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85 Articles and Chapters in PDF - Douglas R. White

see also
  • Structure and Dynamics eJournal
  • DRW Wikipedia links
  • Clickable Graph urls SVG Clickable Graph urls e.g., SFI Reprints
  • Human Complex Systems working papers
  • NETWORK papers only (not updated)
  • KINSHIP papers only (not updated) see Classificatory kinship Polygyny page Sexual Division of Labor page
  • CROSS CULTURAL papers only (not updated)
  • SIMULATION studies (not updated)
  • BioTech and Organizational studies (not updated)
  • HISTORICAL DYNAMICS papers only (under construction, not updated)
  • Recent pdfs (not updated)
    Math Anth

    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.







      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

      Abstract. Edmund Leach's data on kinship and marriage is the starting point for a network analysis of marriage exchange and the bilateral devolution of property. The analysis resolves the "Dravidian controversy" over the possibility of fit between the egocentric perspective of dual organization encoded in the Dravidian languages of South Asia and a sociocentric dual organization that is NOT based on matrimonial moieties and unilineal descent, but a more flexible and network-based application of marriage strategies. A network concept of "sidedness" is developed as a new alternative to the moiety concept for dual matrimonial organization. In a significant number of cases where Pul Eliyan villagers marry cousins or other types of consanguineal kin, perfect sidedness is maintained in the actual network of kinship and marriage relations, consistent with the Dravidian "two-sided" terminology of direct matrimonial exchange. Agnatic descent, however, is not the principle by which sidedness is maintained, since daughters can be heirs to agnatic estates if male heirs are lacking, and there exists a significant option of propertied daughters taking the role of a male in the marriage exchange system. Alongside the normal rule of postmarital residence with the husband's agnatic kin, there exists the uxorilocal alternative that is emphasized by Leach as having strategic importance for marriage alliances between affines. Such marriages, when they involve transmission of agnatic property to the daughter (in the absence of sons), provide the key to understanding how an emergent network structure of dual organization is possible based on flexible marriage strategies rather than prescriptive descent rules for matrimonial moieties. The result is that while blood marriages follow the prescriptions of Dravidian "two-sided" kinship terminology, more strategically oriented marriages may ignore the implications of Dravidian terminology when it comes to marriages between strictly affinal kin, agnatic heiresses marrying men from remote villages, or blood relations through men from remote villages. While certain of these marriages are recognized as "wrong" from a terminological standpoint, the ideal of a consistent but continually re-emergent sociocentric dual organization is superimposed on the behaviorally "wrong marriages." The only casualty of this emergently networked dual organization is the anthropological insistence that dual organization is necessarily dependent on rules of descent. For Pul Eliyans, however, "sidedness" is resolved case by case with the social validation of successive marriages, and not rationalized with respect to a formal logic of descent.

      Here then is a system of social rules and strategies that are reconciled against each other in the freedom to realign and readjust terminological discrepancies in favor of a continually reemergent but consistent network structure of dual matrimonial organization that lacks a basis in a strict rule of descent. The rules of bilateral inheritance, it turns out, have more significance for property-holding residential groups than the rules of descent. Furthermore, property that is temporarily alienated from an imperfectly agnatic residential group because of inheritance devolution to daughters can be brought into the group through the combination of subcaste endogamy and dual organization in which "agnatic" property devolving through females can first pass to an opposing "side" but then back to its "side" of origin. Disputes about legitimate claims to agnatic property are common in this exchange system, but form an integral part of the emergent process by which there are micro-level changes to the structure of dual organization whose practical effect is to support an ethos of balanced exchange between equal but opposing "sides" -- the key feature of Dravidian-type social and economic organization.

      Abstract. This article proposes a new approach to the comparative study of alliance systems, centered on the dynamic coordination of actual marriage choices. With the aid of diverse software tools, the authors seek to identify the emergent properties of matrimonial networks as a whole ensemble. After explaining some of the methodological aspects of this work, they present two relatively simple network characteristics, ones that correspond to two modalities of bipartition of the nodes in the network: one the structure of dividedness, the other that of sidedness. Certain more general theoretical perspectives on bipartite marriages networks are envisaged.

      Abstract. This paper analyzes ethnographic data on kinship, transmission of land and religious activities among elite Muslim families in a Javanese village, against a background of Javanese kinship ethnography and comparisons with kinship networks of village hamlets and elites in other villages. Concomitant variation establishes support for general hypotheses about the organization of Javanese kinship. Parental graph analysis (White and Jorion 1992) is used for network comparisons and to focus on processes of transmission and consolidation of resources among the elites, and establishes subsets of actors connected by common bilateral descent and marriage ties. Inheritance of land, religious activities and ensuing occupational specialization can be closely traced as secondary flows on the basic kinships scaffolding. Stern's (1994) visual algebra is used for representing and breaking down subsets of actors or ties and for creating images of the whole network. The discrete methods applied in this paper are precise tools for decomposing multiple ties in kinship networks and yield deeper insight into structural patterns than standard methods of positional analysis tried in an earlier paper (Schweizer 1988).

      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.

