- 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.
reviewed 2005 in
Europhysicsnews 36(6):218-220
by Stefan Thurner:
2006 Douglas R. White, Natasa Kejzar, Constantino Tsallis, Doyne Farmer, and Scott White. Download:
A Generative Model for Feedback Networks (including trade, biotech, kinship)
Physical Review E 73, 016119 abstract tiny url- http://tinyurl.com/ylpbn3
Arxiv abstract
Santa Fe Institute Working Paper 2005
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. See Working Papers Series
for the Social Dynamics and Evolution group for full color preprint as well as an interactive conference PDF by Kejzar.
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
Contents and Introduction -
Network Analysis and Ethnographic Problems:
Process Models of a Turkish Nomad Clan. Douglas R. White and Ulla C. Johansen. Boston: Lexington Press. ISBN # 0-7391-0896-4.
review copy available
Abstract. The introductory chapter introduces and illustrates four propositions about network theory and emergence:
- Networks have structural properties (local and global) that have important feedback on behavior and cognition. This section reviews the probabilistic and scaling theories of network topology and dynamics, evidence for feedback process in networks, many of which are "out of range" for perception even by the best of ethnographers. Adamic, Lukose and Huberman's (2003) findings are reviewed insofar as network scaling properties alter the ratio between local inequality (heterarchy that allows network navigation) and global inequality or network hierarchy, i.e., this ratio changes as a function of self-similar or scale-free properties of network topologies. All the current interdisciplinary work on network scaling is reviewed in this light in relation to social processes, problems of observation, and the understanding of social dynamics.
- Micro-macro (and macro-micro) linkages offer explanatory principles, some of which are highly deterministic. Mathematical theorems concerning structural and probabilistic relations between micro and macro properties of networks are reviewed to show how theoretical explanations about social structure and organizational dynamics can be formulated in terms of general scientific principles. Balance, clustering, relational equivalence, structural cohesion, and network embedding are examined as explanatory models that allow the formation of models and explanations that are consistent with general theoretical principles.
- Many structural properties have configurational effects, whether or not they have micro-macro linkages. Here, the effects of structure per se are examined, as consequences of proximal effects of principles such as reciprocity and network embedding.
- Emergents may be local or nonlocal, depending on whether they have micro-macro linkages.
Clarifications of the continuum of structural effects from local to nonlocal are shown to relate to needed clarification of
a concomitant continuum for the varying meanings of emergence.
The argument is developed that analysis of network structure and dynamics is not only valid but necessary for any ethnographic, historical, or longitudinal approach to understanding social processes. Network analysis offers a fully generalizable and multilevel (including heterarchic) approach both to coding events and relations occurring among multilevel actors and their environments, and to theorizing social interplay between structure and dynamics. Rule-based regularities are distinguished from emergent structural properties that have configurational effects. Models and emergent phenomena are distinguished by how such properties interact with the presence or absence of micro-macro linkages.
Five propositions are advanced for "when does network analysis matter?" and the problems of expected and unexpected change arising out of network and multiagent interactions. Given our findings about the limits of ethnographer knowledge regarding organizations, groups and the formation of knowledge communities, we show how network analysis can provide crucial components of an understanding of emergent rules and emergent groups. We focus especially on the explanatory power and context of hierarchically and heterarchically embedded layers of structurally cohesive groups in social networks and the vistas, measurements and general explanatory principles that these can provide to ethnography in particular and understanding social dynamics in general. The introductory chapter is intended to provide a new theoretical context for a coherent and encompassing network approach to ethnography and social theory that is capable of driving whole new classes of results from the analysis of the rich data provided by ethnographers and ranging from observed relationships to the full richness of the symbolic media of interpersonal and culturally mediated interactions.
See the reviews for reader reactions and related articles in Chronicling Cultures and the journal Complexity. The glossary of the book provides the reader with conceptual and technical background in the fields of complexity theory, networks and graph theory, social and kinship organization, and general ethnographic and sociological vocabulary.
- books
- L'Homme reviews, 2000
- reviews of Kinship, Networks and Exchange
- book abstract, Kinship, Networks and Exchange
- book abstract, 2005, Process Models
- The meaningful family subgroups are not unilineal descent groups but sets of cognates that are more densely intermarried, through various kinds of relinking.
- Structural endogamy based on relinking is associated with wealth consolidation and thus with higher prestige.
- Structural cohesion added by sibling and sibling-in-law links reinforced by structural endogamy is associated with consolidation of wealth from different ancestral sources.
