Abstracts and links to articles in PDF format

Recent Publication Awards

2004 Award

Networks, Fields and Organizations: Micro-Dynamics, Scale and Cohesive Embeddings - White, Owen-Smith, Moody, and Powell (2004, below) Rated the third most viewed article in its journal

Abstracts and links to articles in PDF format Sept 2001-Oct 2004- Douglas R. White

2005 Douglas R. White, Natasa Kejzar, Constantino Tsallis, Doyne Farmer, and Scott White. Network Model for Feedback Circuits (including kinship) Submitted to Physical E http://arxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/0508028 paj file 1250-0-2-0 Edge Based Model simulation for alpha = 0 (start), beta=1.9 (distance decay), gamma = 0 (route), N=500, steps of 15 shown in figures with black lines as tree-like links to new nodes, red lines are feedback links at various (clickable) distances

Abstract. We investigate a simple generative model for network formation. The model is designed to describe the growth of networks of kinship, trading, corporate alliances, or autocatalytic chemical reactions, where feedback is an essential element of network growth. The underlying graphs in these situations grow via a competition between cycle formation and node addition. After choosing a given node, a search is made for another node at a suitable distance. If such a node is found, a link is added connecting this to the original node, and increasing the number of cycles in the graph; if such a node cannot be found, a new node is added, which is linked to the original node. We simulate this algorithm and find that we cannot reject the hypothesis that the empirical degree distribution is a q-exponential function, which has been used to model long-range processes in nonequilibrium statistical mechanics.

2005 Walter W. Powell, Douglas R. White, Kenneth W. Koput and Jason Owen-Smith. Network Dynamics and Field Evolution: The Growth of Interorganizational Collaboration in the Life Sciences. American Journal of Sociology 110(4):1132-1205 (has full text in pdf as well as html with enhancements) electronic edition Download: SFI-WP2003d.pdf See link to movies at Barabasi site

Abstract: We develop and test, using McFadden's discrete choice statistical modeling applied to network dynamics, four alternative logics of attachment - - accumulative advantage, homophily, follow-the-trend, and multiconnectivity - - to account for the development of interorganizational collaboration in the field of biotechnology. The commercial field of the life sciences is characterized by wide dispersion in the sources of basic knowledge and rapid development of the underlying science, fostering collaboration among a broad range of institutionally diverse actors. We map the network dynamics of the field over the period 1988-99. Using multiple novel methods, including analysis of network degree distributions, network visualizations, and multi-probability models to estimate dyadic attachments, we demonstrate how a preference for diversity shapes network evolution. Collaborative strategies pursued by early commercial entrants are supplanted by strategies influenced more by universities, research institutes, venture capital, and small firms. As organizations increase both the number of activities around which they collaborate and the diversity of organizations with which they are linked, cohesive subnetworks form that are characterized by multiple, independent pathways. These structural components, in turn, condition the choices and opportunities available to members of a field, thereby reinforcing an attachment logic based on connection to partners that are diversely and differently linked. The dual analysis of network and institutional evolution offers a compelling explanation for the decentralized structure of this science-based field.

2004 (rated the third most-viewed article from this journal) Douglas R. White, Jason Owen-Smith, James Moody, and Walter W. Powell Networks, Fields and Organizations: Micro-Dynamics, Scale and Cohesive Embeddings. http://journals.kluweronline.com/article.asp?PIPS=5273175 Computational and Mathematical Organization Theory 10(1):95-117. Special issue on Mathematical Representations and Models for the Analysis of Social Networks within and between Organizations, Guest Editors Alessandro Lomi and Phillipa Pattison. Download: SFI-WP2004-03-09

Keywords: Graph theory, social networks, algorithmic detection, cohesive network topologies, fields, organizations, micro-macro linkages.

Abstract: Social action is situated in fields that are simultaneously composed of interpersonal ties and relations among organizations, which are both usefully characterized as social networks. We introduce a novel approach to distinguishing different network macro-structures in terms of cohesive subsets and their overlaps. We develop a vocabulary that relates different forms of network cohesion to field properties as opposed to organizational constraints on ties and structures. We illustrate differences in probabilistic attachment processes in network evolution that link on the one hand to organizational constraints versus field properties and to cohesive network topologies on the other. This allows us to identify a set of important new micro-macro linkages between local behavior in networks and global network properties. The analytic strategy thus puts in place a methodology for Predictive Social Cohesion theory to be developed and tested in the context of informal and formal organizations and organizational fields. We also show how organizations and fields combine at different scales of cohesive depth and cohesive breadth. Operational measures and results are illustrated for three organizational examples, and analysis of these cases suggests that different structures of cohesive subsets and overlaps may be predictive in organizational contexts and similarly for the larger fields in which they are embedded. Useful predictions may also be based on feedback from level of cohesion in the larger field back to organizations, conditioned on the level of multiconnectivity to the field.

