange land who grapples with hard questions about marriage, monogamy, and the very nature of faith.

The worldwide bombshell of Brian David Mitchell, the itinerant sidewalk preacher who kidnaped Elizabeth Smart, finally brought the world's attention to what Oprah Winfrey's show labeled as third-world Taliban-type abuses in Utah and Arizona. Now polygamy expert and retired law enforcement officer John Llewellyn provides a dramatic inside look at each of these polygamist groups.

Highlights many ofthe inherent problems of polygyny, but challenges the myopic media-driven depiction of plural marriage. This work criticizes the techniques used by state and federal governments to raid entire communities in the 1950s and in April 2008.

From The Gallup Organization-the most respected source on the subject-comes a fascinating look at the importance of measuring public opinion in modern society. For years, public-opinion polls have been a valuable tool for gauging the positions of American citizens on a wide variety of topics. Polling applies scientific principles to understanding and anticipating the insights, emotions, and attitudes of society. Now in POLLING MATTERS: Why Leaders Must Listen to the Wisdom of the People, The Gallup Organization reveals: What polls really are and how they are conducted Why the information polls provide is so vitally important to modern society today How this valuable information can be used more effectively and more...