- Reconsolidation of wealth through relinking marriages is more likely the greater the number of siblings because this entails the division of family inheritance amongst a greater number of heirs. Relinking marriages will be less important when there is a single child as heir.
- The type of relinking that is most important to membership in the prestige core of the marriage network is not the marriage between blood (consanguineal) relatives, but horizontal relinking between families and sibling sets, which resemble cycles of endogamous marriage among sets of families.
Recent Publication Awards
Network Realism as a Theoretical Paradigm
2004 Award Outstanding Article Publication, ASA Mathematical Sociology Section, for "Structural Cohesion and Embeddedness:
A Hierarchical Concept of Social Groups" - Moody and White (2003, below)
Human Complex Systems working papers)
Abstracts and links to KINSHIP and GENEALOGICAL articles and chapters in PDF format - Douglas R. White
see new Tools for Marriage Network Analysis1974 Douglas R. White Mathematical Anthropology. Reprinted from J.J. Honigmann, ed., Handbook of Social and Cultural Anthropology: 369-446. Chicago: Rand-McNally.
Abstract. Mathematics shares with science the use of axiomatic reasoning. This sort of reasoning is crucial to the development of theory in that when consequences are proven mathematically to follow from a certain set of assumptions, this logic can be incorporated as a logico-deductive component of theory as contrasted to empirical tests of hypotheses. Stronger theories are often constructed by weakening the axiom sets to the point of greatest generality while still deriving theoretically important consequences. Four of six basic kinds of mathematical reasoning are developed and exemplified by applications to core anthropological problems. These four, treated in successive sections are: Processual Analysis; including probabilistic and deterministic models; Optimization Analysis, including decision and game theory; Structural Analysis, including graph theory and models of network optimization; and Ethnographic Decomposition, including natural information processing systems and abstract algebraic decomposition. Two major areas not treated here are Data Reduction via matrix analysis, including multidimentional scaling, and Measurement Theory, including quantification, statistics and probabilistic reasoning. The argument developed here shows how the four classes of mathematical reasoning that are examined, because they treat complementary kinds of problems, can be usefully combined in what might be called overlay models that treat, for example, social process, agency and choice, structural constraints, and the role of information in human behavior. The two areas that are omitted from consideration would apply to any and all of these for complementary types of models, simply because they are more generic.
1971 Douglas R. White, George P. Murdock, Richard Scaglion, Natchez Class and Rank Reconsidered Ethnology 10:369- 388.
This 1971 reconstruction of how individuals were actually linked historically in the social networks of the Natchez people provides a classic example of how processual and network modeling can reveal and clarify inferences about social structure. The famous "Natchez Paradox" was discussed in virtually every introductory Anthropology text up to the publication of this article. See current accounts of the historical Natchez and the bibliography on the Natchez. Descendants of the Natchez today are recognized among the Southeastern American Indian groups and among mixed descendants of English colonists. Among these descendants, in turn, are today's recognized Natchez political leaders. Perhaps only the Encyclopedia Britannica is still remiss in describing Natchez social structure as a four-class system, as in Swanton's reconstruction of 1911. Swanton's reconstruction, however, implied a self-immolating social structure characterized by the Natchez Paradox as explicated in the abstract below. Only traces of this Paradox, compounded from several sources of ethnographic misunderstandings, are alive in urban legend and on the WWW today, such as Bennet's memory of discussions by Adam Przeworski (2004). The abstract that follows, simply because Ethnology publishes articles without abstracts, was written only in 2005.Abstract Textual analysis, comparative
distributional evidence, and prosopographic network methods are used here to solve the Natchez Paradox first posed by
C. M. W. Hart in
1943, expressed in
mathematical form by Samuel Goldberg in 1958
and summarized, in terms of analytical dilemmas, inconsistencies, and possible 'solutions,' by Jeffrey Brain in 1971.
The Natchez Paradox emerged from an ethnographer's reconstruction of four Natchez social classes, three of which -- Sun rulers, Nobles, and Honoreds, as opposed to Commoners --
had been assumed by the historical ethnographer, John Swanton, to be ranked exogamous matri-descent groups. While all nobility
married commoners, the children of males would be expected to belong to their mother's group. Swanton concluded from his
reading of the contemporaneous historical texts of the 18th century French colonists that the children of men in the Sun, Noble, and Honored classes
did not revert to commoner status but only to one level lower in the social hierarchy. The paradox shown by Hart and
demonstrated even more strongly by Goldberg in his mathematical model is that given equal reproductive rates of marriages of different types over
successive generations, combined with Swanton's hypothetical social rules, the
Sun lineage would constitute a stable proportion of the population, the Noble lineages would increase their proportion
in each generation, and the Honored lineages would increase proportionally to the proportion in the Noble lineages,
thus obliterating the commoner class in relatively few generations.
