The Linkages Projects

School of Social Sciences, University of California, Irvine (under permanent construction)

Longitudinal Community Fieldsites click for interactive map For fuller information, see D White home page and Genealogy page for P-graph and Pajek (for coded ethnographic data and maps on historical ethnographic databases, see also World Cultures electronic journal)

One of the Linkages Projects is an effort to assemble a large database on human communities from around the world, including kinship datasets and genealogies, along with rich ethnographic data, as recorded by anthropologists, or in many cases, historians, demographers, sociologists, or political scientists. This database -- now expanded to over 150 ethnographic cases, along with programs for visualization and analysis of community networks, has led to new insights into the nature and organization of kinship, social networks, institutional change, and human social processes in general. The kinship graphs below illustrate networks of a few datasets from the Linkages database, shown in our 1996 formats (see new formats below), and some of the software we and others have developed, along with who we are.

These data, along with long-term linkages-affiliated fieldsites, provide a scaffolding for more intensive long-term studies that contribute knowledge needed for local community participation to be effective in self-regulation and governance of projects and activity streams that affect their lives and the sustainability of their ecologies. Such knowledge is essential for legislation at the state and international level to regulate outside agencies whose activities affect or claim to effect local development. This is the goal of Linkages, a network of researchers concerned with long-term assessment of populations studied by anthropologists in developing and developed countries to assess the impacts of development and social change and the sustainability of economies and ecosystems on which communities are dependent.

We are listed on la Biblioteque en SCIENCES SOCIALES, Quebec, Canada.

Datasets (Illustrative)

Java Muslim elites in an Indonesian village
USA A partial genealogy of American presidents
Turkey Turkish nomads longterm fieldside
Mexico Relinking Kinship in a village in Tlaxcala
Australia Alyawarra Networks, Kinterm and Lifecycle Decision Models
Canaan Old Testament Patriarchs

Software

Pgraph, the Package for kinship and marriage network analysis, which now feeds data to Pajek, UCINet, and GEDCOM programs
Pajek, the Package for Large Network Analysis
see also: GIM, the Genealogical Information Manager, and UCINet
newer 2D and 3D formats using VRML, KineMage, Chime and other advanced visualization software is discussed in links to the PI's home page.

Participants

Principal Investigator:
Douglas R White

Participating Faculty and Postdocs:

Murray Leaf (UT Dallas), the Murray Dozen:
Mike Fischer (Kent, Canterbury)
Dwight Read (UCLA)
J. Stephen Lansing (Arizona)
F.Kris Lehman (Illinois)
David Kronenfeld, UC Riverside, Anthropology
Richard Feinberg (Kent State)
Martin Ottenheimer (Kansas State)
Nick Gessler (UCLA)
Paul Ballonoff (independent)
Robert McKinley (Michigan State)

Sander E. van der Leeuw Sorbonne / Nanterre, Anthropology ARCHAEOMEDES II long term projects: long term studies of The Vera Basin (southeastern Spain), Marina Baja (southern Spain) and Empordà (northeastern Spain), The Ancient Rhône Valley (France), The Lower Rhône Valley In Modern Times, The Argolid (Greece), Epirus (Greece) 1950-1995, Bassano (Italy), Baixo Mondego (Portugal) Map of the Mediterranean basin showing the location of case studies

Woodrow W. Denham, Ph. D. Anthropology, University of Washington. Technical and anthropological consulting, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates; Long term Ethnographic Projects: Group Compositions in Band Societies: 41 sets of genealogical censuses for band societies around the world spanning a period of two centuries. These data sets can be analyzed from many perspectives to learn just what was or was not happening within the social organization of hunter-gatherer bands when they were first studied by Western social scientists. Email: wdenham@ncia.net
Details of the Datasets:

Africa. Colin Turnbull's Mbuti Pygmy data sets are very large and rich, as is Lorna Marshall's !Kung data set.

Asia. Von Furer-Heimendorf's Chechu set from India is the largest and richest set I found from Asia, with Watanabe's Ainu set coming in a distant second but with a lot of depth. The Vedda and Semang sets are small but valuable.