      Abstract. To answer the need for a simplified and comprehensive introduction to Cross-Cultural Research in the context of a classroom in a computer laboratory, this introduction addresses

    • 1 What is Cross-Cultural Research? (with a focus on Cultural coherence or decoherence within and between human communities: human behavior, beliefs, and institutions)
    • 2 A Course in Cross-Cultural Research
    • 3 Goals and Outcome
    • 4 Tools: Spss; Maps and MapTab; Statistics for Galton's Problem
    • 5 Topics and Terms: Lists of Topics; Files; References; Glossary
    • 6 Resources: e.g., on-line articles, e.g., JSTOR "Polygyny"
    • 7 Draft and Final Paper
    • 8 References
    • 9 On-line Resources:

      Articles from World Cultures journal at http://www.worldcultures.org/

      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.

      See also, 2006: Pinpointing Sheets for the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample Douglas R. White and George P. Murdock

      SCCS Wikipedia site

        [2002] 1986 Douglas R. White, Data Base . Current Anthropology 27(1):83-84

      Abstract. Since 1969, hundreds of cross-cultural studies have contributed coded data using the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample which will now distributed in the journal World Cultures.

        2008 Douglas R. White, Standard Cross-Cultural Sample, International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, 2nd edition, Ed., William A. Darity, Jr.. Vol. 8. pp. 88-93. New York: Macmillan Reference USA Draft 1.1

      Abstract. Since 1969, hundreds of cross-cultural studies have contributed coded data using the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample. Some of uses of the SCCS are describing and findings illustrated by reviewing the ideas in major books whose authors coded new data as well as evaluating theories tested from the new and cumulative database.

      See also the Wikipedia sites, 2006: Standard Cross-Cultural Sample and Galton's problem

      Abstract.The theory of reliability and reliability estimates, nearly a century old, has rarely been employed in anthropology, both for lack of familiarity and related problems of computation. This theory is reviewed and considered for use with anthropological data. A set of procedures is provided which combine existing methods to solve the practical problems in use of the theory to assess the reliabilities of composite measurement scales combining multiple measures, of individual independent measurements of a single concept, and of individual cases scored on the composite scales. These procedures are also embodied in a computer program, the results of which are explicated. While domain sampling assumptions are the only requirements of assessing reliability of composite scales, strict assumptions and validation procedures are discussed for the assessment of individual variable reliabilities. An illustration using reliability theory is drawn from cross-cultural studies for "high inference" measures from four different studies of father - child interaction. Validity issues are illustrated both in terms of tests for measurement bias and construct validity for the hypothesized relation between the father - child bond and beliefs in high gods.
      Reliability theory is equally applicable in comparative and ethnographic case studies. It offers research practices and theoretical understandings that are capable of integrating and mediating discourse between many of the splintered schools of thought in anthropology, and healing some of the rifts between them. Essentialist biases are discussed as one reason why the theory is not more, widely employed.

      Abstract. A co-authored methodological guide to software written by the first author assesses the classical problems (discussed by White 1990) of determining (1) unidimensionality of multiple measures of the same construct as a prerequisite to assessing reliability, (2) item and multiple-item scale reliability and (3) the reliability of estimates for individual cases.

      Abstract. Since 1969, hundreds of cross-cultural studies have contributed coded data using the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample. The bibliography is a coded compendium of all the ethnographic sources used in different coding projects by hundreds of contributors. Relevance to the pinpointed ethnographic site and time period is coded for each ethnographic source. The on-line database is published in World Cultures.

      Abstract. Interpreting comparative observations from diverse world cultures poses the dilemma of how to unfold the wide variety of functional and historical processes observed in cultural systems. Do correlations among cultural variables represent functional relations or historical adhesions? Some elements are acquired through independent invention (including functional adaptation), others through common origin (through migration, replication of like units) or diffusion (borrowing between units). Diverse origins may indicate differing functions or explanations for cultural phenomena, but functions also change in time and may require different explanations under the selective pressures of a different historical period. Similar institutions among cultures at one point in time may reflect convergent adaptation and historical interaction rather than commonality of origin.

      The present article adopts the spatial perspective on the patterns of similarity and differences between culture-bearing entities, using a measure of spatial autocorrelation, the Moran coefficient (Moran 1950). An overall index of spatial clustering in cultural patterns is estimated from the application of spatial autocorrelation statistics to cross-cultural data. Autocorrelation - the measure of similarity among related units - has a direct relevance to comparative research in that it has profound methodological implications for testing cross-cultural hypotheses that depend on measuring correlation between variables. E v a with small samples (e.g., of N=40), levels of autocorrelation of .40 and above are sufficient to cause serious underestimate, by orders of magnitude (e.g., at half or less of the true value) of sample variance, standard errors, and confidence limits @ow, Burton and White 1982), both for sample means and estimates of correlation or regression coefficients.

      Leaving methodological issues aside, at least until results of the study on levels of autocorrelation are presented, the spatial organization of culture is necessarily a major theoretical issue in anthropology if there are mnltiple processes in cultural systems that work at different spatial levels and time scales.

