Recent imbs_socdyn_sdeas items

BACK TO KINSHIP III: A GENERAL INTRODUCTION

Mon, 23 Mar 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Back to Kinship III is the third Special Issue of the e-journal, Structure and Dynamics sponsored by the group, Kinship Circle. Each issue is dedicated to current kinship research.There are 5 articles in this Special Issue, covering a wide range of kinship research questions and topics The first two articles, by William Young and Warren Shapiro, respectively, employ ethnographic evidence as the reason for revising previous kinship ideas. The next two articles, by Robert Parkin and Dwight Read, respectively, focus on kinship terminology and revisit theoretical issues. The last article, by Alain Matthey de l’Etang, discusses theorizing by Dwight Read challenging the “received view” of kin terms being derived through a genealogical framework and proposing, in its place, that kin terms are structurally organized through a generative logic for the terminology

RETHINKING NAVAJO SOCIAL THEORY

Mon, 23 Mar 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Hal Scheffler, in arguing that native concepts about procreation provide the basis for kin reckoning universally, presented considerable evidence for his argument, in addition to the extension rules for which he is best known, This essay applies this evidence to the Navajo materials and shows that a Schefflerian analysis is correct. By contrast, the analysis of Nava-jo kinship by Gary Witherspoon, indebted to David Schneider’s ideas, is shown to be wide of the mark. Scheffler also argued, in much the same logical vein, that gender classification around the world is bipartite, that claims of a “third sex” are without merit. The argument is applied to “third sex” claims by Wesley Thomas, which claims are shown to be baseless.

WHY CAN HUNTER-GATHERER GROUPS BE ORGANIZED SIMLARLY FOR RESOURCE PROCUREMENT, BUT THEIR KINSHIP TERMINOLOGIES ARE STRIKINGLY DISSIMILAR: A CHALLENGE FOR FUTURE CROSS-CULTURAL RESEARCH

Mon, 2 Dec 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Cross-cultural research involves explanatory arguments framed at the meta-level of a cohort of societies, each with its own historical development as an internally structured and organized system. Historically, cross-cultural research on hunter-gatherer groups initially was in accord with the general anthropological interest in determining the ideational basis for differences in systems of social organization, but more recent work has shifted emphasis to the phenomenal level of factors affecting the mode of adaptation to an external environment. This has left a major lacuna in our understanding of the reasons for cross-cultural differences among ideational systems such as kinship terminologies in hunter-gatherer societies. I address this lacuna in this article through cross-cultural comparison of hunter-gatherer kinship terminologies at an ideational, qualitative level. The means for so doing is first worked out using the kinship terminology of the Hadza, an East African hunter-gather...

KINSHIP AND HISTORY: TRIBES, GENEALOGIES, AND SOCIAL CHANGE AMONG THE BEDOUIN OF THE EASTERN ARAB WORLD

Sat, 30 Nov 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Most scholars of tribal organization among the Bedouin of the eastern Arab world utilize a two-dimensional, hierarchical model of Bedouin kinship that represents only relations of descent and affinity. This model resembles a genealogy and shows how small descent units are enclosed by larger ones. It implies that tribes grow in size only through biological reproduction. Such a representation of the Bedouin tribe fails to distinguish politically central lineages from politically peripheral lineages and also ignores the processes through which foreign lineages become “attached” as clients to politically powerful, central lineages. To correct and supplement this genealogical model, the author presents a concentric model of Bedouin tribes that adds a “central/peripheral” distinction. This model also includes relations of political “attachment” that can affect the internal morphology and growth of Bedouin tribes in ways that are comparable to the effects of affinal and suckling kinship...

SUBSTITUTABILITY OF KIN AND THE CROW-OMAHA PROBLEM

Thu, 28 Nov 2019 00:00:00 +0000

The reasons for the existence of Crow-Omaha terminologies have long been debated because of difficulties in associating them with specific features of social organization or practice. However, by going back to the theories of earlier authorities like Josef Kohler, Radcliffe-Brown and Lévi-Strauss and using them to interpret some key ethnographies, it is possible to suggest why they exist. That is, from ego’s perspective, the vertical equations that define Crow-Omaha terminologies unite descent lines whose members in each generation can substitute for one another in relations with ego’s descent line, as marriage and other ties between those lines work themselves out over a time scale of, very often, several decades. Ultimately this can be linked to the long claimed links between Crow-Omaha terminologies and the prohibition of certain kin types in marriage, which typically act to delay the repetition of previous marriage alliances for one or more generations. It is suggested that...

CHAPTER 8: DWIGHT READ: TOWARDS A NEW PARADIGM: FOLLOWED BY A DISCUSSION BETWEEN THE AUTHOR AND DWIGHT READ

Thu, 14 Nov 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Here I report on Dwight Read’s theory for a paradigm change in kinship anthropology which entails kinship terminologies being interpreted as symbolic computational systems based on kin-term products. I also report on how Read argues that different conceptualizations of sibling, either sibling resulting by descent from parent, or sibling viewed in terms of shared parentage, two cultural conceptions that are rendered – here exemplifying the masculine side – by the kin-term products, S o F = B [son of father = brother] or F o B = F [father of brother = father), lead to respectively building up a descriptive or a classificatory terminology. The chapter also deals with how Dwight Read accounts for the relationship between genealogical tracing and the working out of kin terms using kin-term products and how the logic of kin-term products is consistent with the extension of kin terms to kin-type...

The Gift and the Centipede

Mon, 27 Feb 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This paper addresses the similarity between behavioural economics and social anthropology with respect to approaches on repeated reciprocity. The case at hand is the application of the Centipede game to Marcel Mauss's concept of the Gift. In a Centipede game players interact in an alternating sequence of decisions to take or to pass an endowment. Mauss describes sequences of reciprocal giving in potlatch cultures, in which strict obligations determine choice options. The paper shows that models developed in behavioural economics, such as the Centipede game, can also be applied to prominent contexts in economic anthropology.

GLOBAL ECONOMIC DYNAMICS OF THE FORTHCOMING YEARS: A FORECAST

Sun, 1 Jan 2017 00:00:00 +0000

The paper analyzes the current state of the world economy and offers a short-term forecast of its development. Our analysis of log-periodic oscillations in the DJIA dynamics suggests that in the second half of 2017 the United States and other more developed countries could experience a new recession, due to the third phase of the global financial crisis. The economies of developing countries will continue their slowdown due to lower prices of raw commodities and the increased pressure of dollar debt load. The bottom of the slowdown in global economic growth is likely to be achieved in 2017-2018. Then we expect the start of a new acceleration of global economic growth at the upswing phase of the 6th Kondratieff cycle (2018-2050). A speedy and steady withdrawal from the third phase of the global financial crisis requires cooperative action between developed and developing countries within G20 to stimulate global demand, world trade and a fair solution of the debt problem of developing...

The Study of Kinship Systems and Terminologies in Russia and the Soviet Union

Mon, 5 Sep 2016 00:00:00 +0000

The paper traces the origin of kinship studies as a subdiscipline of ethnography in Russia and the former Soviet Union. It identifies three long-term trends in the study of kinship (typological, ethnosociological and ethnocultural) in the region and highlights the importance of evolutionary thinking and the conceptual distinction between content and manifestation in the study of kin terminological systems. It presents several illustrative studies that demonstrate how Russian and Soviet scholars have tackled these trends and conceptual principles in practice.

The Nexus Between Kinship and Ritual

Mon, 5 Sep 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Not only ritual, but also kinship, can be understood as self-generative and in fact mutually self-generative social phenomena. They are in this sense foils for each other’s production of social values, transformations, causes, and effects. Because this model of cultural agency is nonlinear rather than linear, it works on the transformation of social wholes rather than categorical divisions, and thus can be applied to medieval as well as contemporary socio-ritual contingencies.

KV(Ŋ)KV -Kinship Terms in the Australian Aboriginal Languages:First Part:Kaka 'Mother's Brother'

Mon, 5 Sep 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Here, I report the pervasive distribution in numerous Aboriginal language groups all over Australia, of kinship terms with similar phonetic shapes and meanings, such as kaka MB, FZH, EF. It is argued that this distribution is consistent with the antiquity of this term in the language families in which it is found. Further, its pervasive presence in non-Pama-Nyungan (non-PNy) as well as in Pama-Nyungan (PNy) languages, is consistent with inheritance from a higher taxonomic level, possibly Proto-Australian, and beyond, and even possibly from the proto-language spoken by the first modern men who colonized Sahul, while the grounded idea of a primordial Kariera-like at the start of higher nodes in the Australian language phylum is consistent with the claim that the Proto-Australian kinship system was Kariera-like.

New Simulation Techniques in Kinship Network Analysis

Mon, 5 Sep 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Thanks to new conceptual and computational tools, the analysis of kinship and marriage networks has advanced considerably over the past twenty-five years. While in the past, the discussion of empirical marriage practices was often restricted to a casual observation of salient network features, it is now easy to produce a complete census of matrimonial circuits, both between individuals and between groups. However, the abundance of structural features which have thus become accessible raises a new question: to what extent can they be taken as indicators of sociological phenomena (such as marriage preferences or avoidances), rather than as effects of chance or of observer bias?

This paper presents a series of recently developed simulation techniques that deal with this issue. Starting from a new approach to “classical” agent-based modeling of kinship and alliance (group) networks (Section 2), we then present an automatic model discovery technique which,...

