Experience-rich anthropology
Experience-rich anthropology| Interactive genealogy/kinship software accessible via WWW. | Kinship | WWW |
| Anthropological Expert Systems | Comparative Anthropology/Theoretical anthropology/Economics/Rationality | WWW |
| Simulation | Comparative Anthropology/theoretical anthropology/economics/rationality | WWW |
| Qualitative and Quantitative Assessment in Comparative Anthropology'. | Comparative Anthropology | WWW |
| Other material still under development |
Although kinship had been neglected by many anthropologists for some years, kinship related topics are beginning to assume importance in anthropology. This unit draws together various WWW resources for learning about kinship, including Brian Schwimmer's tutorial, examples created for teaching at Kent over the past 14 years, and soon, an online version of Dwight Read's Kinship Algebra Expert System.
Four resources have been under development for ERA. These elements are mostly oriented towards the description and analysis of genealogical connections within groups of people and their relationship to other social properties and activities. However, there is attention to more theoretical aspects of kinship and genealogy. There are also a set of links to sections of other ERA projects where kinship is important.
1) Kinship Editor. Entering genealogical data.
This is a simple graphical editor for entering genealogical data. The various symbols are created, dragged into position, and data is entered linked to each person's symbol. The genealogy can be output in a variety of ways, including simple lists and structured data for input into the other elements in this section. A Hypercard version have been in use since 1988. It has been translated to java, and should be available by mid-October 1998 as both an applet running from this site and as a standalone program.
2) Showing Kinship. Diagramming genealogical data.
The Kinship editor is oriented towards direct entry of genealogical data, rather than making diagrams. One of the more interesting aspects of genealogical data is that it can be recast from different perspectives, and other social variables can be imposed over a particular genealogical view. This element presents some papers and the datasets that underlay them, the capacity to draw the datasets in a variety of ways, and to superimpose the distribution of other attributes over the resulting genealogical diagram. The diagrams are 'active' which means that specific information about individuals and their relationships are available, and genealogical positions can be manually set . This element should be available by late October 1998 as both an applet running from this site and as a standalone program.
3) Calculating Kinship: Kinship in Prolog
Diagrams area useful tool for investigating genealogical relationships, but some relationships, and knowledge about relationships, require more dynamic capacity for representation. This element shows how this knowledge can be represented using a variant of Prolog, a declarative programming language.
Prolog is a good computer programming language for dealing with complex structural systems such as that presented by kinship. This applet will give you some experience with this.
This element includes a paper relating to representing knowledge about kinship by Michael Fischer originally published in the Bulletin of Information for Computing and Anthropology (BICA) in Feb. 1987. There is a more sophisticated (and better documented) example derived from Chapters 6 and 7 of Michael Fischer's book, Applications in Computing for Social Anthropologists, London, Routledge 1994 (ASA Research Methods Series). Finally, examples created in the Kinship Editor can be used. Permission is being sought for some other published examples.
This element should be available by late October 1998 as both an applet running from this site and as a standalone program.
4) Kinship Algebra Expert System (KAES). Originally developed by Prof. Dwight Read at UCLA, we are converting this program to Java and building an element around it. This is mainly a tool for investigating the structure of kinship terminologies, in particular the algebraic structure. Algebraic approaches to the study of kinship have been fruitful, but the technical aspects often put both the analysis and results out of reach for most anthropologists. KAES is an expert system that leads you through a kinship terminology of your choice, asking questions about the relationship between terms, and constructing an algebraic account is this is possible.
This is under development, and will probably be available sometime in the Spring of 1999 as a java applet and application.
Kinship Resources http://lucy.ukc.ac.uk/Kinship/
Introduction
The idea of using an expert system, a computer program that simulates a human expert (i.e. an informant) in anthropological analysis has been received by anthropologists with some interest, but with more caution (Davis 1984:3). This caution is justified because for most anthropologists the inner workings of the expert system are not known; they are black boxes.
This element includes a paper that describes some of the basic aspects of expert systems and discusses their applications to anthropology. The element also provides examples of how expert systems can be used to represent information, and a simple expert system applet in Java so students can experiment with the existing examples and create their own. Examples include a very simple scenario from Lewis on Gilbertese Navigation, and more substantial examples relating to arranging marriages in Lahore, Pakistan.
This element will be available from December, 1998.