        1995 Douglas R. White, George Peter Murdock American National Biography Oxford University Press under the auspices of the American Council of Learned Societies. On line edition at http://www.anb.org

      Abstract. Critique of dispositional explanations for local level conflict shows anomalies in Ross's (1985) theory of violence and in ethnographic accounts using "culture of violence" explanations of conflict. This paper parallels international relations theories (e. g. Waltz 1959) in examining hypotheses about regional and world-system linkages as causally implicated in local-level warfare. In a pilot study using a fraction of the standard sample, two variables are found to predict external conflict: Frequency of interregional contact and relocation forced by powers in the larger world-system. The correlation between external and internal conflict is positive in more peripheral zones of the world-system, but negative in the more central zones. External war combined with the extent of state level organization predicts the strength of fraternal interest groups, one of the dispositional predictors of internal violence. Such evidence might support a scenario for reversing the direction of causation in Ross's theory of violence such that internal violence and societal features "disposing" to internal violence (including features of socialization) may result from conflictual pressures at the world-system, regional linkages and state levels.

      These findings support Ross's (1985: 553-554) statement that "As a number of modern nations haves shown ..., teaching a citizenry to fight outside enemies often produces more fighters inside as well." They do not support his speculation that "Similarly, if violence is a mechanism for dealing with internal opponents, whv would we not expect it to he used with outsiders too?" simply because internal violence almost never occurs independently of external war, which makes a reversal of causality implausible.

      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.

      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:
      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.

      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.

      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.

      ENTAILMENT ANALYSIS (click here for software) AND MATHEMATICAL ANTHROPOLOGY

      Abstract. The purpose of this paper is to explore a more precise form for theoretical propositions in certain types of cross-cultural problems and to develop and explicate an accompanying statistical method. An inductive application of the method of entailment analysis has led us to formulate a new and power ful theory of the sexual division of labor.

      Abstract. The purpose of this paper is to explore a more precise form for theoretical propositions in certain types of cross-cultural problems and to develop and explicate an accompanying statistical method. An inductive application of the method for entailment analysis has led us to formulate a new and powerful theory of the sexual division of labor.

        1983 Douglas R. White, Robert Pesner, Kark Reitz, An Exact Significance Test for Three-Way Interaction Cross Cultural Research: 18:103-122.

        Abstract. A modification of Fisher's exact test for the 2 x 2 x 2 contingency table is proposed as a test of the null hypothesis of no three-way statistical in teraction among variables, controlling for the two-way or first-order correlations. The test uses a truncated hypergeometric distribution, limited by the bivariate marginal totals of the variables. Possible generalizations to L x M x N tables are discussed. The test is also applicable to the null hypothesis of no difference in the magnitude of correlation in a comparison of two bivariate distributions. Illustrations of each application are provided. One obvious use in cross-cultural or survey research is as a test of the replication of a correlation in different subsamples of a population.

        This test, for binary variables, is used prior to entailment analysis to verify the absence of greater-than-random occurrence of higher-order interactions.

      Abstract. Statistical entailment analysis (White, 1984; White and McCann, 1988 Social Structures: Form and Behaviour in Social Life) (Cambridge University Press) pp. 380-404) aims first at a rigorous evaluation of null hypotheses of statistical independence as a potential source of binary data structure, and second at constructing a discrete structure (Boolean) model of those statistical interactions that remain when the null hypothesis is rejected for particular subsets of variables. Signal detection theory, rather than a conventional significance level, is used to specify optimal cutoffs given an ordering of ratios of actual to expected across levels of exception and relevance. Bivariate entailment analysis is generalized here to improve its utility for use in lattice approximation. Generalized statistical entailment analysis describes Boolean patterns in a set of data in terms of those that occur with greater frequency than expected by chance according to a model of complete statistical independence (the specific model of independence derives from a distribution of randomly permuted entries in the columns of the data matrix marginals, i.e. keeping univariate marginals fixed). This expands on the initial design of entailment analysis (White, 1984) to deal with partial orders of quasi-implication in pairs or chains of dichotomous variables, supported by statistical evidence of departure from bivariate independence and conformity to the rules of transitivity. Statistical approximations simplify a lattice representation of discrete structure by forcing quasi-implications (ignoring exceptions), for example, but they also provide information about those implications in the lattice that represent statistically significant tendencies. Given a lattice representing the discrete structure of a raw data matrix, the findings of entailment analysis describe additional structural regularities (tendencies towards further statistical constraints on Boolean patterns that occur in the data) that can be used to simplify (by approximation) the lattice of empirical patterns. As demonstrated with studies of dual orderings of material possessions (possessions stratify people; people possessions), the statistical interpretability of discrete structure lattices is enhanced by using the results of entailment analysis for consensus-simplification of statistically strong or significant implicational relations.

      A programmed statistical method developed for the analysis of binary data by the author explicates how to find approximations to discrete Boolean relations of inclusion, mutual exclusion, and collective exhaustion that satisfy empirical conditions for transitivity, and thus which facilitate formulation of rules and generalizations in discrete form ("If ... then ...") that are also logically transitive. Signal detection methods are used to reject relationships that could be due to chance by comparing actual relationships to those found in Monte Carlo simulations of comparable random datasets. The analytic results constitute a discrete network structure of nontrivial empirical implications that characterize a dataset.

        1996 Statistical entailments and the Galois lattice Douglas R. White. Special Issue on Social Network and Discrete Structure Analysis Social Networks 18(3): 201-215. doi:10.1016/0378-8733(95)00273-1 Copyright (c) 1996 Published by Elsevier Science B.V.