2003 (was a working paper in last review period) - Awarded the best Math Soc paper of the year by the ASA Mathematical Sociology Section - James Moody and Douglas R. White, Social Cohesion and Embeddedness: A Hierarchical Concept of Social Groups. American Sociological Review 68(1):1-25. Implemented in NetMiner v2.4.0 (fall 2003)

Abstract: While questions about social cohesion lie at the core of our discipline, no clear definition of cohesion exists. A definition of social cohesion that leads to an operationalization of social embeddedness based on network connectivity measures cohesiveness as the minimum number k of actors whose absence would disconnect a group. Two members of a group with cohesion level k automatically have at least k different ways of being connected through independent paths. This definition generates hierarchically nested groups, where highly cohesive groups are embedded within less cohesive groups. We discuss the theoretical implications of this definition and demonstrate the empirical applicability of our conception of nestedness by testing the predicted correlates of our cohesion measure within high school friendship and interlocking directorate networks. The positive results of these tests reinforce those of other studies in what we have come to call Predictive Cohesion Theory.

Keywords: Graph theory, social networks, algorithmic detection, cohesive groups, social boundaries

2004 Douglas R. White. Ring Cohesion in Marriage and Social Networks Forthcoming: Social Networks special issue edited by Alain Degenne Mathematiques, informatique, et sciences humaines Journal of the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Science Sociales, Paris Download: RingCohesionMarriage.pdfTools for Marriage Network Analysis

2004 Klaus Hamberger, Michael Houseman, Elizabeth Daillant, Douglas R. White and Laurent Barry. Matrimonial ring structures Forthcoming: Social Networks special issue edited by Alain Degenne Mathematiques, informatique, et sciences humaines Journal of the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Science Sociales, Paris Download: MatrimonialRingStructure.pdfTools for Marriage Network Analysis

2005 Woodrow W. Denham and Douglas R. White Multiple Measures of Alyawarra Kinship, Field Methods 17(1). See also: blocking Alyawarra kin terms Charles Kemp ckemp at MIT.edu

Abstract: A field experiment conducted in Central Australia in 1971-72 explored differences between what Aborigines actually did and what they said they did when anthropologists interviewed them. Fieldwork entailed observing behavior and recording it in numerically coded forms; analysis entails extracting patterns computationally that would not appear in traditional ethnographic data. This paper focuses on discrepancies between expected and observed with regard to descent, marriage and kinship. First it examines field methods and the resulting dataset, then it reviews a wide range of analytical methods that have been used to interpret the data. The alternative analytical methods reviewed here serve to test "competing hypotheses" about the nature and operation of Alyawarra descent, marriage and kinship. At the same time, however, the cumulative result of using these diverse methods has been increasingly complex and subtle understandings of previously unknown aspects of Central Australian social organization. The fact that the data continue to repay increasingly sophisticated analyses thirty years after they were recorded attests to the success of the field experiment.

Conclusions:

The Radcliffe-Brown normative model functions as a kind of "cognitive core" for the Alyawarra system of descent, marriage and kinship. It is not incorrect, but it is seriously incomplete and inadequate.

Examination of alternate models of Alyawarra social struWorkshop on Dynamics of groups and institutions: Their emergence, co-evolution and environment. Santa Fe Institute and the Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences, from June 7 to June 11, 2004cture cannot be uniquely resolved into a single model but a nested model with a unique simplest structure embedded in models that are more complex. Each layer of models conforms to actual marriages that are in 98% agreement with the RB section memberships.

The elegance of the Atkins' double helix model is marred by the fact that patterns of marriage among the deceased are quickly forgotten and no longer cast their shadow as a constraint on future behaviors. Thus the "kinship system" can evolve dynamically across a class of network models influenced stochastically by age distributions at marriage in accordance with Tjon Sie Fat's algebraic model, and to incorporate non-Alyawarra lineages in ways that are incompatible with both the RB and the Atkins models, thereby violating the Axiom of Algebraic Closure. An open format model that does not require the assumption of Generational Closure is one of the nested models that provide a good fit to the ethnographic data.

The problem posed by the widespread extra-normative application of Omaha terms led us to discover recurring patterns in Alyawarra behavior that give the people a great deal of discretionary control over marriage by applying Omaha terms non-reciprocally in violation of the Axiom of Universal Reciprocity.

Not only was the field experiment successful, but our findings require some fundamental rethinking of models for Australian kinship.

2002 Douglas R. White and Michael Houseman The Navigability of Strong Ties: Small Worlds, Tie Strength and Network Topology, in Networks and Complexity Special Issue, Complexity 8(1):72-81. SFI Preprint eScholarship Reprint

Abstract: We examine data on and models of small world properties and parameters of social networks. Our focus, on tie-strength, multilevel networks and searchability in strong-tie social networks, allows us to extend some of the questions and findings of recent research and the fit of small world models to sociological and anthropological data on human communities. We offer a ***navigability of strong ties*** hypothesis about network topologies tested with data from kinship systems, and potentially applicable to corporate cultures and business networks.