What we find in our prosopographic counting of individuals mentioned by name in the historically contemporaneous French
texts is that the only persons with Honored status who were mentioned in these texts were men, and consequently, without Honored women,
there were no Honored lineages and no Honored class.
The textual sources are clear that Honored status was a social rank for men, so that Honored matrilines (and their
female members) were clearly an invention of Swanton, possibly because he did not
base his analysis on mentions of individuals in the French texts, which are numerous, but only on presumed categories.
The other probable mistake in inference derives from the fact that while French words in the singular indicate
gender, the plural term 'les Honores' applies equally to men in the plural and to both genders in the plural.
Swanton overgeneralized, in our view, in drawing the inference that there existed a social class of Honoreds
that contained both men and women. Women with that status simply did not exist. Honored, we show, was a term
only for male rank, not a designation for social class or for a set of distinct matrilineages.
The Natchez Paradox also arose from Swanton's erroneous rejection of a contemporaneous account given in one of the
documents written by French colonists that delineated a consistent system of devolution of noble rank that depended
on distance from the Royal line. By this firsthand account from someone conversant with the nobility, the children
of Sun men (the royal lineage) devolved to Noble status for both men and women, but Noble status in the female line
of descendants of these women devolved, after three generations, to Commoner status for women but for men to Honored rank.
It was only the sons of men of Honored rank, in this account, who became commoners.
Commoners, however, could also achieve Honored status by fame through their exploits in war. Part of the reason Swanton
disputed this French account of Natchez nobility was because of the asymmetry of rank assigned to children of Noble men:
even if such a man was a matrilineal greatgrandchild of a ruler, his sons were Honored while his daughters were
Commoners. Such asymmetries, which Swanton mistakenly thought of as matters of asymmetric descent rather than of rank, seemed
unlikely to Swanton. As described in one of Swanton's own publications, however,
our distributional analysis of cases in the neighboring region identifies the neighboring Caddo as having
asymmetric gender status of precisely the Natchez type. The Caddo and Natchez had long engaged in trade,
so this asymmetric assignment of status need not be disregarded as a valid ethnographic feature
of the Natchez status system. The Natchez paradox, then, was apparently the result of various compounded errors,
including Swanton's assumptions about symmetries in rules of descent as concerns sons and daughters. Swanton did not
differentiate clearly the different elements of rank, class, and lineage as they operated in Natchez society.
We regard these multiple sources of evidence as providing a definitive alternative
description of Natchez social structure than that proposed by Swanton in this reconstruction of 1911, roughly 180 years after
the dispersal of the Natchez as a distinct and integral society. This was a complex society with an hereditary
aristocracy and complex rules for the devolution of status and rank. Swanton recognized only certain aspects of
this complexity. When it came to Natchez principles of devolution of rank in the Royal and noble
matrilines, many of which are common to royal lines, Swanton was unwilling to recognize the similarity to those found
in other monarchical polities. The Natchez Paradox re-emerges, then, as an example of the use of network and
mathematical models both as a check on ethnographic interpretations in the reading of historical texts and as pointing
the way to better solutions in the rereading of textual data. Textual data can easily be misinterpreted. In the present
case Swanton evidently overrelied on categorical inferences that fit his prior assumptions. Errors of this sort can easily
overtake even the best of ethnographers, a category into which Swanton, in his extensive published works
and his many ethnohistorical and ethnographic contributions, has long occupied a place. It is a credit to the
Natchez historical corpus, on which Swanton relied, that some of his errors of inference can be corrected based
on a reexamination of the textual evidence.
Our appendix provides a network and genealogical analysis of the 20 prosopographic mentions of Sun royalty and
how ranking within the royal lineage related to the center-periphery occupation of political posts in the Kingdom.
It is also shown how the center-periphery structure of the ruling lineage exacerbated internal political divisions
in the war with the French, and the exodus of one branch of the Natchez population to merge with Southeastern groups
and towns such as those of the Creek, Chickasaw, and Cherokee.
1983 Douglas R. White and Karl P. Reitz, Graph and Semigroup Homomorphisms Social Networks 5:193-234.
Abstract A set of nodes in a graph are regular-equivalent when each has the same relations with other nodes that are regular-equivalent. For a homomorphic mapping (or blockmodeling) of nodes and arcs into an image that preserves adjacencies, regular equivalence offers the structure-preserving property that semigroups of generating and compound relations on the original graph (or network with multiple kinds of arcs or edges) are preserved.