      Abstract: Statistical entailment analysis (White, 1984; White and McCann, 1988 Social Structures: Form and Behaviour in Social Life) (Cambridge University Press) pp. 380-404) aims first at a rigorous evaluation of null hypotheses of statistical independence as a potential source of binary data structure, and second at constructing a discrete structure (Boolean) model of those statistical interactions that remain when the null hypothesis is rejected for particular subsets of variables. Signal detection theory, rather than a conventional significance level, is used to specify optimal cutoffs given an ordering of ratios of actual to expected across levels of exception and relevance. Bivariate entailment analysis is generalized here to improve its utility for use in lattice approximation. Generalized statistical entailment analysis describes Boolean patterns in a set of data in terms of those that occur with greater frequency than expected by chance according to a model of complete statistical independence (the specific model of independence derives from a distribution of randomly permuted entries in the columns of the data matrix marginals, i.e. keeping univariate marginals fixed). This expands on the initial design of entailment analysis (White, 1984) to deal with partial orders of quasi-implication in pairs or chains of dichotomous variables, supported by statistical evidence of departure from bivariate independence and conformity to the rules of transitivity. Statistical approximations simplify a lattice representation of discrete structure by forcing quasi-implications (ignoring exceptions), for example, but they also provide information about those implications in the lattice that represent statistically significant tendencies. Given a lattice representing the discrete structure of a raw data matrix, the findings of entailment analysis describe additional structural regularities (tendencies towards further statistical constraints on Boolean patterns that occur in the data) that can be used to simplify (by approximation) the lattice of empirical patterns. As demonstrated with studies of dual orderings of material possessions (possessions stratify people; people possessions), the statistical interpretability of discrete structure lattices is enhanced by using the results of entailment analysis for consensus-simplification of statistically strong or significant implicational relations.

      MATHEMATICAL ANTHROPOLOGY

      Abstract. under development

      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.

      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: 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.

      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.

      Reviewer comments. One paper, that by Brudner and White, does appear to break new methodological ground and seems to me to be distinguished on theoretical and historical grounds as well. The Brudner/White method for analyzing longitudinal large-scale social networks has perhaps solved a problem that has eluded the discipline for many years. Brudner and White go further than demonstrating a new method: they show that they can speak to and articulate with a broad range of classical and contemporary theoretical problems. This paper, previously published as well in Theory and Society, would warrant republication if there was no other published work describing this method. Of all the papers submitted for consideration, I found this one to be the freshest and most interesting, in part because it spoke to debates that are actually considered in the current theoretical landscape of sociology.

      Structure and Dynamics of the Global Economy: Network Analysis of International Trade 1965-1980 David A. Smith, Douglas R. White Social Forces, Vol. 70, No. 4. (Jun., 1992), pp. 857-893.jstor
      pw/GlobalEcon1992.pdf

    Abstract: This article reports results from a quantitative network analysis of international commodity trade flows designed to measure the structure of the world economic system and to identify the roles that particular countries play in the global division of labor. It improves on previous network-analytic studies of the world economy in two ways. First, by using a newly developed measure of regular equivalence, this operationalization of a nation's roles in the international system is methodologically superior to previous work. Second, we have built a dynamic aspect into the analysis by examining international trade networks at more than one point in time (1965, 1979, and 1980). This allows us to answer questions about change both in the overall structure of the world-economy and in the positions of particular countries in the system. Our findings generally conform to the theoretical expectation of the world-system perspective as well as qualitative descriptions of recent changes in the international division of labor. Abstract. Two page summary of main results of Smith and White, 1992.

      1988 Flow Centralities: Do they Predict the Economic Rise and Fall of States? Douglas R. White and David A. Smith. Paper for Sunbelt Meetings 1988 San Diego pub/White&Smith.pdf FIGURES

    Abstract. The problem of measuring the centrality of states, and of explaining the economic rise and fall of states, is a central issue engaging social theorists accounting for social structure and change. The problem arises not only in recent times, but rather has always been a current one. Theorists tend to agree that long term macroscopic perspective is needed to situate the problem in a formal way. In this field, however, the problem has not been situated previously on the appropriate structural measurements. This paper develops a structural model of the economic rise and fall of states based on formal measures of flow centrality. Its wider concern is with the dynamics and consequences of differential position and centrality in exchange networks.

      The Distribution of Avoidances in Human Societies: figure, page 5, Douglas R. White and Rudolf Wille, in, Lattice Theory and its Applications: In Celebration of Garrett Birkhoff's 80th Birthday 1995, by K. A. Baker, Garrett Birkhoff, and Rudolf Wille. Lemgo, Germany: Heidermann Verlag.

    Abstract. A nested line diagram (concept lattice) is used to show the structure of avoidances from a cross-cultural study by Douglas R. White, as drawn by Rudolf Wille in his "Lauditorio" to Professor Birkhoff, the American mathematician, author of Lattice Theory, which appeared in 1940, and, with Saunders Mac Lane 1997, A Survey of Modern Algebra.