2004 Douglas R. White Network Analysis and Social Dynamics. Cybernetics and Systems 35(2-3):173-192, online journal, special issue. Edited by Dwight Read. Introduction by Murray Leaf

Abstract. Network analysis, an area of mathematical anthropology and sociology crucial to the linking of theory and observation, developed dramatically in recent decades. This made possible a new understanding of social dynamics as a synthesis of network theories. Concrete links can be identified between the actions of self-reflective agents, with rich information processing and decision processes deeply embedded in social worlds, and emergence or change in the self-restructuring systems they operate – including the emergence of organizations, groups, institutions, norms and cultures.

2003 Douglas R. White, Ties, Weak and Strong. Encyclopedia of Community Vol. 4:1376-1379. Edited by Karen Christensen and David Levinson. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Reference.

Abstract. This entry reviews the relationships among the biased networks models of Rapoport, the small-world problem posed by Milgram and later addressed by Watts, and studies of community cohesion in relation to the strength of weak ties hypothesis of Granovetter

2004 Douglas R. White, Cross-Cultural Research: An Introduction for Students, World Cultures 14#2:164-178. early version

2004 Douglas R. White, A Student's Guide to Statistics for Analysis of Cross-Tabulions, World Cultures 14#2:179-193. update

Abstract. Cross-tabulations of qualitative data are a fundamental tool of empirical research. Their interpretation in terms of testing hypotheses requires a number of relatively simple concepts in statistical analysis that derive from probability theory. When strictly independent events having two characteristics that are independently defined are tabulated in a contingency table, the laws of probability can be used to model, from the marginal totals (rows, columns) of the table, what its cell values would be if the variables were statistically independent. The actual cell values of the frequency table can be used to measure the correlation between the variables (with zero correlation corresponding to statistical independence), they can be compared to expected values under the null hypothesis of statistical independence, and they can be used to give an significance-test estimate of the probability that the departure of the observed correlation from zero (statistical independence) is simply a matter of chance. Further, when the sample of observations departs from strict independence because of observed interactions between them, the correlations between interacting neighbors measured on the same variables can be used to deflate effective sample size in obtaining accurate significance tests.

[2002 Reprinting with new annotations] 1969 George P. Murdock and Douglas R. White, Standard Cross-Cultural Sample: on-line. Reprinted with annotations from Ethnology 8:329-369

Abstract. Since 1969, hundreds of cross-cultural studies have contributed coded data using the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample which is now reprinted here with annotations and guides to the on-line database as published in World Cultures.

Unpublished Manuscripts

2003 Douglas R. White, Emergence, transformation and decay in pastoral nomad socio-natural systems. to appear in Emergence, Transformation and Decay in Socio-Natural Systems, edited by Sander van der Leeuw, Uno Svedin, Tim Kohler, and Dwight Read.

Abstract. A network approach to economic organization, kinship systems and complexity dynamics is used to explore nomadic pastoralism as a socio-natural system. Graph theoretic measures of network cohesion are related to issues of the emergence, transformation and decay of social and economic networks and their sustainability and resilience in relation to the environment and the organization of energy, material, social, and informational flows.

Conference paper 2004 Douglas R. White and Michael Houseman, Taking Sides: From Coherent Practice to Macro Organization. American Anthropologogical Association.

Abstract. We show how simple rules shared by actors acting somewhat independently and with local rather than complete global information can nonetheless generate coherent global structures. In the case of dual organization, from analysis of actual marriage networks and genealogical linkages, we find many ethnographic instances where two-sided networks and marriage choices go unnoticed by ethnographers because global labels and descent rules for sides are absent. To understand global structures and institutions that may be at play, unnoticed, in social systems, it is simply not sufficient to look for shared labels attached to the parts of global structure: their structure may reside in patterns of relationships, in their instantiation. What patterns residing in relationships instantiate, however, is not necessarily a set of local decision rules that are shared and identically labeled, but rather sets of local outcomes of behavior that contribute - in possibly heterogeneous even if structurally equivalent ways - to a global configuration.

Conference Paper 2001 Douglas R. White (UC Irvine) and Michael Houseman (Paris EPHE) Sidedness: 160 Million Strong? Abstract of presentation for the American Anthropological Association.

2005 Douglas R. White, Natasa Kejzar, Constantino Tsallis and Celine Rozenblat. City-size hierarchies, 430 BCE -- 2005: Generative models toward a long-term geopolitical theory. Submitted to Structure and Dynamics, Download: paper_7_6city.pdf

2005 Jason Owen-Smith, Walter W. Powell, and Douglas R. White. Network Growth and Consolidation: The Effects of Cohesion and Diversity on the Biotechnology Industry Network Submitted to Management Science, Special issue on Complex Systems Across Disciplines. Download: Growth_andConsolidation.pdf

Other Conferences and Keynotes

Other: Books