2000 Douglas R. White and Karl P. Reitz, Homomorphismos de grafos y semigrupos sobre redes de relaciones. Politica y Sociedad 33:149-165. [Reprint in translation of 1983 "Graph and Semigroup Homomorphisms" Social Networks 5:193-234. ] Abstract. See above.
Historical note. Regular equivalence
might seem like the logical place to begin the study of patterns in kinship systems,
but this proved not to be the case. Denham and White (2005, below) eventually
showed that even the beautiful kinship algebras attributed to Austrialian kinship systems,
for example, were unjustified abstractions in the minds of kinship analysts based
on their assumptions about closure in social rule systems. The axiomatic formalizations
of Harrison White (1963) or John Boyd (1969) were not sufficiently weak to capture the
behavioral flexibility of the kinship networks that are actually recorded in genealogices
rather than given as abstract models of kinship 'systems'. Boyd's 'proof' of the
equivalence between terminological systems, componential analysis and kinship algebras as
depending only on a certain network density proved, in an errata published by Boyd (1972) in
a later issue of Mathematical Psychology, to have been mistaken.
One might have thought, by weakening the assumptions of structural equivalence,
as in White and Reitz (1983) definition of regular equivalence, that the role relationships
in patterned kinship systems could be recaptured. This also proved not to be the case. It is
not simply that kinship systems are not closed because there is always a 'next' generation
that does not yet fit into a preexisting pattern, but that this 'openness,' along with
forgetting of generations far in the past, leads to a flexibility that is fully
exploited in actual behavior, as Denham and White (2005) show for the most carefully collected
of all the Australian kinship databases.
The long road to an understanding of kinship patterns that will be evident in the following
studies, then, did not lead through algebras of kinship structures that display
a logic of closure, even if the algebraic axioms are weakened, as for example by Tjon Sie Fat
(1990). In that sense, Malinowski was correct in his critique of kinship algebras as
ethnocentric models (figments of imagination) of the kinship analyst. The road to understanding
deviated from a study of 'role structure,' which is not so uniform even in traditional
societies as anthropologists had been lead to believe, but rather through concepts that
we might use more generally to understand alternative constructions of community such
as structural cohesion and structural endogamy, and more sensitive uses of graph theoretic
concepts and longitudinal analysis to understand social dynamics.
Bibliography for historical notes.
BOYD, John P. 1969. The algebra of group kinship. Journal of Mathematical Psychology 6:139-167. Erratum J. Math. Psychology 9:339 (1972)
TJON SIE FAT, Franklin E. 1990. Representing Kinship: Simple Models of Elementary Structures. Standort: FB f.Ethnologie: Gesellschaft 673.
WHITE, Harrison. 1963. An Anatomy of Kinship: Mathematical Models for Structures of Cumulated Roles. Englewood Cliffs NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Rethinking Polygyny: Co-Wives,
Codes, and Cultural Systems Douglas R. White Current
Anthropology, Vol. 29, No. 4. (Aug. - Oct., 1988), pp. 529-572.
jstor
pw/Polygyny1988.pdf
The new coding system includes more variables and better definitions of variables than used previously and illuminates regional patterns and differences in polygyny. New variables include habitations of co-wives and husbands, recruitment of co-wives, marriage of captive women, and rank or stratification among males. Using his system, White tests hypotheses for two regional polygynous complexes: wealth-increasing polygyny and sororal polygyny, which exemplify an improved comparative methodology. After introducing and substantiating the new coding system, White offers a rather extensive analysis of coding problems, including ambiguity, conflicts in sources, insufficient evidence, inference, observer bias, and meaning or measurement validity.
COMMENTS: White's critics applaud his improvements in comparative polygyny coding and his analysis of coding problems. They proclaim his contribution as a much needed, wise, and important resource for the study and analysis of this socio-cultural complex. Most critics also offer what they themselves call "small" criticisms, including White's emphasis on regional complexes and the enhancement of economic status via multiple wives.
REPLY: White reiterates the need for a new coding process and thanks his commenters for valuing his new measures. He also attempts to reinforce his arguments that were criticized, including the clarified concept of macroculture in defense of criticisms related to regional emphasis.
Representing and Computing Kinship: A New Approach Douglas R. White, Paul Jorion
Current Anthropology, Vol. 33, No. 4. (Aug. - Oct., 1992),
pp. 454-463. jstor
pw/White-Jorion1992.pdf
1996 Kinship networks and discrete structure theory: Applications and implications. Douglas R. White, and Paul Jorion. Special Issue on Social Network and Discrete Structure Analysis, Social Networks 18(3): 267-314. doi:10.1016/0378-8733(95)00277-4 Copyright (c) 1996 Published by Elsevier Science B.V.