The Evolutionary Origins of Kinship Structures

Mon, 5 Sep 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Patrilineal kinship structures are among the most complex manifestations of the impact of kinship on human social life. Despite the fact that such structures take highly diverse forms across cultures, that they are absent in many human societies and, moreover, that they are not observed in other primate species, a comparative analysis of human and nonhuman primate societies reveals that human kinship structures have deep evolutionary roots and clear biological underpinnings. I argue here that the first patrilineal kinship structures came into being as the emergent products of the combination, in the course of human evolution, of ten biologically grounded components, seven of which are observed in our closest relative, the chimpanzee, the remaining three being consequences of the evolution of pair-bonding in humans. This indicates that contemporary patrilineal kinship structures are not cultural creations, but cultural constructs that built upon, and diversified from...

Why Marriage?

Mon, 5 Sep 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Marriage is not founded straightforwardly upon procreation. Rather, marriage is universally — not withstanding groups such as the Mosuo of China lacking institutionalized marriage — a contractua l relationship legitimating a woman’s childbearing and giving her offspring social identity. While a child-bearing woman may simply take on the motherhood role, the same is not true for fatherhood. Rather, marriage defines a male conceptually as father for social purposes, regardless of his biological status. From a conceptual perspective, this, in conjunction with the introduction during hominin evolution of the cognitive ability to recognize a relation of a relation as a relation, enabled the formation, by our ancestors, of genealogical tracing as a recursive process connecting pairs of individuals through parent/child links. But genealogical tracing becomes problematic, both with regard to accurate transmission of genealogical...

Ties That Bind:Marital Networks and Politics in Punjab, Pakistan

Mon, 5 Sep 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Pakistani politics are characterised by strong corporate social links through kinship and caste that impose reciprocal obligations and rights. Marital maps enable allow for accurate prediction of allegiances and decision making and contribute to a transparent assessment of political processes in the country. While much of the focus on reciprocal relations has understandably been on descent relations (dynasties), the complex network of marital alliances that cut across lineage and sectarian divides helps explain notable levels of stability despite the fragility of the state and other public institutions. Using the example of one of the most successful political dynasties in post independence Pakistan, we show the extent of cross lineage, region and even party alliances that shape this political kinship network.

Beyond Fitness and Nurture: The Kinship Paradox

Mon, 5 Sep 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This paper builds on earlier analyses of primary data on kinship in Qatar. Its conceptualization centers kinship as a highly structured universal human phenomenon in the study of humankind. As lived practices, kinship forms a bounded, identifiable domain that is distinguishable from other societal relations. Going beyond reducing kinship to fitness (biology) or nurture (culture study), analysis of primary ethnographic data gathered as part of a grant-funded field research project on kinship practices in Qatar, including suckling practices along with kinship by birth and by marriage, is presented to demonstrate how complex anomalies emerging at the level of kinship experience reveal in analysis properties of kinship as a transformational triadic structure, here proposed as a universal feature of kinship and a dynamic aspect of its structure.

Back to Kinship II: A General Introduction

Mon, 5 Sep 2016 00:00:00 +0000

The two failed orientations to kinship, nurture and fitness, are transcended as this collection of original kinship work moves forward, building on the rich theoretical and ethnographic past of kinship study to a reinvigorated future of new data, reconceptualization of paradigms, fresh debates and new theory. Using kinship to anthropomorphize nonhuman primates is rejected. Contributions from 18 distinguished scholars of kinship cover the four-field, cross-cultural science of anthropology. Issues in kinship study are explored through marriage, kin terms, space, incorporation, ritual, primate studies, and contributions from Russia. This collection carries kinship study into the future.

Ethnological Problems and the Production of Archaeological Kinship Research

Mon, 5 Sep 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Ethnology traditionally guides most research on kinship practices. However, diachronic hypotheses are inadequately tested when using synchronic and normative information from limited periods of ethnological observations. Archaeological kinship analysis on residence, descent, and marriage, using middle-range factual correspondences between social practice and material remains, enable plausible inferences on variation and change in kinship practices over long periods of time. Therefore, archaeology is ideal for independently evaluating diachronic hypotheses. Taíno, Maya, and Hohokam case studies are presented and the results obtained from archaeological kinship analyses are summarized. These analyses show that variation and change are prevalent, thereby defying normative characterizations. Several long-standing functionalist hypotheses on the emergence of residence and descent practices are evaluated, and several of these find little support from long-term diachronic archaeological...

Dualism and Pluralism in Pueblo Kinship and Ritual Systems

Mon, 5 Sep 2016 00:00:00 +0000

How do kinship and ritual systems articulate with patterns of social organization? Among the Pueblos of New Mexico and Arizona, social organization has been described as conforming to two opposing patterns. Among the Eastern Pueblos of the Rio Grande, especially the Tanoan-speaking towns north of Santa Fe, kinship is held to play a structurally insignificant role; social organization there, rather, pivots on ritual sodalities.” In the Western Pueblos (especially Hopi and Zuni), named matrilineal descent groups (“clans” and lineages), associated with Crow kinship terminology, are treated as the main articulating features of the social system. How is it that notwithstanding major cultural similarities in other respects, the Pueblos came to exhibit such different structuring principles for social life? This paper argues for greater similarities in the kinship and ritual systems of Eastern and Western Pueblos than has previously been ascribed to them, and suggests that dual...

Why Schneiderian Kinship Studies Have It All Wrong

Mon, 5 Sep 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Followers of David Schneider regularly claim that kinship in one or another community is not based upon native procreative notions. This claim has been shown to be wrong in several cases. But early childhood adoption might be thought to pose a special challenge to these correctives, because, unlike kinship notions established later in life, it draws upon the decided tendency of the very young to attach themselves to adult caretakers regardless of the presence or absence of a procreative connexion. Analysis of three well-known ethnographic cases suggests, however, that even here native ideas concerning procreation are semantically primary.

Frames of Reference and Kinship Terminology Systems

Mon, 5 Sep 2016 00:00:00 +0000

The content of the spatial relationships module has been extensively studied and a fundamental part of such content is the concept of frame of reference; that is, a set of coordinates that generates an oriented space within which relationships between objects are established. There are three major types (and six subtypes) of frames of reference: the relative, the intrinsic, and the absolute. The content of the spatial relationships module has been proposed as being foundational to the development of both language and cognition. In this work I explore the possibility that the various types of frame of reference participate in the construction of the basic patterns of the kinship terminology systems: descriptive-Sudanese, bifurcate merging-Iroquois (also Crow and Omaha), classificatory and/or generational-Hawaiian (also classificatory-Dravidian), and lineal-Eskimo.

CONCEPTUALIZING ‘FRONT’ AND ‘BACK’: FRAMES OF REFERENCE AND TAUMAKO REPRESENTATIONS OF SPACE

Wed, 27 Jul 2016 00:00:00 +0000

The study of navigation involves questions about the conceptualization of space and ways in which people share their spatial understandings with others. This article focuses on one aspect of spatial cognition, a phenomenon commonly known as “frames of reference” (FoRs). It explores the myriad ways in which Taumako islanders in the southeastern Solomons talk about spatial relations that English speakers term ‘front’ and ‘back.’ I examine how Taumako notions of ‘front’ and ‘back’ articulate with FoRs that are well established in the anthropological literature, and I explore the challenge of applying commonly-accepted FoR typologies to actual Taumako usage. In some contexts, there was little disagreement among my interlocutors as to proper use of the salient terms. In others, there was considerable divergence; and in certain instances even the same person appeared to be inconsistent from one occasion to the next. I will attempt to identify those areas in which I found widespread...

CONCLUSIONS: A CROSS-DISCIPLINARY JOURNEY THROUGH SPATIAL ORIENTATION

Wed, 27 Jul 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Multiple disciplines offer diverse intellectual tool-kits that can be brought to bear on studies in any one. In this concluding article, I use elements of physics and cognitive psychology to analyze the material reported in this collection. In the case of the articles on navigation at sea (Genz, Feinberg and Pyrek), the physics of ocean waves, climate, and the motion of stars can illuminate the reports of interlocutors. The sensitivity of long wavelength swells to the presence of land seems widespread and is in accordance with known wave behavior and reports. In addition, wave phenomena may be related to local bathymetry and point to further lines of inquiry. Likewise, wind-compass and star directions can be directly compared with climate data and known star motions. The four articles on language and spatial orientation predominantly on land (Montague, Feinberg, Schneider and Van Der Ryn), are examined via the question: Does social cognition follow spatial cognition? As has...

SPACE AND PERSON IN THE TROBRIANDS: THE SELF AS LIVING AND DEAD

Wed, 27 Jul 2016 00:00:00 +0000

The Trobriand language contains two spatial markers, o and wa, which designate types of space, space of the living and space of the dead. All geographic space in the Trobriand world is assigned into one or the other of these two categories. This essay delves into the hows and whys of this and illustrates why such a seemingly simple topic as space has proven to be so ethnographically and linguistically challenging

RESOLVING AMBIVALENCE IN MARSHALLESE NAVIGATION:RELEARNING, REINTERPRETING, AND REVIVING THE “STICK CHART” WAVE MODELS

Wed, 27 Jul 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Marshallese wave navigation remains one of the least understood systems of traditional spatial orientation in Oceania. A sharp decline in voyaging during the historic era and continuing reluctance to share the surviving family-based knowledge of the waves has led to ambiguous and sometimes contradictory interpretations, encompassing both local and anthropological ambivalence. In this article, I examine the navigational concepts of two acknowledged experts from different navigation schools in the Marshall Islands who modeled their ideas of the dynamic flow of ocean waves in wooden instructional devices, commonly referred to as “stick charts.” Of central importance is how a navigator worked toward resolving his ambivalence of these concepts by relearning, reinterpreting, and reviving the stick chart wave models. Theoretically, the selectivity of abstract models during practical engagement in the oceanic environment adds to an already powerful dynamic in the complementarity of...