Australia. The two largest and richest sets from Australia are Rose's from Groote Eylandt near the Arnhem Land coast, and my own from the Alyawarra of Central Australia. Unfortunately I seem to have lost the Tiwi (1928) data set. The few other sets included here are useful since rare, but are miniscule.

Europe. The three data sets from Europe pertain not to hunter-gatherers but to reindeer herders.

North American Indian. The twelve North American Indian sets could be subdivided into two main subgroups. The Southwestern United States group includes Goodwin's Apache and Julian Steward's 19th century Paiute and Shoshone data. The Canadian Subarctic group includes Dogrib, Hare, Kutchin and Slavey, with Northern Ojibwa as a far outlier.

North American Inuit. The Greenland and Labrador data sets are old and interesting, while the Ungava Peninsula and Northwest Alaska sets are not so old and probably are more interesting that they appear to be. The richest sets in the entire data base pertain to the Central Arctic; viz., the Iglulik, Netsilik and Copper Inuit. The original data for these groups was collected during the Fifth Thule Expedition 1921-1924 and was quite rich without further refinement. However, the data received a great deal of further refinement and expansion by David Damas during fieldwork in the Central Arctic in the 1960s. My own contribution to refining the data even further occurred as a result of very close collaboration with Damas in the late 1970s when both of us were on the faculty at McMaster University. The Central Arctic data sets are large and extraordinarily rich, and are as complete and correct as we could possibly make them.

Dwight W. Read UCLA, Anthropology
Duran Bell, UC Irvine, Anthro/Economics
James Z. Lee, U Michigan, History
Thayer Scudder, CalTech, Anthropology
Thomas Schweizer, Cologne, Anthropology (d. 1998)
T. Scarlett Epstein, IDS/Sussex-Emeritus, Anthropology and Development email: scarlett-epstein@mail.u-net.com Village Voices file flier
Michael Houseman, EPHE Sorbonne, Paris, Ethnologie
Peter Bearman, Columbia, Sociology
Maurizio Gribaudi, EHESS-Paris, History
Ronald Breiger, U Arizona, Sociology
Eric Widmer, University of Geneva, Sociology/Networks/Demography/Modes of Life
Robert van Kemper, Southern Methodist Univ, Anthropology
Ann Turner, Menlo Park CA U.S. Genealogist
Michael Fischer, Canterbury-Kent, Anthropology
Ward H. Goodenough, Penn-Emeritus, Anthropology
Elizabeth Colson, Berkeley-Emeritus, Anthropology
Ulla Johansen, Cologne-Emeritus, Anthropology
Michael J. Casimir, Cologne, Anthropology
Monika Boeck, Cologne, Anthropology
Michael Bollig, Cologne, Anthropology
Michael Schnegg and Julia Pauli, Cologne, Anthropology
Hartmut Lang, Hamburg, Anthropology
Hans Fischer, Hamburg, Anthropology
Waltraud Kokot, Hamburg, Anthropology
Lilyan A. Brudner, UC Irvine, Anthropology
Conrad Kottak, Michigan, Anthropology
Nancie Gonzales, Maryland, Emeritus: Anthropology
Grant McCall, Canberra, Anthropology
Judith Stepan Norris, UC Irvine, Sociology
Jorge Gil-Mendieta, UNAM-Mexico, Social Networks
Samuel Schmidt, Texas-El Paso, Political Science
Narciso Pizarro, Complutense-Madrid, Sociology
Stephen Berkowitz, Vermont, Sociology (d. 2003)
Gerald Gaillard, Lille, Anthropology
J.M. Dupriez, Lille, Sociology
Vladimir Batagelj, Ljubljana, Computing/Graph Theory
Andrej Mrvar, Ljubljana, Computing/Graph Theory
Frank Harary, New Mexico State (d. 2005), Computing/Graph Theory

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Graduate Students, UCI:
Silvia Casasola, Social Networks
William Fitzgerald, Social Networks
Ben Jester, Social Networks
Pat Skyhorse, Social Networks
Jeff Stern, Social Networks
Birgit Pauksztat, Social Networks

Graduate Students Elsewhere:

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This page was last updated 2002-12-27.