Abstract. Confusions between substantive and relational concepts of kinship as a social network have led to a number of problems that are clarified by a temporally ordered relational theory of network structure. The ordered-network approach gives rise to a novel means of graphing the social field of kinship relations, while allowing kinship to be locally defined in culturally relative terms. Its utility is exemplified in applications to kinships among US Presidents, Old Testament Canaanites, and native Australians of Groote Eylandt. The formal concepts treated in the mapping of kinship networks are: kinship axioms, parental graph structure, core, circuits of consanguineally and affinally linked kin, sides and divides, homeomorphic mappings, homomorphisms as potentially simplifying mappings of kinship, elementary structure, and order-structure. Representational theorems are proven about homeomorphisms, cores and circuits, and the ambiguity of elementary structures. The last set of theorems leads to clarifying and redefining some of the basic concepts of elementary, semi-complex and complex structures of kinship in terms of properties of generationally ordered networks. The conclusions of the formal argument are 'post-structural' in the narrow sense of demonstrating the need for specifying contingent historical processes in the structural analysis of kinship as a social field. The open-ended approach to change, one that is implied by the study of ordered structures that unfold in a temporal succession, connects to issues of population variability, selection, and evolutionary processes. The kinship structures that are mapped in this approach are not intended as any sort of complete representations of kinship 'systems', but merely as scaffoldings that help to bring into view kinship as a social field, providing a baseline for other mappings (which may be superimposed) of social processes such as communicative fields, exchange processes, transmission of learned behaviors, social rights and inheritance, political and religious succession, and the like.
-
1997.
Structural Endogamy and the Graphe de Parenté.
Mathématiques, Informatique, et Sciences Humaines 137:107-125.
Abstract. This article, one of a series, approaches
the topics of marriage and kinship through a revitalized kinetic structural approach that shifts the primary focus
from abstract models of rules, terminologies, attitudes and norms to exploration of concrete relations in a
population, analyzed graph-theoretically in their full complexity as networks. Network representation
using the graphe de parenté (p-graph) serves as the basis for examining marriage alliance theory,
population structure (such as endogamy and exogamy, inbreeding, subgroups), as well as other
possible concepts of general sociological interest. These include structural endogamy as a cohesive relational structure,
which is associated with social formations such as classes,
strata, ethnicity, and elites (Schweizer and White 1998, in press). This type of potentially multi-layered structural approach extends to the study of structures and processes of actual marriage and kinship practices and other forms of social linkage that build off of them. Identification of structure and processes which occur in such networks is enhanced by mapping attributes or dynamic variables onto the armature of the kinship graph. Any number of theoretical questions concerning kinship and marriage may be posed or restated to address questions of the structure of kinship networks, and thus depend upon such analysis for deeper critical insights. The focus in this discussion is specifically on the connections between graph-theoretic analysis and various substantive theoretical questions concerning kinship and marriage networks.
Abstract.
This is the first theoretical application of the concept of
structural endogamy as identifying an empirical variable or boundary
condition within social networks that is linked in
causal-explanatory ways to social class formation. Using an
ethnographically rich case study of an Austrian village in which
oral and (ca. 100) household genealogies provide 150 years of
marriage network data, while manorial archives continue the
stem-line household genealogies back to the founding of the "house
system" in 1517, the hypothesis is formulated that the social
class boundary between farmstead owner-operators (including heirs
and buyers) and secondary service occupations not linked to
farmstead ownership is established and maintained through the
mechanism of structural endogamy. Two principles of inheritance are
in conflict in this farmstead house-system, that of passing the
principal productive property intact to a principal heir (usually a
son, or if not is available, a daughter), and that of the intestate
rights of children to equal division of parental inheritance. The
use of wills or testaments resolves his conflict through "equitable
division" which maintains stem-line impartibility of farmsteads
along with quitclaims to those who are not principal heirs.
Structural endogamy, in this case specifically the marriage of a
potential heir to a spouse who brings in divided property from
another divided patrimonial stemline, is shown to be (1) a
qualification for class membership via principal heirship, (2) a
means of reconstituting subdivided estates, and (3) a means of
social perpetuation of the two-class system which often even divides
siblings within the same nuclear family. The predicted statistical
relationship between class-membership, heirship and structural
endogamy is confirmed empirically and implications for new
approaches to studies of social class formation are discussed.
