Human Complex Systems

Read’s work on the generative logic of kinship terminologies constitutes one of the most distinctive and stimulating series of publications in the contemporary anthropology of kinship.  His intention to produce a universally valid explanatory (i.e. causal) theory of kinship terminology is highly ambitious – but also appropriate and intellectually refreshing. An important feature of his theoretical framework is that it allows for an interaction between universal cognitive processes and local cultural ideas. Another distinctive feature is that Read usually models whole terminologies – and specific features, such as crossness and generational skewing, are understood in the light of the terminological system as a whole. Read has been continually testing and refining his conceptual apparatus, and in this paper he brings it to bear for the first time on Crow-Omaha systems – offering us an exploratory case study that is intended both to show the insight that the generative logic approach can bring, and to investigate the specific logical features that may give rise to the phenomenon of skewing. In this comment I will look at Read’s approach in quite a general way, embedding my specific comments  on his analysis of Thonga kinship within this more general review.

The thought-provoking review of Denham by Dr. Robert Banks points out some very important parts of cultural analysis, unfortunately seldom discussed. Some of the questions posed by Banks are in part answered by two citations in Denham’s original paper: those of Hirshleifer (1977) and Gammage (2011). While Denham discusses Gammage in a bit more depth (pages 82 and 83), he cites Hirshleifer for more narrow reasons. Hirshleifer, a micro-economist, was one of the original modern thinkers on how biological and cultural evolution can be treated as one subject. Had Hrdy not treated the subject, Denham could have proposed his study showing that Hirshleifer predicted much of what Denham found. 

Read’s formal analysis of kinship terminologies is well known and widely respected, as is his leadership in promoting the formal analysis of kinship through the formation of panels and conferences, and his role in this journal. As in all his work the paper is strongly reasoned and draws upon a knowledge of the literature that is long and deep.  All of these are reasons we welcome the piece before us.  On the other hand, the spirit of this work is somewhat different from that of our book, engendering in us some reservations.  Taking the strengths for granted, we will confine our comment to a couple of things in Read’s article with which we take issue.

The capacity of kinship networks to be multi-functional, i.e. to shape other domains of the social life such as religion or the economy, reflects their function of channeling information flows. The more tightly the kinship network is structured into self-reproducing exogamous units, the better it resists the historical trend of losing its function as information channel and jointly its grip on the other aspects of the social life. For kinship networks to hold their multi-functionality, do actors need to be aware of their structure? In other terms, do the rules need to be explicit and followed in full awareness by the participants to the network? Or are the structuring principles able to operate behind the scenes even when their subjective representation is absent? The author reports on this the views expressed in personal conversations by his former professors: Lévi-Strauss, Fortes, Leach, Needham, Goody, Barnes and Macfarlane. In supporting the second view, that the awareness of the actors is indifferent, quantitative anthropology and psychoanalysis reveal their surprising affinity.

In this letter I demonstrate the analytical power of identifying the generative logic of kinship terminology structures and clarify aspects of the evolutionary origin of structures that have been attributed to unexplained processes such as adding or subtracting equations, or adding or subtracting attributes that ignore the systemic generative nature of kinship terminology structures.

This is the third of three papers I have written recently that challenge and seek to supplant the presumption of closure, rigidity and simplicity in anthropological analyses of Australian Aboriginal social organization. The first dealt with generational closure in canonical Kariera and Aranda kinship models; the second dealt with societal closure, endogamy and the small-world problem; this one examines closure, rigidity and simplicity in residential group compositions. I argue that these three problematic applications of the concept of closure converted European folk beliefs into a scientific theory based more on assumptions and conjectures than on observations of Aboriginal behavior. This paper and the two that preceded it constitute a systematic argument that emphasizes the importance of openness, flexibility and complexity in analyzing Australian Aboriginal social organization. 

The current paper is a commentary on theoretical issues associated with diversity in residential group compositions within and among Australian Aboriginal societies. I approach the matter by focusing primarily on variability in ethnographic patterns and historical processes for which I collected computer-analyzable behavioral and cognitive data with the Alyawarra speaking people of Central Australia in 1971-72. Throughout the paper, I emphasize complexity, openness, flexibility and freedom among the Alyawarra, while rejecting simplicity, closure, rigidity and Strehlow’s (1947) “all-oppressive night-shadow of tradition”. 

Among the Alyawarra, “residential group” means 2 or more people living together in any of three kinds of residences and three kinds of communities. “Group composition” refers to the diverse relationships among people with whom one lives. Relevant biological and behavioral factors include sex, age, marital status, asymmetrical male/female generation intervals with a mean wife

It is a truism that we cannot account for societal complexity when our preconceived notions prevent us from perceiving it. My objective here is to demonstrate that a great deal of complexity in Australian Aboriginal social organization waits to be discovered if only we will look for it. Raising one’s consciousness is not developing a grand theory, but it may be a useful first step. 

In a multi-site study of Welsh-American identity, informants were asked to rate the "Welshness" and "Americanness" of the behavior in a set of 21 scenarios, or brief narratives designed to exemplify Welsh and American personhood concepts. In addition, consultants were asked to rate how desirable or ideal the behaviors were, in their opinion. The Welsh-American population in the two sites, one in Iowa and the other on the Vermont/New York border, varied from low to high social visibility. Using consensus analysis of the scenario data, we test of a series of hypotheses concerning the perceived differences between "Welsh" and "American" personhood in high and low visibility sites and between the diaspora populations and the homeland of Wales.