WHICH WAY IS FRONT?: SPATIAL ORIENTATION COMPLICATIONS IN CONTEMPORARY SAMOAN VILLAGES

Wed, 27 Jul 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Drawing on four years of ethnographic fieldwork in Samoan villages examining Samoan village architecture and spatial uses, I illuminate the culturalization of space in Samoan villages in terms of the front–back axis, deemed a key orientation in contemporary Samoan social life. The Samoan term for space is vā, defined as the interval or “between-ness” of entities in physical, social, spiritual, ideational and temporal landscapes. I highlight how perceptions of, and actions on, the vā in Samoa are the modus operandi by which relationships, boundaries and balances in Samoa are negotiated and determined, and how the front-back axis informs binary, mutually complementary and inter-dependent sets of socio-spatial relationships in that system. Central to understanding vā and the front–back axis is its Samoan articulation at different scales—from the architecture of the individual house, to household and whole layouts. This article builds on previous theoretical and ethnographic literature...

THE VAEAKAU-TAUMAKO WIND COMPASS AS PART OF A “NAVIGATIONAL TOOLKIT”

Wed, 27 Jul 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Different voyaging communities in the Pacific use a variety of non-instrument navigational techniques for way-finding across long distances. The use of a star compass has been well documented for several groups. Wind compasses are less well documented and appear to be less utilized throughout the region. This article seeks to understand the Vaeakau-Taumako wind compass as it compares to other wind compasses, as well as how wind and star compasses and other navigational techniques compare to each other as cognitive frameworks for navigation.

ABOVE AND BELOW AMONG MAINLANDERS AND SALTWATER PEOPLE IN BUKA, BOUGAINVILLE

Wed, 27 Jul 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This article draws on ethnographic field research in Buka, Bougainville, in order to address the question of multiple models in spatial orientation and the factors that constrain their relative salience. With respect to different Polynesian settings (Tonga and Samoa), Bradd Shore has suggested that a preference for allocentric models may be linked to pronounced social hierarchies. However, findings from other settings (Taumako) indicate that matters may be more complicated. Within the Buka area, I suggest that the relative salience of allocentric and egocentric radiality is connected to people’s relative position in local hierarchies. “Mainlanders,” who are located “above” in terms of local social hierarchies, rely more strongly on allocentric models, compared to “saltwater people” who are located further “below” and prefer to use egocentric models. I link this finding to the contrast between “mainland” and “saltwater” subsistence activities and show how “mainlanders” adopt...

Introduction: Navigating Spatial Relationships in Oceania

Wed, 20 Jul 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Recent decades have seen a revival of interest in traditional voyaging equipment and techniques among Pacific Islanders. At key points, the Oceanic voyaging revival came together with anthropological interests in cognition. This special issue explores that intersection as it is expressed in cognitive models of space, both at sea and on land. These include techniques for “wave piloting” in the Marshall Islands, wind compasses and their utilization as part of an inclusive navigational tool kit in the Vaeakau-Taumako region of the Solomon Islands; notions of ‘front’ and ‘back’ on Taumako and in Samoa, ideas of ‘above’ and ‘below’ in the Bougainville region of Papua New Guinea, spaces associated with the living and the dead in the Trobriand Islands, and the understanding of navigation in terms of neuroscience and physics.

Evaluating Settlement Structures in the Ancient Near East using Spatial Interaction Entropy Maximization

Fri, 24 Jul 2015 00:00:00 +0000
We explore settlement structures and hierarchy found in different archaeological periods in northern, specifically the Khabur Triangle (KT), and southern Mesopotamia (SM) using a spatial interaction entropy maximization (SIEM) modeling and simulation method. Regional settlement patterns are investigated in order to understand what feedback levels for settlement benefits, or incentives, and abilities to move or disperse between sites in a landscape and period could have enabled observed settlement structures to emerge or be maintained. Archaeological and historical data are then used to interpret the best results. We suggest that in the Late Chalcolithic (LC) and first half of the Early Bronze Age (EBA), the KT and SM appear to have comparable urban patterns and development, where settlement advantage feedbacks and movement are similarly shaping the two regions for those periods. Within period variations, such as restrictions to population diffusion or movement in the EBA, are...

Persistent Cultures: Miskitu Kinship Terminological Fluidity

Sat, 2 May 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Kinship is understood dynamically and processually but kinship terminologies are remarkably stable idea systems. They provide cultural continuity over time and are more resistant to modification than many types of cultural instantiations. Miskitu speakers in Nicaragua, however, have adopted new kin terms that appear to have fundamentally changed the idea system used to generate their kin terms historically. The shape of the changes that have occurred in Miskitu kin terminologies over time are the result of powerful economic, political and social forces introduced, in part, as a consequence of the geography of Mosquito Coast economies, migrations and political processes. We argue that the current use of kin terms is atypically hybrid and is not the result of a single, algebraically derivable idea system. Rather than negating the validity of mathematical approaches to kinship terminologies, the case of Miskitu kinship terminology suggests that core idea systems, although subject...

Asymmetry in In-Degree and Out-Degree Distributions of Large-Scale Industrial Networks

Mon, 23 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Many natural, physical and social networks commonly exhibit power-law degree distributions. In this paper, we discover previously unreported asymmetrical patterns in the degree distributions of incoming and outgoing links in the investigation of large-scale industrial networks, and provide interpretations. In industrial networks, nodes are firms and links are directed supplier-customer relationships. While both in- and out-degree distributions have “power law” regimes, out-degree distribution decays faster than in-degree distribution and crosses it at a consistent nodal degree. It implies that, as link degree increases, the constraints to the capacity for designing, producing and transmitting artifacts out to others grow faster than and surpasses those for acquiring, absorbing and synthesizing artifacts provided from others. We further discover that this asymmetry in decaying rates of in-degree and out-degree distributions is smaller in networks that process and transmit more...

On the emergence of large-scale human social integration and its antecedents in primates

Sun, 21 Sep 2014 00:00:00 +0000

One of the universal features of human sociality is the fact that our social networks are highly integrated – human societies exhibit several nested social layers including families, bands and communities. Several factors have been identified as creating disincentives for hostile intergroup relations, including economic interdependence (trade), intermarriage (exogamy), cooperative defence against external adversaries (warfare), and lack of patrilocal residential groups (absence of patrilocality with external war). We provide a preliminary test of hypotheses relating to the correlates of amicable relations between communities (i.e. absence of internal war) using the standard cross-cultural sample (SCCS) database. Intermarriage did not have any explanatory power, there is a nearly significant effect of trade on the establishment of intergroup tolerance, and the evidential basis for cooperative defence and patrilocal residence are strong when combed into a multiplicative effect....

COMBINING DIVERSE DATA SOURCES FOR CEDSS, AN AGENT-BASED MODEL OF DOMESTIC ENERGY DEMAND

Wed, 1 Jan 2014 00:00:00 +0000
CEDSS (Community Energy Demand Social Simulator) is an empirical agent-based model designed and built as part of a multi-method social science project investigating the determinants of domestic energy demand. Ideally, empirical modellers, within and beyond social simulation, would prefer to work from an integrated dataset, gathered for the purposes of developing the model. In practice, many have to work with less than ideal data, often including processed data from multiple sources external to the project. Moreover, what data will be required may not be clear at the start of the project. This paper describes the approach to dealing with these factors taken in developing CEDSS, and presents the completed model together with an outline of the calibration and validation procedure used. The discussion section draws together the most distinctive features of empirical data collection, processing and use for and in CEDSS, and argues that the approach taken is sufficiently...

Reconceptualizing the Dynamics of Religion as a Macro-Institutional Domain

Wed, 28 Aug 2013 00:00:00 +0000
Macro-institutional analysis was once central to sociological inquiry, such that Durkheim saw it as synonymous with sociology. With the failure of Parsonsian grand macro theory, sociology shifted its lens to the organization, or meso-level of analysis. While producing key insights into the dynamics of corporate units, the macro-environment has become ambiguously theorized. In the paper below, the emergent properties and dynamics of the religious institution—an important sphere of human action central to classical sociology and currently a vibrant subfield—are elucidated. It is argued an analysis at the macro-institution can produce a more robust understanding of social organization and action, which supplements the important meso-level models by more precisely defining and delineating the contours of the macro-level. The paper below achieves this goal by (a) explicating the generic qualities of all religious institutions and (b) positing the key intra- and inter-institutional...