1998 Michael Houseman and Douglas R. White,
Taking Sides: Marriage Networks and Dravidian Kinship in Lowland South America.
Transformations of Kinship, pp. 214-243.
Edited by Maurice Godelier, Thomas Trautmann and F.Tjon Sie Fat.
Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.
Abstract.
Reviews of
'theorie de la practique' in l'Homme 2000
Abstract.
Reviews of
'theorie de la practique' in l'Homme 2000
1998 Douglas White & Thomas Schweizer,
Kinship, Property Transmission,
and Stratification in Javanese Villages.
Kinship, Networks and Exchange, Chapter 3, pp. 36-58.
Edited by Thomas Schweizer and Douglas R. White.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Abstract.
For commentary, see Reviews of
'theorie de la practique' in l'Homme 2000
1999 Douglas R. White, Networks,
Cognition and Ethnography: Thomas Schweizer Remembered,
Connections 22:19-27.
Abstract: The life and
research agenda of Thomas Schweizer, who died suddenly at the age of
48, is considered in terms of its contributions to anthropology and
social science generally. Schweizer was the leading contributor to a
processual approach to understanding the fundamentals of
ethnographic research through a synthesis between the network
approach to social organization and an actor based approach that
takes into account cognition and individual decision making under
the network constraints and dynamics of social organization. This
memorial considers how this synthesis developed within Schweizer's
career and his institutional and intellectual contributions to
German Anthropology and the University of Cologne Institute of
Ethnology.
1999 Douglas R. White,
Vladimir Batagelj and Andrej Mrvar, Analyzing
Large Kinship and Marriage Networks with Pgraph and Pajek,
Social Science Computer Review 17(3):245-274.
Sage Article pdf
Abstract. The p-graph approach that
has proven an invaluable aid to the study of kinship, marriage and
genealogical network analysis here is explicated ñ in terms
of solving five key conceptual problems of network studies,
including that of identifying subgroup boundaries -- and combined
with a computer package for sparse-network algorithmic analysis and
visual representation of large (up to 90,000 node) networks. The
results of this new marriage between graph-theoretical analysis,
computer science, network anthropology and network-visualized social
history are illustrated for a 1600- person social system consisting
of an entire Turkish nomad society, with a relinking density of 75%,
the highest density of structural endogamy yet recorded. It is shown
how the algorithmic, analytic and graph-editing technology of this
new concatenation of elements for network analysis leads to striking
new understandings of social structure and social processes, and how
to prepare visualizations of discoverable emergent properties of
structure in such a large and dense network. This article reviews
the developments and contributions of the authors to the evolution
of these tools and methods for large-scale network analysis, and
provides a complete series of guides and illustrations for the
reader to utilize the two software packages discussed.
Abstract. This study shows
various ways that formal graph theoretic statements map patterns of
network ties into substantive hypotheses about social cohesion. If
network cohesion is enhanced by multiple connections between members
of a group, for example, then the higher the global minimum of the
number of independent paths that connect every pair of nodes in the
network, the higher the social cohesion. The cohesiveness of a group
is also measured by the extent to which it is not disconnected by
removal of 1, 2, 3,..., n actors. Menger's Theorem proves that these
two measures are equivalent. Within this graph theoretic framework,
we evaluate the family of concepts of cohesion and establish the
validity of a pair of related measures: Calibrated for successive
values of k, these two measures combine into an aggregate measure of
social cohesion, suitable for both small-and large-scale network
studies. Using these measures to define the core of a new
methodology of cohesive blocking, we offer hypotheses about the
consequences of cohesive blocks for social groups and their members,
and explore empirical examples that illustrate the significance,
theoretical relevance, and predictiveness of cohesive blocking in a
variety of substantively important applications in sociology.
2001 Frank Harary and Douglas R. White
P-Systems:
A Structural Model for Kinship Studies. Connections
24(2):35-46. Click article title at that site for the PDF.
Abstract: Several
mathematical models have been proposed for kinship studies. We
propose an alternate structural model designed to be so simple
logically and intuitively that it can be understood and used by
anyone, with a minimum of complication. It is called a P-system,
which is short for parental system. The P-system incorporates the
best features of each of the previous models of kinship: a single
relation of parentage, graphs embedded within the nodes of other
graphs, and segregation of higher level descent and marriage
structure from nuclear family structure. The latter is also the key
conceptual distinction used by LÈvi-Strauss (1969) in the
theory of marriage alliance. While a P-system is used to represent a
concrete network of kinship and marriage relationships, this network
also constitutes a system in the sense that it contains multiple
levels where each level is a graph in which each node contains
another graph structure. In sum, the connections between the nodes
at the outer level in a P-system are especially useful in the
analysis of marriage and descent, while at inner level we can
describe how individuals are embedded in the kinship structure.
