Regions based on social structure

Regions based on social structure
Burton, Michael L. (University of California)
Moore, Carmella C. (University of California)
Whiting, John W. M. (Harvard University)
Romney, A. Kimball (University of California)

Data:	1996
Resum:	Boas argued that anthropologists should make historical comparisons within well-defined regional contexts. A century later, we have many improvements in the statistical methodologies for comparative research, yet most of our regional constructs remain without a valid empirical basis. We present a new method for developing and testing regions. The method takes into account older anthropological concerns with relationships between culture history and the environment, embodied in the culture-area concept, as well as contemporary concerns with historical linkages of societies into world systems. We develop nine new regions based on social structural data and test them using data on 35 I societies. We compare the new regions with Murdock's regional constructs and find that our regional classification is a strong improvement over Murdock's. In so doiig we obtain evidence for the cross-cultural importance of gender and descent systems, for the importance of constraint relationships upon sociocultural systems, for the historical importance of two precapitalist world systems, and for strikingly different geographical alignments of cultural systems in the Old World and the Americas.
Drets:	Tots els drets reservats.
Llengua:	Anglès
Document:	Ressenya ; recerca ; Versió publicada
Publicat a:	Current anthropology, Vol. 37, núm. 1 (1996) , p. 87-123, ISSN 0011-3204

37 p, 4.4 MB

Registre creat el 2015-10-19, darrera modificació el 2022-03-05