Pastoralist Mobility and Social Controls In Inner Asia: Experiments Using Agent-Based Modeling

Fri, 26 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Archaeological, historical, and ethnographic sources on the pastoralism of Inner Asia provide evidence for a resilient, but highly volatile steppe adaptation that developed several thousand years ago. This study explores some fundamental aspects of pastoralist settlement and social systems as they developed following the Bronze Age. The analysis uses the agent-based computational model, HouseholdsWorld, to simulate aspects of mobility, population density, kinship structures, and herd dynamics relating to emerging social territories and the implications for sustainable landscape use. Comparisons with archaeological data show the potential impacts of social controls on habitation distributions and mobility. When overarching social controls were in place distinctive territorial differences emerged. When social controls were less centralized individual households became wealthier. In regions with dense populations, expanding the scope of landscape knowledge allowed micro-mobility...

The validity of partition as a solution to ethnic conflict

Thu, 9 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This paper examines the effectiveness of partition in ceasing violence during ethnic conflict. Wigmore-Shepherd’s 2012 study argued that ethnic conflict is often due to the congruence between ethnic and political identity, allowing political conflicts to become ‘ethnicised’ and ethnic conflict to eclipse the original political dispute. Therefore this paper hypothesises that ethnic homogenisation via partition can allow the original political conflict to re-emerge in a potentially violent manner. The hypothesis is tested by an agent based model adapted from the model used in the 2012 study. The model finds that in the instances where there is not a perfect congruence between ethnic and political identity, politically motivated violence does persist in the ethnic enclaves. It was found that a lower level of congruence would result in a higher level of post-partition violence. Furthermore the act of migration itself can encourage spikes of ethnically...

Transformationality and Dynamicality of Kinship Structure

Sat, 13 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Building on data systematically gathered during a field study in Qatar, it is found that kinship structure is characterized by a property combining transformationality and dynamicality, certainly in Qatari kinship, and proposed here as a feature of the universal human phenomenon of kinship.

Talk Is Not Cheap: Kinship Terminologies and the Origins of Language

Sat, 13 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Kinship terminology is a human universal, a kind of cultural knowledge circulated through language. In this paper I explore the possibility that the need for social rules prompted the development of fully syntactic language via kinship terminologies. In other words, kinship terms are at the core of modern language. They require uniquely human cognitive features such as symbolic reference and recursiveness, which in turn require a cognitive capacity beyond that of non-human primates. The conceptualization of kinship types was crucial in the transition from non-human primate to human social organization and the ‘invention’ of kinship terms facilitated this transition. The heuristics used in kin classification could have provided the decisive cognitive leap that introduced the essential tools for organizing and expanding social relationships and increasing the chances for survival. Thus kinship terms could have been the original nucleus of human language.

We, the Taumako: Kinship Among Polynesians in the Santa Cruz Islands

Sat, 13 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Raymond Firth’s We, The Tikopia, first published in 1936, still sets the standard for detailed, nuanced, sensitive ethnography. As Malinowski’s student, Firth—who died in 2002 at the age of 100—was a hard-headed functionalist, whose forte was careful examination of cultural “institutions” and their effects on individuals as well as on other institutions. Suspicious of abstruse theoretical pronouncements, he presented his analyses in plain language and always situated them in relation to the “imponderabilia” of real people’s everyday lives. We, The Tikopia has been a foundational text for generations of anthropologists, and it helped to guide my research on three Polynesian outliers over the past four decades. Since the time of Firth’s initial fieldwork, conditions in the region have changed drastically, as even the most remote communities have become enmeshed in the world market economy. In 2007-08, I studied a revival of indigenous voyaging techniques on Taumako, a Polynesian...

Implicit Formality: Keesing’s Challenge and Its Significance for European Kinship

Sat, 13 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000

During the 1960s and 1970s, students of kinship became increasingly uneasy about the gap between formal terminology-and-genealogy-based models and data on actual behaviour. This gap–sometimes described as the problem of relating ‘prescriptive’ and ‘statistical’ models–was an important factor in Schneider’s rejection of the structural and cognitive traditions, and their subsequent near abandonment by Anglo-American anthropology. However, these developments did not resolve the problem so much as simply refuse to address it. The need for a better understanding of the relation between terminology and behaviour is still there, nowhere more so than in Europe, where quantitative historians and sociologists have revealed major macro-regional differences in kinship practices, which are associated with distinct patterns of kinship terminology.

This is where Keesing comes in. In his contribution to a 1972 volume celebrating the centenary of Morgan’s “Systems”, he, too criticized...

Back to Kinship: A General Introduction

Sat, 13 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000

In this collection, we retrace some of the historical development of the anthropological study of kinship and go back to the concepts and ideas that we, as anthropologists, had previously been circulating about kinship knowledge. We address issues that have been raised about the study of kinship, the place of kinship in anthropological knowledge and what constitutes kinship on the basis of local knowledge.

The Place of Kinship in the Social System: A Formal-and-Functional Consideration With an Appendix on Descent and Alliance

Sat, 13 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This papers examines the recent controversy as to whether there is any universally defined domain of kinship in sociocultural systems from the point of view of the philosophy of science, in particular, the classical positivism (e.g., of Radcliffe-Brown and of Murdock) that I show to have motivated the question. It also examines the American version of the controversy, as with Schneider, and shows that, again, the question arises because of essentially the radical empiricism of cultural particularism and its methodological focus. It then proceeds to evaluate the question from a cognitive-cum-formalist perspective, and goes on the argue that Lounsbury’s approach is not only also positivist-behaviorist in its foundations but also unwilling or unable to consider kinship as a domain having regard to its function within the whole social system and therewith in fact inadequately formalist, having regard to genealogical organization. I proceed to take especial not of the fact that,...

The Descent of Morgan in Australia: Kinship Representation from the Australian Colonies

Sat, 13 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Morgan had two extraordinary disciples in Lorimer Fison and Alfred Howitt in Australia. They were inspired by Morgan’s kinship schedule and were profoundly engaged in the method and theory of the collection of kinship data and its interpretation. Fison began using the schedule in Fiji in 1869. Soon after his first contact with Howitt, in 1873, they changed the method of collection of kinship terminologies. This paper traces the shift from tabulated kinship lists to family trees and the use of sticks to represent relationships (nearly twenty years before Rivers’ celebrated ‘genealogical method’), as well as efforts to find new means of representing kinship through experimentation with ‘ graphic formulae’ inspired by chemical equations. These innovations first occurred through the gathering of kinship data about the Kŭnai of Gippsland, Victoria, and crucially involved close collaboration between Howitt and his Kŭnai consultant Tulaba. What was revealed in this process was...

From Consanguinity to Consubstantiality: Julian Pitt-Rivers’ ‘The Kith and the Kin’

Sat, 13 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000

In 1973, Julian Pitt-Rivers published a chapter in Goody’s The Character of Kinship that, although rather infrequently used and quoted, suggested a work-around to the major criticisms that were expressed towards kinship studies in the 1970s. Reintroducing the notion of “consubstantiality”, Pitt-Rivers suggested a bringing together of emic and etic approaches to kinship classification and ontology. As straightforward as it may appear, the concept, when combined with Burke’s use of the notion in relation to that of “context”, crystallizes a methodology for embedding structural and formal approaches of kinship within the social domains of relatedness and action. While discussing Pitt-Rivers’ proposition, this paper illustrates the application of consubstantiality as an explanatory model of the extension of self in the Australian Western Desert through two examples: the diversity of marriage scenarios and their consequences and the “unusual” usage of some terminological classes...

The Legacy of Radcliffe-Brown's Typology of Australian Aboriginal Kinship Systems

Sat, 13 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000

I review A. R. Radcliffe-Brown’s approach to the classification of Australian Aboriginal kinship terminologies and marriage systems, including revisions by A. P. Elkin. I contrast Radcliffe-Brown’s approach to typology with those of Lévi-Strauss and Scheffler, and I trace the way in which certain of Radcliffe-Brown’s categories have become standardised in the anthropological literature. Following a discussion of approaches to classification, I propose a new classification of Australian systems and examine the frequency and spatial distribution of the proposed types.

The House That Morgan Built

Sat, 13 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000

L.H. Morgan’s kinship work began and ended with the Iroquois longhouse, and the Iroquois kinship system that it shaped and by which it was shaped. Kinship became a house for anthropology, shaping and being shaped by the emerging discipline. Much of the house that Morgan built for anthropology still stands, including the last book, on houses and house-life, which seems to anticipate the current literature on houses and house-societies.

The Recognition of Kinship Terminologies As Formal Systems

Sat, 13 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000

We now know what kinship terminologies are and what their function is in kinship systems, even though this knowledge is not yet widespread. Every social system consists of a set of organizations built up interactively by the use of specific idea systems: governmental systems are systems of organizations built up by the use of governmental ideas, military systems by the use of military ideas, economic systems by the use of economic ideas, and so on, including kinship systems by the use of kinship ideas. These social idea systems are not preeminently nomenclatures per se, but are associated with distinctive nomenclatures, just in the way that geometry is not a nomenclature but is associated with a nomenclature. For kinship, the core of the nomenclature has mainly been encountered and studied under the heading of “kinship terminologies.” The ideas associated with them are the ideas that make up their definitions. These are highly systematic and form powerfully generative ...

A New Approach to Forming a Typology of Kinship Terminology Systems: From Morgan and Murdock to the Present

Sat, 13 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This paper addresses typological relationships among kinship terminologies determined from structural differences in the way kin terms are organized as systems of concepts. Viewing a terminology as a system of concepts makes evident the generative logic of a terminology that starts with properties shared across several terminologies and eventually includes properties specific to a single terminology. These structural properties lead to a typology in which structural differences between terminologies form the branch points. The typology highlights two primary dimensions along which terminologies may be distinguished: (1) structural differences between terminologies and (2) variation in the morphology of the lexemic form of kin terms. Variation in the former relates to change constrained in the cultural domain and change in the latter relates to change constrained in the linguistic domain.