Abstract. Longitudinal
network analysis is coupled in this study to a systematic analysis
of the results of long-term ethnography of a nomadic group. Data
collection using genealogical, interview and observational methods
is complemented by analytic methods using graph theoretic concepts
and dynamical as well as structural methods to assess various
cross-cutting and hierarchical levels of social cohesion (nuclear
and extended families, lineages, clans, tribal groups, and village
or nationality affiliations as found within the nomad group) to
formulate and test hypotheses about social mobility and political
leadership. Predictive hypotheses about the inverse relation between
out-mobility and social cohesion versus the direct relation between
cultural transmission and marital relinking as a form of cohesion
are thought to validate the basic approach. The model of distributed
cohesion developed from these data provides a new understanding of
processes supporting the emergence of leaders in egalitarian nomadic
groups.
2002 Douglas R. White and Michael
Houseman The Navigability of
Strong Ties: Small Worlds, Tie Strength and Network Topology,
in Networks and Complexity
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 ënavigability of strong tiesí
hypothesis about network topologies tested with data from kinship
systems, and potentially applicable to corporate cultures and
business networks.
2003 - Awarded the best Math Soc paper of the year
by the ASA Mathematical Sociology Section - James Moody and Douglas R. White,
Structural 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 Structural Cohesion lie at the core of our discipline, no clear
definition of cohesion exists. A definition of Structural Cohesionthat
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 Network
Analysis and Social Dynamics.
Cybernetics and Systems 35(2-3):173-192,
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.
2004 Douglas R. White and Michael
Houseman, Taking Sides: From Coherent
Practice to Macro Organization. Submitted to American
Anthropologist.
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.
2004 Douglas R. White.
Ring Cohesion Theory in Marriage and Social Networks
Social Networks special issue edited by Alain Degenne
Mathematiques
et sciences humaines 168:5-28 Journal of the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Science Sociales, Paris
Download: KEY-WORDS - Kinship network, Family relinking, Social cohesion, Structural endogamy.
2004 Klaus Hamberger, Michael Houseman,
Isabelle Daillant, Douglas R. White and Laurent Barry.
Matrimonial ring structures
Social Networks special issue edited by Alain Degenne
Mathematiques
et sciences humaines 168:83-121. Journal of the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Science Sociales, Paris
Download: KEY WORDS - Matrimonial rings, Kinship, Social network analysis, Graph theory, Enumeration theory, Social anthropology
1997 Lilyan A. Brudner
and Douglas R. White. Class,
Property and Structural Endogamy:
Visualizing Networked Histories publisher posting:
Theory and Society
26:161-208. Reprinted at eScholarship (the repeated footnote number, 8, on p 164 should be 9).
1998 Michael Houseman and Douglas R. White,
Network Mediation of
Exchange Structures: Ambilateral Sidedness and Property Flows in Pul Eliya.
Kinship, Networks and Exchange, Chapter 4, pp. 58-88.
Edited by Thomas Schweizer and Douglas R. White.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Article reviewed in Kinship, Computing, and Anthropology
pdf
2001 Douglas R. White and Frank
Harary, The Cohesiveness of Blocks in Social
Networks: Node Connectivity and Conditional Density.
Sociological
Methodology 2001, vol. 31, no. 1, pp. 305-359.
Blackwell
Publishers, Inc., Boston, USA and Oxford, UK. SFI
Posting
1. Connectivity - the
minimum number k of its actors whose removal would not allow the
group to remain connected or would reduce the group to but a single
member - measures the social cohesion of a group at a general level.
2. Conditional density measures cohesion on a finer scale as a
proportion of ties beyond that required by a graph's connectivity k
over the number of ties that would force it to k + 1.
2002 Ulla Johansen and Douglas R.
White, Collaborative
Long-Term Ethnography and Longitudinal Social Analysis of a Nomadic
Clan In Southeastern Turkey . Chapter 4, pp. 81-99, in
Chronicling Cultures: Long-Term Field Research in Anthropology,
edited by Robert van Kemper and Anya Royce. AltaMira Press.