Expert Systems in Anthropology http://lucy.ukc.ac.uk/Expert/
Introduction
When we apply a rule or set of rules to a set of input information, we derive a set of results corresponding to the inputs. The process of deriving this set of instances of applying the rule can be called simulation. The rule is a model which describes relationships, the application of the rule to generate an outcome is a simulation.
For example, if we take a rule adapted from Islamic Shariat law:
If talaq is said three times in succession to the wife before two male witnesses
the marriage is
dissolved, otherwise the marriage continues.
and apply this rule to the following information ó talaq was said twice to the wife before two male witnesses ó we arrive at the result that the marriage continues.
Simulations of this sort are nothing new to anthropologists ó we do them all the time in our head or on paper to validate our analyses against data, to explore the properties of our models, or to extrapolate our models to new situations. Such simulation, predating computers, has been used in anthropology at least since the nineteenth century (Mulvaney 1970). Simulation, with caution and reservation, is used to observe rituals, ceremonies and activities, which for some reason cannot be observed in the ordinary course of fieldwork (Clammer 1984:72ó3; Ellen 1984:274). Indeed, formal interviews and ëset-upsí (Jackson 1987:41) meet this sense of simulation to some extent. Finally, we practice simulation each time we ëplay outí our models and analyses in our minds or on paper, testing against observed data, and evaluating the results.
The use of computers for simulation modelling were among the first encounters of social anthropologists with computing (Kundstater et al 1963; Gilbert and Hammel 1966), not only because simulation met more or less the conception of what computers did in the early 1960s, but also because anthropologists at that time were beginning to explore the use of more sophisticated models and attempting to apply a more systematic perspective to anthropology.
This element includes some papers describing issues in simulation, some specific simulations, such as the Kapauku (Buchler and Fischer 1986), the !Kung based on Lee (1969), or Sakultatun (Wilson 1998). We are currently negotiating to include some of the classical simulations from the anthropological literature.
There are also some more generalised examples on the interaction of production and resource utilisation on population dynamics and the impact of preference for sex of children on population structure that students can experiment with.
This element will be available from mid-November 1998.
Simulation in Anthropology http://lucy.ukc.ac.uk/Simulate/
Introduction
Comparison is still touted as one of the main aspects of anthropological inquiry, as well as the source of much controversy. The goal in this element is to provide resources that students can use to investigate the distribution and range of different social and cultural features across a sample of societies. It is based on the Ethnographic Atlas (Murdock 1965) and materials derived from the constituent ethnographies, including both qualitative and quantitative information.
The qualitative information is accessed through a simple search facility which retrieves text segments from relevant ethnographies that contain the key terms searched for. There is both a simple controlled vocabulary and direct in-text word searches. We have specific ethnographic information on marriage, and rather more popular, human sexuality. We have used this in first-year teaching at Kent since 1991. Typically we ask students to write a comparison and synthesis of three societies approach to sexuality, and it is consistently cited as the favourite assignment of the students' first year, despite being one of the more time consuming.
The quantitative information is derived from the Ethnographic Atlas (Murdock 1965). Students can examine the distribution of 92 social and cultural variables over 186 societies, including mode of subsistence, marriage and betrothal patterns, residency, division of labour and land tenure. They can also make tables that cross-tabulate the distribution of two variables, so that correspondences between, say, division of labour and mode of subsistence can be identified.
The resulting tables are 'live'. The cells of the table can be clicked on to reveal the societies that make up that cell, and these entries are also 'live', and the entire set of coding for that society can be examined in a table with other societies if desired.
This quantitative part of this element will be available 1 Oct. 1998.
The qualitative part will be available shortly thereafter pending some licensing concerns.
Ethnographic Atlas Resources: http://lucy.ukc.ac.uk/EthnoAtlas/ethno.html
| AB 'Economic Migration: Poles in France 1928-1987' | Economic Anthropology/Ethnicity/Migration/History and Anthropology | WWW |
| AB 'Some ethical dilemmas in interviewing' | Ethics/Field methods/ | WWW |
| CT Simulated village plan for Bicker's Punjabi Village material | Pakistan/Urban Anthropology/Politics/Economics | WWW |
| CT Simulated 'walk-through' presentation of a Mambila Palace for Zeitlyn's ERA elements | African Societies/Politics/Ritual | WWW |
| KB Yoruba theatre material | African Societies/Performance | WWW |
| WJ Uduk in refugee camps | Migration/ | WWW |
| Angola Iron Smelting- under development | WWW |