Sleep and risk-taking propensity in life history and evolutionary perspectives

Fri, 29 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Tradeoffs between time allocated to sleeping versus waking result from variations in local ecologies and should correlate to alterations in behavioral life history strategies. It was predicted that firefighters who sleep less, with lower overall sleep quality, would exhibit greater motivation for risk-taking, an important component of fast life histories. Firefighters completed evolutionarily relevant questionnaires on five domains of risk-taking propensity that were correlated to sleep quantity and quality variables. Multiple linear regression analysis indicated that self-reported measures of sleep quantity, sleep latency, and psychological and physical sleep quality were occasionally and variably related to within-group competition, between-group competition, reproduction, environmental challenge, and mating and resource allocation for mate attraction risk domains in predicted directions.

Robust Intelligence (RI) under uncertainty: Mathematical foundations of autonomous hybrid (human-machine-robot) teams, organizations and systems

Tue, 1 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0000

To develop a theory of Robust Intelligence (RI), we continue to advance our theory of interdependence on the efficient and effective control of systems of autonomous hybrid teams composed of robots, machines and humans working interchangeably. As is the case with humans, we believe that RI is less likely to be achieved by individual computational agents; instead, we propose that a better path to RI is with interdependent agents. However, unlike conventional computational models where agents act independently of neighbors, where, for example, a predator mathematically consumes its prey or not as a function of a random interaction process, dynamic interdependence means that agents dynamically respond to the bi-directional signals of actual or potential presence of other agents (e.g., in states poised to fight or flight), a significant increase over conventional modeling complexity. That this problem is unsolved, mathematically and conceptually, precludes hybrid teams from processing...

Ethnic identity, political identity and ethnic conflict: simulating the effect of congruence between the two identities on ethnic violence and conflict

Tue, 23 Oct 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This thesis outlines and presents an alternative hypothetical process to the emergence of ethnic conflict. Ethnic conflicts, rather than being dependent upon pre-existing ‘ancient hatreds’, are instead the result of a congruence between ethnic and political identity which grants individuals the ability to use ethnicity to identify and eliminate political threats. This hypothesis is formed by the examination of three case studies of ethnic conflict: Lebanon, Northern Ireland and Croatia. This hypothesis is then formalised and tested using an agent based simulation in which agent interactions are dependent upon ethnic and political identity and the congruence between the two. As predicted there was a strong positive correlation between how accurately ethnic identity reflected political identity and the level of ethnically motivated violence in the simulation, although the relationship was not linear. Furthermore the effect of a shift in congruence was found to be roughly comparable...

Global Inflation Dynamics: regularities & forecasts

Wed, 18 Jul 2012 00:00:00 +0000
The analysis of dollar inflation performed by the authors through the approximation of empirical data for 1913–2012 with a power-law function with an accelerating log-periodic oscillation superimposed over it has made it possible to detect a quasi-singularity point around the 17^th of December, 2012. It is demonstrated that, if adequate measures are not taken, one may expect a surge of inflation around the end of this year that may also mark the start of stagflation as there are no sufficient grounds to expect the re-start of the dynamic growth of the world economy by that time. On the other hand, as the experience of the 1970s and the 1980s indicates, the stagflation consequences can only be eliminated with great difficulties and at a rather high cost, because the combination of low levels of economic growth and employment with high inflation leads to a sharp decline in consumption, aggravating the economic depression. In order to mitigate the inflationary consequences...

Farming and Fighting: An Empirical Analysis of the Ecological-Evolutionary Theory of the Incidence of Warfare

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 00:00:00 +0000
Explanations of the causes of war fall roughly into two schools: those arguing for the primacy of environment and technology, and those arguing for the primacy of sociopolitical factors. We re-examine two hypotheses from the former school, viz, societies are more likely to engage in war when they have: 1) more productive subsistence technology; and 2) higher population density. Using data from the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample, and up-to-date multivariate modeling methods, we find only qualified support for the first hypothesis and find the reverse relationship for the second: higher population densities lead to less war, not more. We show that omitted variable bias can explain the failure of previous studies to discover this relationship. Finally, we show that the two schools seem to be equally correct, in that each explains about the same proportion of the variation in frequency of external war.

Updated scripts for R in Eff and Dow (2009) Issue 3#1 art 1

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Changes in R necessitate updated R scripts for Eff, E. Anthon, & Dow, Malcolm M. (2009). How to Deal with Missing Data and Galton’s Problem in Cross-Cultural Survey Research: A Primer for R. Structure and Dynamics, 3(3). Retrieved from: http://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/7cm1f10b

What Anthropologists Should Know About the New Evolutionary Synthesis

Wed, 28 Sep 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Discoveries of modern biology are forcing a re-evaluation of even the central pillars of neo-Darwinian evolution. Anthropologists study the processes and results of biological and biocultural evolution, so they must be aware of the scope and nature of these changes in biology. We introduce these changes, comment briefly on how will influence anthropology, and suggest numerous readings to introduce anthropologists to the significance and substance of the new evolutionary synthesis.

The Second Wave of the Global Crisis? On mathematical analyses of some dynamic series

Fri, 1 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0000

This article continues our analysis of the gold price dynamics that was published in December 2010 and forecasted the possibility of the “burst of the gold bubble” in April –June 2011. Our recent analysis suggests the possibility of one more substantial fluctuation before the final collapse in July 2011. On the other hand, in early 2011 we detected a number of other commodity bubbles and forecasted the start of their collapse in May – June 2011. We demonstrate that this collapse has actually begun, which in conjunction with the forthcoming burst of the gold bubble suggests that the World System is entering a bifurcation zone bearing rather high risks of the second wave of the global financial-economic crisis.

Demographic Regulators in Small-Scale World-Systems

Wed, 25 May 2011 00:00:00 +0000

This paper presents a simulation of world-systems theory’s iteration model of early human societies. The polities modeled are composed of sedentary foragers and/or simple horticulturalists that rely upon basic subsistence technologies and display low levels of internal differentiation. World-systems theory’s iteration model integrates several processes of demographic regulation: environmental constraints, migration, intra-polity conflict, and inter-polity warfare. Computer simulation of this model reveals that different degrees of resource richness, land area, and initial population size have important effects on the average population levels and the behavior of interacting polities. A well-known ecological phenomenon, “the paradox of enrichment,” emerges when polities interact through warfare. Variations in the size and resources of local and regional areas, along with climatic variation, provide explanations of patterns of warfare in such systems. Finally, to make the iteration...

Growing Social Structure: An Empirical Multiagent Excursion into Kinship in Rural North-West Frontier Province

Wed, 25 May 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Kinship is an essential factor in human social life. Many years of research devoted to develop a better understanding of kinship bear witness to this fact. Important advances were made on conceptual, modeling and empirical grounds. Computational social science---in particular through social network analysis and social simulation---contributed its part to it. Notwithstanding, multiagent simulations of social systems rarely take into account kinship-based social interactions, especially when claiming to be empirical. We combine generative social science's basal argument "grow it!" with the concept that social structure is not reified, but a pattern emerging from interactions between individuals, and introduce a multiagent social simulation that "grows" kinship structures on the basis of socio-demographic and marriage interactions in Pakistan's Rural North-West Frontier Province. The modeling proposed has generalizable demonstrator value in that it is shown how published ethnographic...

Farming and Fighting: An Empirical Analysis of the Ecological-Evolutionary Theory of the Incidence of Warfare

Sat, 1 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Explanations of the causes of war fall roughly into two schools: those arguing for the primacy of environment and technology, and those arguing for the primacy of sociopolitical factors. We re-examine two hypotheses from the former school, viz, societies are more likely to engage in war when they have: 1) more productive subsistence technology; and 2) higher population density. Using data from the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample, and up-to-date multivariate modeling methods, we find only qualified support for the first hypothesis and find the reverse relationship for the second: higher population densities lead to less war, not more. We show that omitted variable bias can explain the failure of previous studies to discover this relationship. Finally, we show that the two schools seem to be equally correct, in that each explains about the same proportion of the variation in frequency of external war.

Warfare and the Evolution of Social Complexity: A Multilevel-Selection Approach

Fri, 24 Dec 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Multilevel selection is a powerful theoretical framework for understanding how complex hierarchical systems evolve by iteratively adding control levels. Here I apply this framework to a major transition in human social evolution, from small-scale egalitarian groups to large-scale hierarchical societies such as states and empires. A major mathematical result in multilevel selection, the Price equation, specifies the conditions concerning the structure of cultural variation and selective pressures that promote evolution of larger-scale societies. Specifically, large states should arise in regions where culturally very different people are in contact, and where interpolity competition – warfare – is particularly intense. For the period of human history from the Axial Age to the Age of Discovery (c.500 BCE–1500 CE), conditions particularly favorable for the rise of large empires obtained on steppe frontiers, contact regions between nomadic pastoralists and settled agriculturalists....