    The distribution of avoidances in human societies shows three fundamental dimensions: husband's affines (virilateral, starting with husband's father), wife's affines (uxorilateral, starting with wife's mother), and generalized affines (starting with wife's brother's wife and extending to opposite sex siblings). The last of the three independent dimensions of the distribution is a significant exception to the 'extensionist' theory of kinship, in which terminologies and characteristic behaviors are 'extended' from closer relatives to more distant relatives. In this case, avoidance behavior in the third dimension is extended from affines (WiBrWi) to close relatives (siblings), not the other way around.

    Some of the following articles in pdf format are found at JSTOR, for which you will need access from campus or your library password:
    http://www.jstor.org/search/cc99331a.10221690180/1-6?configsortorder=SCORE&frame=noframe&dpi=3&config=jstor

      Using Galois Lattices to Represent Network Data Linton C. Freeman, Douglas R. White Sociological Methodology 1993 (23):127-146. jstor
      pw/Galois.pdf TypoP132Freeman_White.pdf       . cited in Annual Review of Sociology 2004.

      Abstract. Galois lattices are introduced as a device to provide a general representation for two mode social network data. It is shown that Galois lattices yield a single visual image of such data in cases where most alternative models produce dual images. The inzage provided by the Galois lattice produces, moreover, an image that can suggest useful insights about the structuralproperties of the data.

      An example, based on data from Davis, Gardner, and Gardner (1 941), is used to spell out in detail the kinds of structural insights that can be gained from this approach. In addition, other potential applications are suggested.

      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

      Abstract.

      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

      Abstract. A new set of codes is offered to begin to unpack the dimensions of polygyny. Included are measures of frequency and statistical distributions of multiple wives, cultural rules, residential arrangements and kin relations among co-wives, male stratification, and marriage of captured women. Problems of coding and measurement are extensively illustrated. A series of hypotheses is supported regarding two types of polygyny: wealth-increasing and sororal. In the first, women's labor generates wealth and (if warfare allows) female captives are taken as secondary wives. Here polygyny stratifies males by wealth and most men are able to become polygynists with age. Residential autonomy of wives is an elaboration of this pattern. The second is marked by coresidence of husband and wives and dependence of the family mostly on resources generated by the husband. Here polygyny is usually dependent on the exceptional productivity of particular men such as hunters or shamans. The regional-historical adaptations of these types differ markedly. Neither fits the model of resource-defense polygyny found in other species. Explanations of polygyny, particularly of the first type, require close attention to resource and demographic flows within regional ecologies. The second type requires further functional and historical analysis. Both require more consideration of the way polygyny operates from the female point of view, a task only partially begun here.

      The Shared Workstation Applications Project (in Reports) Douglas R. White Current Anthropology, Vol. 29, No. 3. (Jun., 1988), pp. 519-520. jstor
      pw/SWAP1988.pdf

      Abstract.

      Cross-Cultural Surveys Today Michael L. Burton, Douglas R. White Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol. 16. (1987), pp. 143-160. jstor
      pw/XCS1987.pdf

      Abstract.

      1988. Causes of Polygyny: Ecology, Economy, Kinship, and Warfare. Douglas R. White; Michael L. Burton. American Anthropologist, New Series, 90(4):871-887. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-7294%28198812%292%3A90%3A4%3C871%3ACOPEEK%3E2.0.CO%3B2-I pdf

    Abstract: We discuss and test competing explanations for polygyny based on household economics, malecentered kin groups, warfare, and environmental characteristics. Data consist of codes for 142 societies from the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample, including new codes for polygyny and environmental characteristics. An explanatory model is tested for the worldwide sample using regression analysis, and then replicated with regional samples. We obtain convergent results with two different measures of polygyny, cultural rules for men's marriages and the percentage of women married polygynously. We conclude that the best predictors of polygyny are fraternal interest groups, warfare for capture of women, absence of constraints on expansion into new lands, and environmental quality and homogeneity.

    Abstract: It is axiomatic to the social sciences, and an essential part of the network perspective, that human performances are intricately linked with their social and enviromental contexts. Researchers in each of the disciplines have rediscovered this in the past decade with respect to a whole host of specific problem areas, under such labels as "context effects", "index utility". and "systems analysis". The earliest mention of the problem with respect to quantitative research occured, to our knowledge, in the debate between the nineteenth century cultural diffusionists and the evolutionists. The latter regarded individual societies as independent instances of uniform causation, and hoped to learn about causation from correlational studies. The former regarded their observations as embedded in an interactive network of historical relationships such as diffusion, migration, conquest, and competition, where the historical, evolutionary and ecological context of each society and the network of interconnectedness between societies plays a major role in multiple causation. In this view, events cannot be regarded as isolated or independent as if each were a context-free "independent invention" of a single society.

    The same arguments, of course, apply to the interpretation of data collected in social or opinion surveys. Political science offers a recent example of the discovery of "context effects" in voting behavior (e.g. Jackson 1975). How much of voting behavior is affected by attributes of the voting unit (whether individuals or aggregates), and how much is the result of interactions between them: of the communication process, bandwagon effects, reference group behavior, or other forms of "symbolic interactionism"?

