Abstract
The morphological properties of kinship and marriage alliance networks, such as circuits, are typically considered as indicators of sociological phenomena - yet, they may also be partly coincidental. To assert the contribution of chance to these morphological features, we develop a standardized method where empirical alliance networks are compared with a random baseline. We apply our framework to a variety of empirical cases and show that some corpuses are remarkably well reconstructed by our random model, while others still feature significant divergencies which may be partly connected to field-based experience. On the whole, our approach may be used to scrutinize the matrimonial role of social groups as asserted by native or ethnological theory.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 394-405 |
Number of pages | 12 |
Journal | Social Networks |
Volume | 35 |
Issue number | 3 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Jul 2013 |
Keywords
- Alliance networks
- Kinship networks
- Morphology indicators
- Multinomial model