Log-Periodic Oscillation Analysis Forecasts the Burst of the “Gold Bubble” in April – June 2011

Tue, 30 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0000

The analysis of the gold price series for 2003–2010 employing both the methodology developed by Didier Sornette and the one of the authors allows forecasting the collapse in gold prices in April – June 2011. The article discusses both the scenarios that could allow avoiding this collapse, and the possibilities of the “gold bubble burst” leading to the second wave of the global economic crisis.

Culture, Altruism, and Conflict Between Ancestors and Descendants

Wed, 17 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Anthropologists often recorded the typical amount of kinship altruism – that is, the altruism between individuals who identify one another as kin -- they observed in what they referred to as tribal or traditional societies (e.g., Murdock 1949; Keesing 1975; Fortes 1969; Evans-Pritchard 1940). This altruism, they noted, was extended to very distant kin. This altruism toward distant kin, as several scholars have pointed out (E. O. Wilson, D.S. Wilson), is fundamentally inconsistent with the predictions of kin selection. In this paper, we present a possible solution to this puzzle, and one that does not reply on group selection. To do this we introduce a new evolutionary concept called “ancestor-descendant conflict” and the mathematical formula upon which it is based. The concept of “ancestor-descendant conflict” is a multi-generational diachronic extension of Trivers’ concept of “parent-offspring conflict.” It leads to an extension and revision of Hamilton’s rule “C

Route Selection and Pedestrian Traffic: Applying an Integrated Modeling Approach to Understanding Movement

Tue, 2 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0000

This paper presents an object-oriented approach that tightly integrates multiple modeling techniques and GIS in order to investigate route selections made by pedestrians in an ancient urban environment. Our applied method allows the integration of agent-based (ABM) and human metabolic models in order to enable different agent types, based on age and sex cohorts, to select street network routes that access different urban structures. The case study we apply our method to is a settlement in Turkey that has a known street network and building structures; however, data on social decisions affecting route selection by pedestrians are missing. Despite the lack of social data, the results provide researchers with a useful and reasonable assessment of past pedestrian traffic volume. Such results can then be used to determine areas of potential archaeological significance and direct further investigations through field excavations or other archaeological techniques. We provide initial...

Conservation of Information: Reverse engineering dark social systems

Tue, 2 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0000

A broad appeal for a new theory of interdependence, 'iota', has been requested for the science of complexity in a special issue of Science, for social network analysis by the National Academy of Sciences, for effects-based operations by the US military, and for modernizing the fields of law and economics. We have proposed a new theory of 'iota' for organizations and systems that already appears to exhibit some validity. It is expressed in a physics of 'iota' (e.g., bistability) that includes Fourier pairs for social uncertainty and Lotka-Volterra-like equations for population effects in social systems. Unlike traditional social science, it assumes that despite the tension between self and collective organizational processes, perfect organizations and social systems become dark, but that purposively dark systems emit more light in the form of unique information (e.g., gangs, terrorists, high-security systems). To reverse engineer dark social systems (DSS), our theory replaces...

Evolution of Cultural Groups and Persistent Parochialism

Tue, 2 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Discriminators who have limited tolerance for helping dissimilar others are necessary for the evolution of costly cooperation in a one-shot Prisoner’s Dilemma. Existing research reports that trust in societies decreases when agents copy markers and tolerance from more successful others. Global cooperation is possible only in highly homogenized societies. Emergent cooperative societies are not robust against mutant defectors with tolerably similar markers. Our simulation experiments compare one society where each agent has immutable binary tags at the same dimension (‘caste society’) to the other where such markers are distributed across different dimensions (‘modern society’). In both societies, the majority of population display strong parochialism. However, cooperation is significantly stable in modern societies although members are more tolerant than those in caste societies. Modern societies are characterized by loosely coupled small-sized groups with different cultural...

The State and the Supernatural: Support for Prosocial Behavior

Fri, 13 Aug 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Using the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample, Roes and Raymond (2003) find that large societies are more likely to be located in resource-rich environments, engage in warfare, and hold beliefs in gods actively supporting human morality (“moralizing gods”). We revisit the Roes and Raymond study, using the methods presented in a series of papers by Dow and Eff. Our findings suggest that moralizing gods are less likely to be found in resource-rich environments or amongst societies frequently engaged in external warfare. We find that cultural transmission over geographic space is the most significant force in conditioning belief in moralizing gods; that moralizing gods are more likely to be found in pastoral societies; and that the relationship between society size and moralizing gods is non-linear, with both very large and very small societies less likely to have moralizing gods. We explain this non-linearity by arguing that the functions of moralizing gods can also be performed...

A Spectral Analysis of World GDP Dynamics: Kondratieff Waves, Kuznets Swings, Juglar and Kitchin Cycles in Global Economic Development, and the 2008–2009 Economic Crisis

Thu, 7 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000

The article presents results of spectral analysis that has detected the presence of Kondratieff waves (their period equals approximately 52–53 years) in the world GDP dynamics for the 1870–2007 period. To estimate the statistical significance of the detected cycles a new methodology has been applied. The significance of K-waves in the analyzed data has turned out to be in the range between 4 and 5 per cent. Hence, this spectral analysis has supported the hypothesis of the presence of Kondratieff waves in the world GDP dynamics. In addition, the reduced spectra analysis has indicated a rather high (2–3%) significance of Juglar cycles (with a period of 7–9 years), as well as the one of Kitchin cycles (with a period of 3–4 years). Thus our spectral analysis has also supported the hypothesis of the presence of Juglar and Kitchin cycles in the world GDP dynamics. On the other hand, our analysis suggests that the Kuznets swing should be regarded as the third harmonic of the Kondratieff...

A Framework to Structure Agent-Based Modeling Data for Social-Ecological Systems

Thu, 7 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Agent-based models (ABMs), perhaps used along with other methods, are increasingly being applied to address problems involving social-ecological systems (SES). However, systematic and standardized techniques for organizing data requirements and collecting information for such models are generally not applied. Defining the types of data that need to be collected is a critical step in instantiating relevant models and detailing behavioral patterns. By organizing data needs into pertinent categories, researchers can focus efforts to make data collection more efficient, provide a clear record of gathered data, conserve project resources, and create models more easily. In this paper, we present a formal method, which we call Delineate, Structure, and Gather (DSG), that has been applied to guide the determination of data requirements, structure data needs, and enable data collection for the development of ABMs addressing SES. The presented framework continues and supplements existing...

How to Deal with Missing Data and Galton’s Problem in Cross-Cultural Survey Research: A Primer for R

Tue, 19 May 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Multiple imputation (MI) has become the preferred method for dealing with missing data in survey research. MI involves three steps: creating m multiply imputed complete datasets; estimating models on each of the m datasets using any standard statistical procedure; combining the resulting multiple estimates of each statistic of interest. This paper provides R programs for MI, and offers some advice for employing MI with data drawn from the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample (SCCS). A second set of R programs combines estimates from the m imputed data sets, and also deals with the problem of network autocorrelation effects, i.e., Galton’s Problem or the non-independence of cases, using two-stage instrumental variables (IV) regression. The objective of the paper is to provide programs, advice and explanations that will help researchers employing cross-cultural survey data, especially the SCCS, to deal with the twin problems of missing data and network autocorrelation effects, using...

A Formal Explanation of Formal Explanation

Tue, 4 Mar 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Two kinds of formal models need to be distinguished: data models derived from patterned observations and theory models derived from theories about processes that produce the patterned observations. These correspond to the difference between the phenomenal domain of observations and the ideational domain of theories. Explanation can be characterized by isomorphism between data models and theory models. The physical, biological and cultural domains differ by what constitute the relevant structuring processes for each of these domains. The cultural domain associated with human societies is far more complex than the other two because the domain of observation must include cultural idea systems. One of the primary roles of formal models for cultural idea systems is to determine the necessary consequences (through mathematical reasoning) of processes hypothesized to provide their internal coherency.

Cultural dynamics: formal descriptions of cultural processes

Wed, 30 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Formalization is typically associated by both supporters and detractors of formal methods with an emphasis on form over content or meaning. However well founded, this association fails to capture why we employ (or not) formal descriptions of what we are describing.
One problem arises when we try to directly link human thought to human behavior (or vice versa); assuming the process of going from one to the other is complex and idiosyncratic, but direct. In this paper I examine an approach to developing a formal system that helps us represent the relationship between ideational and behavioral aspects of socio-cultural phenomena in a manner that is consistent with, and helps address the connections between, symbolic and materialist approaches.
People embedded in cultural processes demonstrate remarkable powers of creation, transformation, stability and regulation. Culture gives agents the power to hyper-adapt: not only can they achieve local minima and maxima, they...

Marriage Payments: a fundamental reconsideration

Sat, 26 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Marriage payments: a fundamental reconsideration
Abstract This paper is a constructive critique of the well-known book by Jack Goody and Stanley Tambiah (1973), Bridewealth and Dowry. Given the general acceptance of Goody’s framework in contemporary studies of marriage and marriage payments, it is essential that we refer to this framework as we advance new theoretical concepts of marriage-related socio-economic processes. As some reviews of this paper have observed, this critique is certainly overdue.
In the course of this discussion we shall set forth analytical conceptions of wealth and consumption goods that we find to be foundational to an understanding of marriage payments and other economic processes; and we provide consistent criteria for studying the cross-cultural incidence of payments, gifts, bequests and inheritance that are often associated with marriage.
For cross-cultural analysis it is important that the dimensions of social process be clearly...