    Our purpose in this paper, however, is not to attempt a review of the vast literature on context effects. Rather, we focus on the costs and benefits of either neglecting context or else incorporating it in the research design. Statistical methods such as multiple regression analysis necessarily contain mathematical axioms which either assert or deny the existence of context effects. We will explore here through simulation studies the following related questions:
    (1) What are the consequences of ignoring context effects, should they be present, or ordinary least squares regression estimates, and
    (2) what are some of the properties of a recently developed maximum likelihood procedure which permits context effects to be included in a regression model as network autocorrelated disturbance terms?

      1984. Galton's Problem as Network Autocorrelation. Malcolm M. Dow; Michael L. Burton; Douglas R. White; Karl P. Reitz. American Ethnologist 11(4), Social Structure and Social Relations. pp. 754-770. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0094-0496%28198411%2911%3A4%3C754%3AGPANA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-Y

    Abstract: Classical statistical inference procedures usually assume the independence of sample units. However, the assumption of independence is often unrealistic in cross-cultural research because societies in neighboring or historically related regions tend to be duplicates of one another across a wide variety of traits that are spread by historical fission, diffusion, or migration of peoples. A recent generalization of the usual regression model explicitly allows for networks of interdependencies among sample units as part of the model specification. Here, two new estimation procedures for this network autocorrelation model are compared to previously employed maximum likelihood procedures, and to the usual regression procedures which ignore interdependence. The results of comparisons based on simulated autocorrelation data and the reanalyses of two previously published empirical studies indicate that both of the procedures proposed here compare very favorably with the maximum likelihood approach, and both are vastly superior to the usual regression procedures when there is moderate to high autocorrelation (i.e., interdependence). [Galton's Problem, cultural diffusion, networks, cultural evolution, statistical methodology]

      1984, Sexual Division of Labor in Agriculture. Michael L. Burton; Douglas R. White American Anthropologist, New Series 86(3): 568-583. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-7294%28198409%292%3A86%3A3%3C568%3ASDOLIA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-U

    Abstract: Female agricultural contributions decline with agricultural intensification. We formulate and test a theory of the processes of agricultural intensification that explains a high proportion of the variance in female contributions to agriculture. Five variables show replicable effects across two or more regions of the world. These are number of dry months, importance of domesticated animals to subsistence, use of the plow, crop type, and population density. Of these, the first two are the most powerful predictors of female agricultural contributions, while population density has only very weak effects

      1981. Sexual Division of Labor in African Agriculture: A Network Autocorrelation Analysis. Douglas R. White; Michael L. Burton; Malcolm M. Dow.. American Anthropologist, New Series, 83(4):.824-849.. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-7294%28198112%292%3A83%3A4%3C824%3ASDOLIA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-0 NOTE: This article contains high-quality images.

    Abstract:A model of causes and consequences of sexual division of labor in agriculture is tested using a sample of African societies. Crop type and the presence or absence of slavery are shown to be effective predictors of the degree of female contribution to agricultural subsistence, and the degree of polygyny is shown to be affected by female agricultural contribution and the form of residence. Autocorrelation effects are found and are shown to be a consequence of Bantu societies having higher female participation in agriculture than would otherwise be expected. This effect is an example of one of the kinds of phenomena that anthropologists have referred to as Galton's problem

      1977 A Model of the Sexual Division of Labor. Michael L. Burton; Lilyan A. Brudner; Douglas R. White. American Ethnologist 4(2): 227-251. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0094-0496%28197705%294%3A2%3C227%3AAMOTSD%3E2.0.CO%3B2-B

    Abstract: Assumptions about economies of effort in performance of tasks in the same production sequence and assumptions about constraints on women's geographic mobility due to nursing and child care are used to derive hypotheses about the allocation of tasks in the sexual division of labor in preindustrial societies. The hypotheses constitute a locational model of the division of labor by sex that makes predictions in the form of entailments: for one sex, doing task X entails doing task Y. The predictions of the locational model are tested using a new procedure for statistical entailment analysis applied to a body of data on fifty tasks in the 185 societies of the standard cross-cultural sample. Assumptions about constraints of nursing and the effect of supplementary feeding of infants on women's participation in task activities are also tested and found to be supported from the evidence on this sample.

      1990 A Cross-Cultural Historical Analysis of Subsistence Change. Candice Bradley; Carmella C. Moore; Michael L. Burton; Douglas R. White American Anthropologist, New Series 92(2): 447-457. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-7294%28199006%292%3A92%3A2%3C447%3AACHAOS%3E2.0.CO%3B2-O

    Abstract. This paper reports on a comparative study of changes in subsistence patterns in small-scale communities resulting from contact with p"l obal economic force;. The local communities are represented by 87 Standard Cross-Cultural Sample Societies ("Standard Sample") (Murdock and White 1969) distributed across four major world geographic areas. This study describes the patterns and general characteristics of the societies on a new set of coded variables representing change processes. The variable set includes agricultural and nonagricultural intensification, the addition of new crops and animals, changes in settlement patterns and expansion, catastrophic loss, changes in trade and wage labor, and the date of ethnographic observation. The findings of the study are both methodological and substantive. The methodological results focus on sampling problems for comparative studies as well as the dates of observation set for sample societies. The substantive findings indicate that variables are regionally clustered, with two basic patterns emerging for the way subsistence systems are affected and changed in different world regions.

