Social Dynamics: Modeling Ethnography, Ethnohistory, and Sociodemographics

Students will learn to enter and analyze ethnographic, published, or archival data using PC database (Spss), spatial (GIS), network analysis and visualization (Pajek) software, and to write publishable articles modeling social structure and dynamics.  This seminar is intended for graduate students in Anthropology, Networks, and the new program in Social Demography.

Background texts:
Anthropological Demography : Toward a New Synthesis (Population and Development Series) by David I. Kertzer and Thomas E. Fricke (Editor), $18.95.

The pilot fieldsite studies (Gwembe Tonga) is part of An International Network of field sites with continuous Demographic Evaluation of Populations and Their Health in developing countries. See: 10000 Tonga and Gwembe WebSite

With funding from the Mellon Foundation (Program in Anthropology and Demography), this seminar set in place for a data base research practicum a Tzintzuntzan website for a key 50 year longitudinal fieldsite in Michoacan, Mexico, where field study was begun by George Foster (UC Berkeley, emeritus) and continued by Robert Van Kemper (SMU Anthropology), Stanley Brandes (UC Berkeley), and others. The Mellon Foundation provided funding to Doug White (UCI, Anthropology), Eric Widmer (Geneva, Sociology), and Robert Van Kemper for construction and analysis of the network components of this database, for testing hypotheses related to migration, family and community structure, and demography. Van Kemper will join the seminar to present project related materials
TUES Oct 19 Van Kemper will join the seminar
and will be available all week for consultation following the meeting of
TUES Dec 7 Van Kemper, when he arrives as 10:30 or so.
Tzintzuntzan Readings:
   Tzintzuntzan (Widmer, Kemper, White): tables
   Kemper
   Foster
   Student paper (Claudia Caro and David Diaz)

In addition to Tzintzuntzan, students can analyze their own data or other datasets are provided. Research in most of these sites is currently supported under a NSF grant (1999-2002).  Up to three students who are also enrolled in the Grant Writing Seminar (Anthro 225, Sociology 289) may write brief proposals for an NSF supplementary grant for graduate experience in research (GER) that provides up to $5,000 for a student component of the research.  Research on Tzintzuntzan and Tzintzuntzan migrants to Southern California is also possible under such funding.

Other Readings:

Pizarro paper

Powell papers

Breiger papers

Bearman paper - Lloyd's bank

Bearman Groote Eylandt paper 1998. "Generalized Exchange." American Journal of Sociology.

Turkish Nomads book ms.

Omaha paper

Guatemalan paper by Casasola and Alcántara

Skyhorse paper on Chuukese

1999 "Structural Connectivities, their Boundaries and Integration: Kinship and Compadrazgo in Rural Tlaxcala, Mexico" (drw, Michael Schnegg, Lilyan Brudner & Hugo G. Nutini) Social Networks: Theory and Applications eds. Jorge Gil and Samuel Schmidt.

"The Invisible State: Radial and Proximal Cohesion in Tlaxcala" (drw, Michael Schnegg & Lilyan Brudner) International Network Conference, The Problem of Institutions: Anthropological Studies.

1997 "Class, Property and Structural Endogamy: Visualizing Networked Histories" (Lilyan A. Brudner & drw). Theory and Society 25:161-208.

1998 "Network Mediation of Exchange Structures: Ambilateral Sidedness and Property Flows in Pul Eliya" (Michael Houseman & drw). pp. 59-89 in Kinship, Networks and Exchange, eds. Thomas Schweizer and drw. Cambridge University Press.

1998 "Kinship, Property and Stratification in Rural Java: A Network Analysis" (drw & Thomas Schweizer) pp. 36-58 in Kinship, Networks and Exchange, eds. Thomas Schweizer and drw. Cambridge University Press.