Carol R. Ember

Myths about Hunter-Gatherers

Stable URL:http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0014-1828%28197810%2917%3A4%3C439%3AMAH%3E2.0.CO%3B2-GEthnology is currently published by University of Pittsburgh- Of the Commonwealth System of Higher Education.Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTORs Terms and Conditions of Use, available athttp://www.jstor.org/about/terms.html. JSTORs Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtainedprior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content inthe JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained athttp://www.jstor.org/journals/upitt.html.Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printedpage of such transmission.The JSTOR Archive is a trusted digital repository providing for long-term preservation and access to leading academicjournals and scholarly literature from around the world. The Archive is supported by libraries, scholarly societies, publishers,and foundations. It is an initiative of JSTOR, a not-for-profit organization with a mission to help the scholarly community takeadvantage of advances in technology. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.http://www.jstor.orgTue Jan 8 22:30:27 2008

Resource Unpredictability, Mistrust, and War A Cross-Cultural Study

The results of this cross-cultural study suggest that war may be caused mostly by a fear of nature and a partially resultant fear of others. A history of unpredictable natural disasters strongly predicts more war, as does socialization for mistrust (but less strongly). It seems that people, particularly in nonstate societies, may try to protect themselves against future disasters by going to war to take resources from enemies.

Residential Variation among Hunter-Gatherers:

This paper addresses itself to predicting variation in residence in a world wide sample of hunter-gatherers. The findings indicate that some subsist ence, demographic, and social environmental factors, suggested by previous theory and research, predict the tendency toward patrilocality versus matrilocality and the tendency toward unilocality versus bilocality. Im plications for the reconstruction of hunter-gatherer life in the Paleolithic are briefly discussed.

Warfare, Aggression, and Resource Problems: Cross-Cultural Codes

This paper presents and discusses codes for the Murdock/White (1969) sample societies. The codes measure warfare frequencies (internal, external, and overall); land and nonland resources taken during war; individual and socially organized aggression (homicide, assault, theft, trespass, suicide); and unpredictable and pre dictable resource problems

The Substantive Contributions of Worldwide Cross-Cultural Studies Using Secondary Data:

Humans seem to want to make sense of their world, to explain why things happen. Without minimizing the creative contribution of theorists, a major problem for social science is to recognize those well-meaning but incorrect theories that pass for knowledge. As Peter Caws (1969: 1378) put it: &dquo;Just as mutations arise naturally but are not all beneficial, so hypotheses [theories] emerge naturally but are not all correct. If progress is to occur, therefore, we require a superfluity of hypotheses and also a mechanism of selection.&dquo; The cross-cultural research strategy provides us with one systematic and objective way of eliminating theories that presumably should, but in fact do not, predict cultural variation. We are obliged to be skeptical about those theories that (when appropriately tested) fail to be supported, and we

Comparing Explanations of Polygyny

Polygyny is common in the ethnographic record. The vast majority of cultures known to anthropology allowed at least some men to have more than one wife simultaneously. This article compares various explanations of nonsororal polygyny, by far the most common type of polygyny. Multiple regression analyses of data for the societies in the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample indicate that the two main independent cross-cultural predictors of appreciable (i.e., more than occasional) nonsororal polygyny are high male mortality in war (resulting in an excess of females) and high pathogen stress, which seems to favor nonsororal polygyny to maximize genetic variation and disease resistance in progeny. High male mortality in war predicts particularly in nonstate societies. High pathogen stress predicts particularly in more densely populated state societies.

Worldwide cross-cultural studies and their relevance for archaeology

Archaeological inference based on ethnographic analogy may or may not be correct. What is worse, there is no systematic way to tell. With certain provisos, it is better to generate archaeological inference from the results of worldwide cross-cultural tests of relational hypotheses. Such tests may provide more benefits than within-region comparisons. This paper discusses a number of ways in which worldwide cross-cultural research may be used in archaeological inference, including: generalizing about societal types, inferring from presumed causes, inferring from material correlates, and inferring from noncausal associations. The paper concludes with a discussion of how comparative archaeology could help cross-cultural researchers test causal theories diachronically.

Problems of Measurement in Cross-Cultural Research Using Secondary Data

Measurement, the process of linking abstract concepts to empirical indicants (Blalock 1968:12; Zeller and Carmines 1980: 2), is critical in the testing of theory. No matter how sophisticated the derivation of hypotheses, sampling design, and statistical analysis, theory-testing may fail if measurement is inadequate. After briefly examining basic measurement concepts, we review a number of problems of measurement in the use of secondary data in cross-cultural research. We order our review by stages of the research process, from the design of measures to the data analysis, and we suggest some possible solutions to a variety of measurement problems. Since researchers face problems that vary with the research question, the type of theory, and the resources available, we hope that our discussion builds awareness of the strengths and weaknesses of various solutions to the different problems of measurement usmg secondary data and, in the process, improves the quality of cross-cultural research. By &dquo;research using secondary data&dquo; we are referring here to studies that code data from ethnographic reports and then use these codes to develop quantitative generalizations across a sample of cases within a region or throughout the whole world. Although we focus on measurement here, one of our central premises is that measurement concerns cannot be separated from questions of theory. Theory specifies which variables are of interest and models how variables may be interrelated. Ultimately, we argue, theory is critical not only in the selection of concepts of interest but also in our evaluation of the adequacy of the measures that are employed and in the interpretation of results. Finally, although it is not a point we develop here, cross-cultural studies using secondary data represent only one way of evaluating propositions about human behavior; propositions also need to be

On the Conditions Favoring Extended Family Households

This paper suggests that extended family households will come to prevail in a society when there are incompatible activity requirements that cannot be met by a mother or father in a one-family household. We discuss why we think that the extended family household is a more likely solution to the problem of incompatible activity requirements than other logically possible solutions. A cross-cultural test indicates that the hypothesis about incompatible activity requirements strongly predicts extended family households, in both agricultural and non-agricultural societies.

Issues in cross-cultural studies of interpersonal violence.

This paper discusses the achievements and promise of cross-cultural studies of interpersonal violence (mainly focusing on homicide). After comparing the methods of cross-cultural and cross-national research, we review some of the special problems of definition and measurement in cross-cultural studies. Then we review the results of such studies and suggest how cross-cultural studies of violence might be improved, both methodologically and theoretically.