    Abstract. A new measure of centrality, CF, is introduced. It is based on the concept of network flows. While conceptually similar to Freeman's original measure, CB, the new measure differs from the original in two important ways. First, CF is defined for both valued and non-valued graphs. This makes CF applicable to a wider variety of network datasets. Second, the computation of CF is not based on geodesic paths as is CB but on all the independent paths between all pairs of points in the network.

    Abstract. This paper generalizes Freeman's geodesic centrality measures for betweenness on undirected graphs to the more general directed case. Four steps are taken. The point centrality measure is first generalized for directed graphs. Second, a unique maximally centralized graph is defined for directed graphs, holding constant the numbers of points with reciprocatable (incoming and outgoing) versus only unreciprocatable (outgoing only or incoming only) arcs, and focusing the measure on the maximally central arrangement of arcs within these constraints. Alternatively, one may simply normalize on the number of arcs. This enables the third step of defining the relative betweenness centralities of a point, independent of the number of points. This normalization step for directed centrality measures removes Gould's objection that centrality measures for directed graphs are not interpretable because they lack a standard for maximality. The relative directed centrality converges with Freeman's betweenness measure in the case of undirected graphs with no isolates. The fourth step is to define the measures of this concept of graph centralization in terms of the dominance of the most central point.

    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.

      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, simulation, 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.

    The simulation study uses difference equations, generation to generation, comparing demographic assumptions of earlier models aiming to "resolve" the Natchez paradox by differential reproductive rates, and the descent rules reconstructed from other evidence, in which case no further reproductive adjustmets are needed to "balance" the demographi composition of different social classes.

    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.

    The 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.

    For a final piece of an American Indian perspective on the Natchez Revolt leading to total destruction of Natchez society by the French see November 28, 1729.

    Software Manual Publications

    Abstract: Fisher-B is an interactive FORTRAN program that performs two functions. First, it calculates the Fisher's exact test and gamma measure of association for 2x2 tables. Second, it tests the null hypothesis of no three-way interaction among the variables in a 2x2x2 contingency table. White et al. (1983) discuss the mathematical logic of the tests. The program can be run from within WINDOWS or from the DOS command line. Since the data are entered from the terminal, the user must prepare the contingency tables before running the program. The results are displayed on the screen and can be output as an ASCII file. A series of tables can be evaluated within a single program session. A limitation of the program is that the total number of cases cannot exceed 300.

      YEAR AUTHOR TITLEr. JOURNAL 22:19-27.

    Abstract:

    Unpublished Manuscripts

    Abstract. The paper is designed to serve as a guide for integrating network analysis into major research institutes in social anthropology and related fields.

      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: PDF Growth_andConsolidation.pdf

    Abstract. The growth regimes of complex networks account for many of their structural features and behavioral effects. Social and economic networks, however, tend to expand along different pathways than their technological or biological counterparts. Complex inter-organizational topologies are characterized by tight-knit clusters of prominent nodes whose dense inter-connections help forge them into an elite that can play gatekeeper and arbiter roles in an expanding network. The characteristics of such emergent elites, however, depend intimately upon the structural locations of the partners that form new ties. Systems where cores deepen their internal connections conserve their position, but may calcify. Those that expand their reach by forming connections to newcomers and to the network's periphery increase responsiveness at the possible cost of incoherence. We draw on twelve years of dynamic network data from the international biotechnology industry to demonstrate that a mix of expansive and conserving ties account for that industry's particular combination of stability and responsiveness. This structural view of network growth offers new insights into the distinctive features of social and economic networks, while linking models of network dynamics to debates in organizational theory and innovation studies.

    Abstract. Under certain conditions, when diverse individuals (e.g., ants, individuals, agents) independently traverse a sequential decision space in reaching objectives (e.g., as modeled by a maze) they acquire synergetic properties of global problem solving (even in the absence of global knowledge about the problem space) by virtue of some form of pooling experience. The laying of pheromones on random paths taken by ants, for example, has been shown to map the set of shortest paths to a food source. This paper shows the conditions under which certain very general classes of mazes have the property of "collective advantage" to finding shortest paths by aggregating ceretain types random individual behavior (individuals have local but no global knowledge of the maze and no perception or reckoning of network distances). Of three factors considered as conditions for collective advantage, two were identified by Johnson (2000, 2001) from simulations: First is the method of traversal of the maze, and second is the method of marking trails towards a collective solution. The third - the structure of the maze - is explored here through graph theoretic concepts. These include precise definitions, theorems and observations, and simulations. They provide a language and a set of results as to the structural factors that affect collective advantage. In general, biconnected maze networks - where every node has independent paths to every other -, with many parallel paths, and many crossover paths between them, assist collective advantage. Rules developed to measure the collective advantage of a maze help to refocus the problem on the coevolution of the learning environments that endow agents with collective intelligence that is distributed across their behaviors and not condensed by selection for individual actors with better forms of global strategies or global knowledge. Results support March's (1991) findings of advantages to exploratory behaviors over selection for exploitation.