Formalization as a Tool for Empirical Research

Thu, 24 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction to the Special Issue on "Formalization as a tool for empirical research: what it buys us and what it doesn't.”

Indigenous Algorithms, Organizations, and Rationality

Tue, 22 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Experimental economics and bounded rationality are very different from one another, but both claim to offer a more general and more empirical type of economic theory. Experimental economists, in addition, claim that their game-theoretic analyses provide rigorous, calculable, inferences from individual decisions to society as a whole. They claim to be describing the basis of social stability, although the argument depends on a unitary conception of “society” that ethnologists have now largely rejected. Both groups view rationality as inherently or originally individualistic and “utility maximizing” rather than inherently or originally social—albeit for entirely different reasons. Neither recognizes rationality as inherently bound up with organizations. These views have no basis in ethnography and are sharply in conflict with the stress on local knowledge in the most successful contemporary development policies. A crucial empirical issue is the nature and power of indigenous...

What Diagrams as a Formal Model Can and Cannot Represent; Examples from Language Family Trees

Tue, 22 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Models of theoretically generated relations among analytic entities have formal properties which enable them to accurately represent some desired relationships, but not necessarily all imaginable relationships. One important part of the modeling task is matching the properties of the model type with the relevant formal properties that one ascribes to the relationships being modeled. Some kinds of mismatches render the model type inappropriate for the given use while others may make it inadequate.
As an example: Tree models can represent “descent” relations among languages. They presume languages have single parents but possibly multiple children—entailing a distinction between elements present through descent and elements “borrowed” or otherwise created. Their interpretation typically includes assuming a smooth temporal transition from minimal dialect differences to separate languages. Two other change processes, interpretable within a family tree but not modeled by it,...

Familiar Space in Social Memory

Tue, 22 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000

In this article, I present an analysis of the results of a memory task (free listing) about social relationships administered to Tongans of Polynesia. Contrary to claims by Weller and Romney (1988) and Ross (2004), the free listing activity did not yield the expected results, i.e., salient social individuals occupying positions at the top of the list. The strategy used to report the village population was prominently spatial. Besides, the analysis of accurate geographical renditions of the memory lists (memory routes), revealed spatial strategies in line with the preferences already documented about spatial relationships (Bennardo, 2000a, 2002b). A discussion of the implications of such findings for an hypothesized Tongan foundational cultural model closes the article.

Genetic Dendrograms and Malaysian Population History

Fri, 18 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000

From Darwin’s time in biology and even before Darwin in linguistics, the tree diagram has been the primary formal depiction of descent. The underlying logic of the dendrogram depends on a branching process: units fission, then diversify through time. This model of differentiation is generally correct for the evolution of species, languages, and genes. However, at the level of human populations, subject to the ramifying effects of gene flow and natural selection, a better model is a reticulating network. This paper will critically examine genetic dendrograms based on “classical” loci as well as mitochondrial DNA in the context of the history of Malaysian Orang Asli populations.

Formalism and Empiricism: On the Value of Thinking Mathematically About Social Grouping and Corporateness

Mon, 14 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000

I am concerned with the distinction between data processing, modeling and actual theory formation, with the generating of empirically interpretable additional theorems, and in particular how formalization, far from abstracting away from data, makes one look at levels of detail one never before even noticed.
I shall begin by examining a conjecture (due to my pupil Zhang Wenyi) about the formalism for distinguishing crowds and ‘groups’ from corporations/corporateness: the former are what I may call event-theoretical topologies (neighborhoods) event theory having to do with temporal-aspectual-modal categories, on which I have written elsewhere. In turn, this has everything to do with the whole controversial question of fuzziness, which I shall go into here. I shall argue that so-called fuzzy sets are topologies, particularly having to do with the saliency of the ‘extent’ of a field, such that, as Zadeh, the originator of Fuzzy Set theory, himself long since pointed out,...

Weight Matrices for Cultural Proximity: Deriving Weights from a Language Phylogeny

Tue, 8 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Galton’s Problem is one of identifying functional relationships in a set of observations where the observations may be related through borrowing or descent. The problem has long been recognized in the fields of anthropology and cross-cultural research, but has been neglected in economics, even in cases where it is likely to be most acute, such as in regression models where each observation is a nation. The appropriate treatment for Galton’s Problem was developed in the 1980s by Malcolm M. Dow, Douglas R. White, and Michael L. Burton. Their solution is to estimate spatial models, where weight matrices for physical distance control for relationships of borrowing, and weight matrices for linguistic similarity control for relationships of descent. This paper documents a method for estimating a weight matrix based on language phylogenetic relationships. The method is applied to the 186 cultures of the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample, and applied to a set of 216 nations. The resulting...

Influence Structures in a Tongan Village: 'Every Villager is not the Same!'

Tue, 1 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Tatau, tatau pé, katoa tatau ‘the same, just the same, all the same,’ is the phrase most Tongan villagers used when asked if any person within the village groups they had just mentioned was mahu'inga taha ‘most important.’ Such forceful insistence on equality among villagers seems incongruous in the context of a monarchial political system, the Kingdom of Tonga, the only surviving Polynesian monarchy.
At the head of this highly stratified society is King George Tupou V, heir of a dynasty that goes back at least a millennium. How can we reconcile the stated lack of local stratification with the overt positive feelings toward a monarchy and its aristocracy?
We used social network analysis to investigate the structure and sources of influence in this Tongan village. The results of the analysis reveals a nuanced local influence structure generated by a combination of traditional kinship status characteristics as well as some based in the emerging cash economy. Thus,...

Network Structures in Industrial Pricing: The Effect of Emergent Roles in Tokyo Supplier-Chain Hierarchies

Thu, 25 Oct 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Given data on supplier chains in a Tokyo industrial district, we show how network structures such as monopsony (uniqueness of buyers) may affect noncompetitive pricing. To address the distribution of these biases we show how two types of emergent roles in hierarchically organized production chains affect noncompetitive price diffusion both horizontally and vertically in the industrial hierarchy. More concretely our model addresses such questions as how it is that, as in the case of this specific industrial hierarchy, processing activities and parts and components manufacturing organized by the “elite” buyers for the top manufacturers, while executed by numerous smaller enterprises lower in Ohta hierarchy, leave so many low-level suppliers subject to monopsony. Monopsony and monopoly (and to a lesser extent, duopoly and duopsony) are structures that may severely reduce profit margins. We use two complementary frameworks to pose and address such questions. One is network economics...

Public Culture and Sustainable Practices: Peninsula Europe from an ecodiversity perspective, posing questions to Complexity Scientists

Thu, 25 Oct 2007 00:00:00 +0000

This is the second of Structure and Dynamics’ thought-provoking series on potential impacts of iconic representations in communicating and helping to implement sustainable human practices. This discussion focuses on ways to expand broad cultural dialogs on solutions to sustainability. The definition of sustainability that is employed here insists that cultural behaviors as they work out in the landscape behave in manners similar to those of natural systems. The complexities and instabilities of ecosystems in relation to anthropic climate change are represented through use of eco-systems theory as subject matter in art-making. They describe and instantiate this in a series of museum installations and dialogs intended to catch the attention and engage scientific researchers, planners, policymakers, and the public in rethinking sustainability. Part I, “Peninsula Europe: The High Ground”, begins by the rethinking of clean-water sourcing, maintenance of ecosystem diversity, reconceptualizing...

Identity and Social Innovation

Thu, 25 Oct 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Foundational to this discussion are two papers on "identity" by George A. Akerlof and Rachel Kranton [2000, 2005]. We contribute to their development of this issue with additional factors that are arguably essential to the analysis of identity formation. While they indicate the importance of norms as the bases of identity, we suggest additionally the relevance of independence, individual creativity and the exploration of behaviors beyond norms. A violation of normative expectations has the potential of entering and affecting the social terrain interactively with positive feedbacks, generating non-linear processes of innovation and social change.
Our most important finding is that when individuals promote innovation in the performance of a social role, the innovation is unlikely to be mimicked by other role incumbents unless the formal rewards to those innovators are perceived to be more than proportional to the significance of the innovation. If those formal rewards are...

An Agent-based Model of Prehistoric Settlement Patterns and Political Consolidation in the Lake Titicaca Basin of Peru and Bolivia

Tue, 23 Oct 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Insights into prehistoric region-wide political consolidation were suggested by simulation results from an agent-based model of pre-state societies. The case study was the late prehistoric period circa 2500 BC to AD 1000 in the Lake Titicaca basin of Peru and Bolivia. Over a series of simulation runs the model produced a range of alternative political pre-histories. A substantial proportion of those runs were classified as matching the scenario archeologists believe actually happened during this time period. Classification was based on multidimensional quantitative measures of empirical criteria for the emergence of simulated macro-level patterns corresponding to observed patterns in the archaeological record.
The model’s structure consisted of a grid of cells, each scaled to 1.5 km x 1.5 km, representing the geography, hydrology, and agricultural potential of the 50,000 sq. km basin. A collection of multiple agents--Settlements, Peoples, Polities, and Chiefs (political...

