Council on Anthropological and Evolutionary Sciences

Consortium of Anthropological, Informatic, and Related Sciences

2004 UCI Seminar Series in Anthropological Sciences

The Evolution of Peoples, Cultures and States.

2005 UC Seminar Series in Anthropological Sciences

Modeling the Evolution of Peoples, Populations, Cultures, States, and Civilizations.

Possible routes for development for the Anthropological Sciences at UCI - pending responses

Part of the mission of the Council on Anthropological Sciences of the UC system (CAIRS Affiliates), with support of the UCOP Department of Academic Initiatives, is to bring together anthropologists and those working in the anthropological sciences (physical and biological, earth, archaeological, historical, linguistic, computational, and sociocultural) in diverse programs and schools at UCI, UCSD, UCR and UCLA. Drawing on their expertise, and that of affiliates at other universities, the goal is to coordinate research and seminars, scientific findings and methods, and funding for research and applied projects, in order to bring the anthropological sciences to bear on problems of central importance at the interface between anthropology and other disciplines.

UCI Council on Anthropological and Evolutionary Sciences (CAES): already formed; membership noted below

Center Status: Policy for Naming Informal Centers at UCI

Irvine Research Units : Application Guidelines

Focused Research Program: Application Guidelines for FRPs at UCI

Organized Research Unit: Current ORUs at UCI and procedures

Anthropological Sciences at UCI: use Psychology at UCI as a model

A Research and Academic Program that would foster and coordinate interdisciplinary foci in the Anthropological and Evolutionary Sciences. One vision of how this might work is to build a Santa Fe Institute type of think tank within an interdisciplinary department that gives joint degrees such as Anthropology/Biology or Social Science/Computer Science, and with emphases such as Archaeology, Physical Anthropology, Molecular Anthropology, Social Networks, Social Science Simulation, Complex Adaptive Systems and the like.

There is also a need for future hires to restore gender imbalances in the Anthropological Sciences

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COUNCIL: UCI Faculty

Duran Bell: Economics, economic anthropology. References (949) 824-7053 Council on Anthropological and Evolutionary Sciences
I began my work as an economic anthropologist after nearly twenty years as an economist, holding a Ph.D. in agricultural economics from UC Berkeley. I was lured into anthropology by an interest in intra-household resource allocation, a subject on which anthropology presents an abundance of cultural variation. I then became interested in bridewealth and dowry and consequently with the nature of lineage organization as wealth-holding social entities, leading finally to a more general interest in wealth-assets and their concomitant social implications.
Having developed the set of necessary and sufficient conditions that must characterize any form of wealth, my current work locates the fundamental dynamic that orients t he development and management of lineages, tribes and states. There is now a basis for investigating the dynamics and the evolution of social formations, using wealth as the central instrumental variable and positing the survival of wealth-holding groups as the central criterion. The establishment of a focus on Anthropological Sciences offers an encouragement to focus more directly on the evolution of social systems, together with an attempt to chart the future course of capitalist globalization.

Michael Burton: Economic anthropology, ecological anthropology, psychological anthropology, gender; Africa, Micronesia. References Council on Anthropological and Evolutionary Sciences

John P. Boyd (Emeritus): Kinship, social networks, mathematical anthropology. Council on Anthropological and Evolutionary Sciences

Leo R. Chavez: International migration, Latin American immigrants, medical anthropology, transnational communities. References Council on Anthropological and Evolutionary Sciences

Benjamin Colby, Emeritus: Culture theory and cultural pathology, content analysis, psychological anthropology, cognition, narrative structures, psychoneuroimmunology; Japan, Mesoamerica, women's health and well-being in Orange County. References (949) 824-7602 Council on Anthropological and Evolutionary Sciences
My current studies explore the ways in which low levels of adaptive potential create cultural pathology and how cultural pathology, in turn, relates to physical and mental health, to the employment of dysfunctional defense mechanisms, to political and religious ideology and to ecological and social degradation. The major effort in these studies is the development of ways to quantify these relationships through measures resulting from distributional analyses, content analysis, and questionnaires.

Jonathon E. Ericson: Archaeological chemistry, environmental quality and health, earth sciences, physical anthropology. (949) 824-7261 Council on Anthropological and Evolutionary Sciences
My work now bridges in physical anthropology and archaeology through the environmental health sciences. My current emphasis is on exposure assessment and development of biomarkers. This work has established many of the pre-Industrial baseline levels of lead distribution and cadmium, lead in the urban environment through environmental epidemiological survey, and the durability of natural glass for nuclear waste containment. Much of the analysis is conducted on remote sensing data using geographic information systems (GIS).