      2005 Douglas R. White, Artemy Malkov, and Andrey Korotayev. The Periodic Theory of Elements for World Population Submitted to Structure and Dynamics Download: PDF FoersterShort1.pdf

    Abstract. Given that a power-law growth dynamic giving way as predicted by von Foerster et al. (1960) to a global demographic transition has been occurring since 1962, we examine the long-term time-series of conventional estimations of world population to see if one or more similar transitions occurred in the past. There is no scientific justification to reject the proposition of one or more very long earlier periods of stable quadratic growth rates that were higher than those observed for the period 1750-1958. These would have necessarily led to earlier singularities that would have produced earlier demographic transitions, like the one observed today. We reject one of the alternatives, that human evolution to date has been governed by a single trend of power-law growth that recently approached a singularity that predicts transition to slower growth. We find instead a coherent theory that connects variation in the connectivities of growing segments of the world population with (1) transition from early exponential growth, (2) quadratic growth in the early period of urban growth and associated trade and other connectivities, with a phase transition to lower growth associated with a power-law growth-reducing singularity, (3) population fluctuations after this first 'collapse' of sustained high-level growth, (4) settling in of steady lower growth rates from 1650-1962, again with a demographic phase transition to lower growth associated with a power-law growth-reducing singularity, and (5) a recent demographic transition for which the long-term trend characteristics are yet unknown, the possible trajectories of which are usefully informed by the historical record and mathematical modeling. We show that the power-law model is not simply one of estimating trends and noting changes in an ad hoc and atheoretical way. Rather, because these models imply a population dynamic close to singularity points, they constitute an explanation of phase shift that does not imply any particular set of mechanisms, only that there is a sufficiency of mechanisms, ones that may differ from region to region, to bring about phase shift prior to singularity. How this mechanism-independent explanation works is explicated.

      2004 Douglas R. White Social Scaling: From scale-free to stretched exponential models for scalar stress, hierarchy, levels and units in human and technological networks and evolution. ISCOM working paper. For submission to: Computer and Mathematical Organization Theory Download: PDF 1982scalingDRW.pdf

    Abstract: Johnson's (1982) model of scalar stress deals with how networks are stacked at different levels to reduce information and energy load by substituting relationships among leaders of hierarchically ordered groups for relationships among members of larger groups at a lower level in the hierarchy. The logic and scaling results of this model are important elements in a theory of network and social scaling. They point to the possibility of scale-free modeling of the modularity of networks based on the relative constancy of the basic units at the individual level that give structure to these networks, the flexibility of how particular groups are organized, the fact that network hierarchies are population-filling with scale-free relationships to population size, and the bulking, organization and conservation of energy, information and material in ways that match the constraints on populations of individuals. These characteristics of scale-free modeling have been successful in biology, and social scaling may well follow the same principles. This article suggests the kinds of modifications that made be needed for larger-scale integrative projects in social scaling.

    Hierarchical and power law models have been much debated in recent decades and their limitations exposed. While Johnson's work contains important insights, this paper examines new types of models that account for observed attenuations in the finite regimes of scale-free distributions (the stretched exponential model) and broken scale-free regimes. A combination of stretched exponentials and network modeling is found to be a productive approach to social and economic scaling that yields theoretical predictions about basal units, moments of distributions, regime attenuation and broken regimes.

    Studies of scale-free, cutoff, and hierarchical properties of the U.S. airlines network in 1997 and a physics citation network are used to compare Johnson's findings with basal unit and scale-free regimes in a more general scaling model that uses the stretched exponential. This model estimates hierarchy levels and basal unit characteristics and finds a similar basal unit of 6 for renormalization at a second level (hubs for local neighborhoods) in the airline industry, suggestive of Johnson's results. The citation network suggests three-levels of multiplicative effects and a basal unit of 3 that is well under Johnson''s limit of 6 but constitutes a minimum unit of social cohesion.

    New papers

      2005 Douglas R. White Conceptual Ethnography: Integrating Disciplinary Practice For submission to Structure and Dynamics eJournal of Anthropological and Related Sciences, Download: PDF CE1.pdf

    Abstract: Conceptual ethnography begins from the recognition that the compartments and conceptions of anthropology and ethnography are interlinked. Here I examine cognition and social networks in relation to the concept of culture, exemplified in the study of kinship. Concepts used in network analysis of the context and behaviors involved in kinship lead to new understandings of patterns of cohesion. Within cohesive groups, people in various communities are shown to use the network itself to compute categories of kinship in unexpected ways that do not require the kinds of assumptions anthropologists often make about the connection between kinship terminology and behavior. It is shown that this lends support to the view that cognition cannot be considered an internal mental process but involves the social environment itself as part of the cognition in the wild, as Ed Hutchins has aptly put the case. Hence culture cannot be considered in terms of models of internal states, and a definition of culture must deal with the many layers of interconnections between behavior, networks, cognition, and socially cohesive units such as community or organizations in which people interact.

    pub/CitySizeHierarchies.doc

    Abstract

    pub/ScaleableConcepts_DRW.doc

    Abstract

    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.

      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:

    • 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.

    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.

    Abstract. Third factor tests using cross-tabulation methods are at the leading edge of cross-cultural research because they get us to think about replicating results, testing validity by controlling for reliability, discovering new relationships that are the result of interactions among variables, identifying invalid relationships by controlling for third factors, and showing how certain correlations are valid withing certain contexts but not others. One-factor tests help to overcome some of the limitations of cross-cultural research by testing for reliability and developing combined measures with higher levels of reliability.

    Abstract.

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