Core/periphery Structures and Trust in Distributed Work Groups: A comparative case study

Tue, 23 Oct 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Trust is crucial for modern organizations and in particular in cases of virtual and distributed work. In such organizations much of the communication is based on electronic media, and the collaborators often know very little about each other when they start collaborating. Due to geographical boundaries it often takes a longer time to build trust in such organizations, and in difficult situations there is a risk of developing distrust rather than trust. This paper is concerned with how trust can be developed in highly distributed groups, and the network-related mechanisms that are used to build trust under such conditions. Based on a comparative study of vocational strong ties (intense, work-related) in four distributed groups, the study suggests that groups with higher levels of trust have an integrating core of collaborators that connects to central employees at the involved local sites. In contrast, the groups with lower trust had moved in the direction of establishing dual...

Empirical Formalism

Mon, 9 Jul 2007 00:00:00 +0000

The empirical status of formal systems of ideas is a crucial topic in the effort to establish a fully empirical anthropology. In anthropology, the dominant view of formal analysis, and the nature of formal structure, is derived from positivistic philosophy in general and logical positivism in particular. In this, "formal analysis" is identified with relationships that emerge from the imposition of arbitrary "analytic" categories on supposedly objective or external phenomena. The argument here is that this view is inherently flawed and such imposition is unnecessary. I describe an alternative and philosophically better grounded conception of form that sees it as non-arbitrary even though it is also necessarily conventional, and as something that can be elicited rather than something that must be imposed.

Reasons vs. Causes: Emergence as experienced by the human agent

Thu, 19 Apr 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Because they are in constant interaction with each other, human beings are often agents within emergent collective processes. Although they are then acting as particles in a field-type phenomenon, their awareness of what they are part of entails that they hold views about why they’re acting the way they do, these, they call “reasons.”
Should physicists dismiss such “reasons” as being illusory causes of events? “Reasons” are actually important explanatory factors of emergent phenomena involving human beings. Awakening and then responding to a catastrophic process will often signal a bifurcation in the physical emergent process. Coordinated behavior can interrupt a positive feedback by generating a counteracting negative feedback.
“Natural” laws were called after “legal” laws; in return, compliance to legal laws by human agents allows their behavior to appear organized, as if by a “natural” law. “Following a rule” conflates the logic of “causes” with that of “reasons”...

Press Release: New calculations show as many as 7.3 million Americans know someone killed or injured in Iraq and Afghanistan

Thu, 4 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000

This is a simply a press release at Duke University on James Moody's assessment (Structure and Dynamics 1#2) of impact of the U.S. wars' casualty tolls.

Book Review: Network Analysis and Ethnographic Problems: Process Models of a Turkish Nomad Clan, by Douglas R. White and Ulla C. Johansen (Oxford, UK and Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2004, Cloth / 2006, Paper, 544 pages)

Sun, 31 Dec 2006 00:00:00 +0000
Book Review: Network Analysis and Ethnographic Problems: Process Models of a Turkish Nomad Clan, by Douglas R. White and Ulla C. Johansen (Oxford, UK and Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2004, Cloth / 2006, Paper, 544 pages)

Seventh Lagoon: The Ring of Water

Sun, 31 Dec 2006 00:00:00 +0000

The Seventh Lagoon is an eco-activist artwork conversation -- with all of us -- on the rise of the earths's oceans previously exhibited and catalogued as part of the Lagoon Cycle (1985). The entire 360-foot work is now in the National Museum of Modern Art at the Pompidou Center in Paris, France. We hope that its web publication will encourage further dialogue on these issues -- Editors.
"Our work begins when we perceive an anomaly in the environment that is the result of opposing beliefs or contradictory metaphors. Moments when reality no longer appears seamless and the cost of belief has become outrageous offer the opportunity to create new spaces - first in the mind and thereafter in everyday life." -- ecoartists Newton & Helen Mayer Harrison, quoted at Greenmuseum.org with the introductory statement:
"Among the leading pioneers of the eco-art movement, the collaborative team of Newton and Helen Mayer Harrison (often referred to simply as "the Harrisons")...

Network Perspectives on Communities

Fri, 8 Sep 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Abstract: The application of network perspectives to communities requires some appreciation of the variety of ways people are now writing about communities. Some scholars and practitioners have drifted toward the view that a community is composed very largely of the personal networks of the individuals who are members of the community. But the whole community is more than the sum of those related parts, and the structure of a community must include not only those direct interpersonal relations but also the relations among the clusters and groups and corporate entities that interact in and about this whole. If scientific knowledge about these matters is to accumulate, we must be able to compare findings among various studies. From the 1940s well into the 1960s the local community was the recognized social unit that sociologists and anthropologists studied. Linton wrote of the necessity of the local group. Many sociologists and anthropologists gave their full attention to...

Atlas of Chiefdoms and Early States

Fri, 8 Sep 2006 00:00:00 +0000

This first installment of an Atlas of Chiefdoms and Early States assembles data on six clusters of elementary hierarchical polities, coded here to measure the scale of both the political-administrative aspects and the social-economic aspects of these case studies. These six clusters - the Hawaiian archipelago, Madagascar, the interlacustrine region of East Africa, the central Cameroons, southeastern Nigeria, and southern Mesopotamia - are documented with ethnographic, historical, and archaeological evidence, for which key references are provided. This initial step toward a compendium is intended to be cumulative. It will be revised and expanded in future installments, along with revisions of the Excel data file that is provided for download, and the editor's edition Spss file with labeled and corrected codings. These data are released into the public domain but because they are constantly up-dated please communicate with the author before using them. Updates of the data may...

Response to Christiansen and Altaweel

Thu, 3 Aug 2006 00:00:00 +0000

This response contextualizes Christiansen and Altaweel's paper within broader currents of human-climate interactions. It then examines some of the implications of the use of wide ranging data sources for the construction of complex models as well as some of the broader implications of the simulations.
These models demonstrate the richness of human responses to environmental and social stresses as well as the tendencies for human social groups to evolve and become differentiated through simulated time.

Fighting a Hydra: A Note on the Network Embeddedness of the War on Terror

Mon, 31 Jul 2006 00:00:00 +0000

While we typically count the number of people directly affected by violence, war and state action with casualty reports, we often ignore how these people are embedded in larger networks. In this paper, I estimate the number of people who know somebody who has been killed, injured or detained in the US war on terrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan, and thus likely at higher risk to joining a resistance movement. Since such numbers are constantly changing, an on-line web-calculator for the estimates is included so that readers can make their own estimates as well. Better understanding how friends and families are affected by such actions will help us understand the wider implications of military action.

Structure and Dynamics Vol.1 No.2: Editorial Commentary

Thu, 27 Jul 2006 00:00:00 +0000

The Structure and Dynamics eJournal offers a conduit for refereed electronic publication, debate, and editorial communication in the domain of anthropology and human sciences. We invite you—as an open access reader at no cost, an author at no cost, or a volunteer, to submit book reviews or commentary—to contribute and to participate in raising the aspirations of the human sciences today. To submit an article, follow the link to “Submission guidelines.” To submit a review simply click Submit a “Reader's Comment” at the article site.
We comment here on the contents and success of the first two issues. Full-text downloads of the eJournal articles numbered 5,313 in the 11 months since September 23, 2005, now averaging 16-17 a day. This reflects positively on quality of the articles, made possible in turn by the high quality and incisiveness of reviews, the number and diversity of reviewers who have responded, and selection for quality in article acceptance and reviewers (and...

Response to Oscillations in Population Sizes – From Ecology to History

Thu, 16 Mar 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Natalia Komarova brings up a very important issue in modeling dynamical phenomena—what mathematical framework to use. I respond to her critique.

Critique of Guillermo Algaze’s “The Sumerian Takeoff”

Sat, 4 Mar 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Drawing upon modern economic theorists, Guillermo Algaze emphasizes continuous, interlocking, self-reinforcing processes of growth and external trade as keys to "takeoff" toward southern Mesopotamia's regional leadership in the fourth millennium B.C. But the search for historical causality, always complex, would better avoid supposed universals of individual motivation as determinate roots of behavior everywhere and concentrate in the first instance on fuller consideration of the specific context and time. Without denying a role for Algaze's factors, I suggest that ever-present risks of subsistence variability were probably more decisive in encouraging social stratification and a higher degree of regimentation within locally contending city-states there. Enhanced military effectiveness then surely played a part, alongside trade and possibly overshadowing it, in ensuing regional dominance.

Preface to Structure and Dynamics:1#3

Sat, 25 Feb 2006 00:00:00 +0000

We institute here a policy of occasionally publishing noteworthy PhD dissertations that advance anthropology or related sciences. Such publications are to be copy edited by the dissertation author, nominated by the author's PhD committee, and must receive unqualified support in our review process of at least two assigned referees, as well as by the editors of Structure and Dynamics.

About the Image: Diffusion Dynamics in an Historical Network

Sat, 11 Feb 2006 00:00:00 +0000

The journal logo illustrates the use of dynamic visualization to complement network and statistical analysis in the study of social, political, economic and historical processes generally. In giving credit to the authors of the logo, this is an invited paper that summarizes earlier work on how existing social networks are transformed into political action in times of rapid social change. Citing Krempel and Schnegg (1988): "This general theoretical problem is exemplified for the 1848/49 Revolution in Esslingen, a middle-sized German town. We use data from more than 200 historical sources to identify patterns of activity and social linkages for more than 2000 inhabitants of Esslingen at the time of the revolution and during the 15 years preceding it."
Results indicate that while existing social structure plays a key role for mobilization processes, the picture needs to be differentiated in theory, explanation, and statistical analysis. To this end, dynamic visualization,...