Carmella Moore: cognitive anthropology, cross-cultural research (Researcher, Cognitive Sciences). Also Lecturer in Anthropology, Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences, California Institute of Technology). NSF Nugget; Society for Anthropological Sciences (SASci) Council on Anthropological and Evolutionary Sciences

Robert Garfias: Ethnomusicology, ethnicity. Kiosk (949) 824-6644 Council on Anthropological and Evolutionary Sciences
My career has had three major phases. For twenty years I directed the graduate program in Ethnomusicology at the University of Washington. During the last five years of that period and for another six I served in university administration, at the University of Washington and then at UCI. During the last 15 years I have devoted my self to teaching general undergraduates at UCI something about ethnomusicology.
My own research has been in various geographic areas. My doctoral research was in Japan on the performance practice of music in the Imperial Court. Later I did research on tonal structure in Burmese music, on the relationship of music structure and practice to dreams and trance with the Shona people of Zimbabwe and subsequent to that, on the survival of Turkish structural elements in the music of Romanian Gypsies (Roma). I have more recently studied the balance of innovation, assimilation and tradition in the Okinawan koten repertoire of the Ryukyus and most recently have been working on the unique character of Makam structure as found in the survival of Ottoman court tradition in Turkey. Underlying all these research interests are questions about how the practice of music in any culture is reflected in other aspects of the society.

A. Kimball Romney, Emeritus: Experimental and psychological anthropology, quantitative and cognitive anthropology. References (949) 824-6797 Council on Anthropological and Evolutionary Sciences.

Douglas Wallace: Human ecology and evolutionary biology; Director, Center for Molecular & Mitochondrial Medicine and Genetics. References (949) 824 9934/3490 Council on Anthropological and Evolutionary Sciences
Genealogical Prehistory and Mitocondrial DNA

Douglas White: Social networks, institutional emergence and transformation; comparative historical and longitudinal analysis, development and social change: European and post colonial societies. References Nuggets (858) 452 9957 Council on Anthropological and Evolutionary Sciences
My pyramid has mathematical and network modeling of sociocultural and demographic processes in human populations, over time, at the top. At the bottom are a host of longitudinal ethnographic field sites, some connected with historical archival data, and many different comparative ethnographic databases, starting with the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample database of largely preindustrial societies, and extending through historical sociodemographic databases such as Carinthian farmer communities (1509-present), the industrial bourgeoisie of Northern France (1800-forward) and many other collaborative sites or hosted databases (e.g., Ethnographic Atlas, group composition in band society, the collaborative network in the world biotech industry, the linkages network of collaborative long-term fieldsite research).
The theoretical findings at the middle of this pyramid involve network modeling needed to understand interactive processes and to study the dynamics that operate in the division of labor, the effects and consequences of social cohesion or decohesion, emergent social structure, social class and power elite formations, the small-world self-organizing properties of social systems, lineage systems, and the like. A current project involves a collaborative European Union grant on (European) information society as a self-organizing system.

Affiliates: UCI Faculty

Brian Skyrms: Evolution of norms, evolutionary game theory, principles of social equity. CV (949) 824 6489
Evolution of Conventions and the Social Contract won Skyrms membership in the National Academy and lead up to his current work on the Evolution of Inference and a current book manuscript on how signaling make a difference to evolutionary processes. His approach to evolutionary game theory makes an important contribution to understanding the dynamics of evolutionary and civilizational processes.

Donald Saari: Distinguished Professor of Economics & Professor of Mathematics. (949) 824-7121
A mathematician whose current work on the political process (voting second as well as first choices), the economy, supply and demand and the emergence of chaotic behavior in those processes reflects an interdisciplinary emphasis on dynamic modeling in the social sciences that has earned him a place in the National Academy. He is interested in research collaborations on the nonlinear dynamics of evolutionary and civilizational processes.

Art DeVany. Emeritus Professor, Economics CV (949) 824 5269, 6336
I teach an experimental course combining artificial intelligence, game theory, evolution, and complex dynamics called Emergent Systems. My research on dynamics of the evolution of the film industry, of emergent markets, and on decentralization and decentralized processes links complexity theory with fundamental evolutionary processes in economics.

Carter Butts, Sociology. CHAIR: CAES ADVISORY COMMITTEE FOR SOCIAL NETWORKS. (949) 824-8591
Butts's research involves the application of formal (i.e., mathematical and computational) techniques to theoretical and methodological problems within the areas of social network analysis, mathematical sociology, quantitative methodology, and human judgment and decision making. Currently, his work focuses on: the structure of spatially embedded large-scale interpersonal networks; models for informant accuracy, network inference, and graph comparison; graphical representations of life history data; and models for human behavior in strategic situations.