Special Issue,
Complexity 8(1):72-81. SFI
Preprint eScholarship Reprint
online journal, special issue. Edited by Dwight Read. Introduction by
Murray Leaf
Abstract. Ring cohesion, as a theory relevant to social cohesion, offers itself in
the analysis of matrimonial relinking as an outgrowth of a structural approach: "Structural
studies are, in the social sciences, the indirect outcome of modern developments in
mathematics which have given increasing importance to the qualitative point of view in
contradistinction to the quantitative point of view of traditional mathematics. It has
become possible, therefore, in fields such as mathematical logic, set theory, group theory,
and topology, to develop a rigorous approach to problems which do not admit of a metrical
solution. The outstanding achievements in this connection - which offer themselves as
springboards not yet utilized by social scientist - is to be found in J. von Neumann
and O. Morgenstern, Theory of Games and Economic Behaviour; N. Wiener, Cybernetics; and
C. Shannon and W. Weaver, The Mathematical Theory of Communication". [quote from
Levi-Strauss, Structural Anthropology, 1963, Chapter XV, Social Structure, section on
"Structure and Measure", p. 283]
RingCohesionMarriage.pdf
Tools for Marriage Network Analysis
Currently undergoing translation for
scientific journal
EMPIRIA from the Faculty of Political Sciences and Sociology in Spain by Beatriz Man~as bmanas(@)bec.uned.es
Abstract. The paper deals with matrimonial rings, a particular kind of cycles in
kinship networks which result when spouses are linked to each other by ties of
consanguinity or affinity. By taking a network-analytic perspective, the paper endeavours
to put this classical issue of structural kinship theory on a general basis, such as to
allow conclusions which go beyond isolated discussions of particular ring types (like
cross-cousin marriage, sister exchange, and so forth). The paper provides a definition
and formal analysis of matrimonial rings, a method of enumerating all isomorphism
classes of matrimonial rings within given genealogical bounds, a series of network-analytic
tools - such as the census graph - to analyse ring structures in empirical kinship networks, and techniques to effectuate these analyses with the computer program PAJEK. A program package containing the required macros can be downloaded from the web. The working of the method is illustrated at the example of kinship networks from four different parts of the world (South-America, Africa, Australia and Europe).
prepublication
pdf MatrimonialRingStructure.pdf - see publication for final version
Tools for Marriage Network Analysis
Figures from article
2007 Douglas R. White and Woodrow W. Denham The Indigenous Australian Marriage Paradox:
Small-World Dynamics on a Continental Scale,
Mathematical Anthropology and Cultural Theory. Guest edited by David Kronenfeld and archived
at UC eRespositories.
See further analysis of these data by members of the machine learning team at the MIT Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences:
Kemp, C., Griffiths, T. L. & Tenenbaum, J. B. (2004) Discovering latent classes in relational data. AI Memo 2004-019
(pdf) - see Part 4 on
blocking Alyawarra kin terms ckemp at MIT.edu
2005 Woodrow W. Denham and Douglas R. White
DenhamWhite
Multiple Measures of Alyawarra Kinship, draft,
Field Methods 17(1):70-101.
See further analysis of these data by members of the machine learning team
at the MIT Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences:
Kemp, C., Griffiths, T. L. & Tenenbaum, J. B. (2004) Discovering latent classes in relational data. AI Memo 2004-019
(pdf) - see Part 4 on
blocking Alyawarra kin terms ckemp at MIT.edu
Conclusions:
See also book sites and special issues with kinship publications at
Unpublished Manuscripts
2001 Douglas R. White (UC Irvine) and Michael Houseman (Paris EPHE) Sidedness: 160 Million Strong? Abstract of presentation for the American Anthropological 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.
- 2002. Narda Alcantara Valverde, Silvia Casasola Vargas, and Douglas R. White.
The Marriage Core of the Elite Network of Colonial Guatemala.
Abstract. Following Houseman and White's definition of the core of a marriage network, we identify the core of the elite network of families colonial Guatemala in the period 1680 and 1800 in structural terms, ones related both to the concept of marriage relinking, used in research on the social organization of cognatic societies, and to the concept of wealth consolidation through structural endogamy. To test hypotheses about the relationship between the structural core of relinked marriages and the consolidation of wealth and prominence in a sample of elites in the richly documented dataset assembled by Casasola (1998, 2001), we develop a second measure of the prestige core of a marriage network, and measure the correlations between the two measures. The second measure uses the notion of network redundancy (White, 1998), in this case, redundancy between husband and wife in the accumulation of prestigious family names. This set of definitions is useful describe the structure and dynamics of cognatic descent groups, such as the Spanish kinship system. We find support for the following hypotheses:
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.
2005 Douglas R. White
Conceptual Ethnography:
Integrating Disciplinary Practice.
For submission to
Structure and Dynamics eJournal of
Anthropological and Related Sciences,
Download:
CE1.pdf