            Benjamin Colby bncolby[.at.]uci.edu
            Carmella C Moore ccmoore[.at.]uci.edu
            Diego Vigil vigil[.at.]uci.edu
            Doug Wallace dwallace[.at.]uci.edu
            Doug White drwhite[.at.]uci.edu
            Duran Bell dbell[.at.]uci.edu
            John Boyd jpboyd[.at.]uci.edu
            Jon Ericson jeericso[.at.]uci.edu
            Kim Romney akromney[.at.]aris.ss.uci.edu
            Leo Chavez lchavez[.at.]uci.edu
            Mike Burton mlburton[.at.]uci.edu
            Robert Garfias rgarfias[.at.]uci.edu
                Brian Skyrms bskyrms[.at.]uci.edu
                Donald Saari      dsaari[.at.]uci.edu
                Art Devany        asdevany[.at.]uci.edu
                Robert Moyzis     rmoyzis[.at.]uci.edu
                John Jay Gargus   jjgargus[.at.]uci.edu
                Chuansheng Chen   cschen[.at.]uci.edu
                Pierre Baldi      pfbaldi[.at.]ics.uci.edu
                Padhraic Smyth    pjsmyth[.at.]uci.edu
                Steve Frank       safrank[.at.]uci.edu
                Robert Beck       rbeck[.at.]uci.edu
                Dwight Read dread[.at.]anthro.ucla.edu
                Michael Fischer M.D.Fischer[.at.]ukc.ac.uk

UCI Faculty Nominations - pending second round of contacts

Chuansheng Chen, Psychology and Social Behavior, Social Ecology. Culture, ethnicity, and adolescent development; the role of non-parental adults in adolescent development; culture and creativity; methodological issues in cross-cultural research; evolution and behavioral manifestations of dopamine receptor genes. (949) 824-4184.

Steven A. Frank, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (949) 824-2244, 6006

John Jay Gargus, M.D., Ph.D. Physiology & Biophysics (Medical Sciences 1) (949) 824-7702, 6638

Robert K Moyzis, Biological Chemistry. Evolutionary reconstruction, migration. 949 824 1849,1870

Pierre Baldi, Information & Computer Science, Director, Institute for Genomics and Bioinformatics (IGB), and Layer Leader for Digitally Enabled Genomic Medicine Cal(IT)² (949) 824-5809 pfbaldi[.at.]ics.uci.edu

Padhraic Smyth, Information & Computer Science (949) 824-2558

Hal Stern, Statistics (949) 824-1568 (dept: 949-824-5392)

James Diego Vigil: Educational anthropology, ethnohistory and urban psychology and socialization in Mexico and U.S. Southwest. (949) 824-6113

Robert Beck, Assistant Professor, Department of Education, and Layer Leader for Education Cal(IT)². (949) 824 6021 rbeck[.at.]uci.edu

Gloria Mark, Assistant Professor, ICS. Interactive and Collaborative Technologies; formerly: Computing, Organizations, Policy, and Society (CORPS) (949) 824-5955 E-mail: gmark[.at.]ics.uci.edu

Affiliates at Other Universities

Timothy A. Kohler, Anthropology, Washington State University; Santa Fe Institute. Simulation and Agent-Based Modeling, Coupling of Human/Ecosystems in the pre-Hispanic Central Mesa Verde Region. CHAIR: CAES ADVISORY COMMITTEE FOR ARCHAEOLOGY.

Andrey Korotayev: Cross-cultural and comparative historical anthropology and dynamical modeling (Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the RAS). CHAIR: CAES ADVISORY COMMITTEE FOR CROSS-CULTURAL RESEARCH.

Daria Khalturina: Concepts of Culture in Cross-National and Cross-Cultural Perspectives, "Cognitive World Maps" of American and Russian Students

Michael D. Fischer, Director of Computational Anthropology, University of Kent: Representation and structure of indigenous knowledge, cultural informatics, and the interrelationships between ideation and the material contexts within which ideation is expressed; Punjab, Swat in Pakistan, and Cook Islands. Experience Rich Anthropology. nominated for CHAIR: CAES ADVISORY COMMITTEE FOR COMPUTATIONAL ANTHROPOLOGY.

Nick Gessler: Distributed cultural cognition, multiagent spatial simulation. nominated for CHAIR: CAES ADVISORY COMMITTEE FOR SIMULATION, COMPLEX ADAPTIVE SYSTEMS, AND ARTIFICIAL CULTURES.

Dwight Read: nominated for CHAIR: CAES ADVISORY COMMITTEE FOR MATHEMATICAL ANTHROPOLOGY.

Nominations at other Universities - pending second round of contacts